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When I arrived in the sticky nighttime heat of El Salvador three nights ago, I was greeted with this card:
“Brenna, Welcome to El Salvador…and to the most fun, challenging, life changing, fruitful, and blessed year of your life.–Layo & Luchy Levia, El Salvador 08″
Tonight, our team had dinner with Layo and Luchy, the area directors for Campus Crusade in Latin America and the Caribbean. They shared their vision for reaching the country for Christ, and it brought tears to my eyes. Really, it was the same basic vision that Campus Crusade has in the US:
- Connect students to Jesus.
- Create life-changing discipleship relationships.
- Build multiplying leaders who will develop others.
- Create self-sustaining movements.
But the way that Layo explained how he hoped to see this play out in his own broken and hurting country was deeply moving. The truth is, in El Salvador, the missionaries have come to the poor, and many have trusted Christ. But these missionaries have altogether missed the influential people in the country. They have ignored the executives, the business owners, the politicians, the very people who can initiate change on a mass scale. Who did God tell Moses to go to first when he was called? Pharaoh. And the Jewish leaders. Who did Paul go to when he did his ministry? He went to the synagogues and pagan temples. He went first to the people of influence. It’s true, we need to care for the orphans and feed the poor. But Paul wasn’t neglecting the poor when he went to the most powerful people with the message of Christ.
So that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to try to find the people who can bring a new morality to a country where alcoholism, rape, and murder are far too common. A morality not forced by outsiders, but brought on by heart change. It’s the kind of vision that hardly has a starting place. But we are starting. Even learning how to communicate, and buy groceries, and get around is a part of the job of reaching students. We’re getting to a place where we feel functional, and we are ready to get into our ministry.
