The Latin Summit

The Latin Summit is an annual meeting of people who train youth leaders in Latin America. [click photo to see large version] The common denominators that bring us together are a) a willingness to work together with others toward a common goal, and b) we all love working with young people.

Underwritten by a generous and visionary foundation, 15 to 20 of us get together to refocus our goals, renew our friendship, make sure we're not reinventing the wheel and encourage each other. Even though we are in different countries and from a variety of organizations the Summit provides a space where we can align visions, focus on the important issues and not "reinvent the wheel".

From the relationships fostered at this Summit quite a few important partnerships have developed that have changed the landscape of youth ministry in the Spanish-speaking world . Over the years we have become friends so it also a lot of fun.

Quito, Ecuador

"Would passengers Alvarez, Chang, Pazchaira, Hughes and Davis please come to the counter of gate 16?"

I turn to Annette and smile at the variety represented in list of names that was just called out over the airport P.A. system. We're waiting for our flight to Ecuador where we'll be part of a team training personnel from the South American division of Compassion Int'l. This is the organization that helps people "adopt" a poor child for $32/month and then provides these children with food, education, clothing, bible teaching, basic health care, etc.

If you are the praying type, we'd love it if you would help support us praying a) that Compassion would be more effective in helping needy children because of what they learn and experience during this conference, b) that the workshop we are leading would be helpful to those in attendance and that Annette and I would be effective communicators.
[click the photo for the big version of Annette in Quito this morning]

Our Newsletter and Other Vaguely Interesting Stuff

We just published our October newsletter. If you're interested in reading it, click here. There's also new stuff over at Annette's quotes blog, PRE-TEXT.

The last couple of weeks we've been in Orlando. Annette continues to work on her book. I prepare papaya, banana, oatmeal, yogurt, and blueberry smoothies and homemade caramel machiatto coffees to keep her fueled. I also help our team coordinate and maintain ParaLideres.org, our youth workers website, which has been totally revamped by Xavier Cabezas, our we'd-be-dead-without-him volunteer programmer.

Last week we hosted the Alex Chiang and family from Lima, Peru. Alex is a friend, colleague, sociologist and youth ministry speaker. The next couple of weeks we get to host Pedro and Analia Bousoño from Argentina. With all these Latin American guests, it dawns on me that my worries about losing my Spanish here in the U.S. were a waste of energy.