Walking With El Salvador

Plan. Train. Go! In a nutshell, this describes the Mission of Healing 2022: Plan , Train , Go. If you are coming into this story in the middle, you really should take a moment to click on PLAN and then on TRAIN . This episode celebrates GO.  CELEBRATES!  Yup, that all caps shout-out is so all of you sister church relationship coordinators and international companion synod cheerleaders in the back row can enjoy a celebratory trajectory moment with our Mission of Healing North team. Whether you've been working on a ministry project with your companions for 3 years, 5 years or 25 years, we suspect you know the challenges of visioning mutually, adapting with time and circumstances, and developing local sustainability - sustainability not only (or necessarily) in terms of local economic independence, but in terms of local local leadership, local leadership development, local creativity, and local enthusiasm.  During the Teach the Teachers event, we collected names and WhatsApp phone n

The pandemic brought lots of changes to the way we could do ministry together, locally and globally. In 2020, we put on the Mission of Healing North Family Wellness Fair just before COVID locked down the world. In 2021, we did a year-long, remote, community education event.  In 2022, we jumped into a new era of community health education in El Salvador and created a training event called "Formación de Formadores" (we used "Teach the Teachers" in English).  2022 Teach the Teachers Event Curriculum Development As I mentioned in the previous installment of the Teach the Teachers story, the Salvadoran Lutheran Church Health Ministries Coordinator, Pastor Conchi, suggested we develop curriculum for the Mission of Healing North Teach the Teachers workshop with a focus on each of 4 human body systems:  Digestive, Circulatory, Respiratory and Reproductive. We started by planning the general information charla for each system. We created big colorful posters and simple

This is a story about the end of an era. We are reminiscent. We are thankful. We are relieved. We are proud. In February 2022, we celebrated 22 years of Missions of Healing in the northern region of the Salvadoran Lutheran Church. This was the last Mission of Healing North centered around the participation of a companion synod delegation. The preparations for the event took more than 6 months and the delegation was in El Salvador for 2 weeks. We are done. And we are not done. In a better-than-hoped-for way, the community health education plan begun during those 2 weeks is being implemented across the region by local teams. This is a "mission accomplished" success story with a happy trajectory. Photo of the 2022 Mission of Healing North delegation. (Photo credit:  Salvadoran Mission of Healing team) Photo of the 2000 Mission of Healing delegation. (2 team members not pictured) The idea for a new kind of Mission of Healing for 2022 evolved out of what we learned by attempting t