July 16, 2009

Greetings from Yucatán!

The exciting news for the Wehmeyer family is that David has graduated from High School and will enter Texas State University at San Marcos this fall and Valerie will be returning to Merida after six years of university and graduate study. She will be teaching Greek at the San Pablo Seminary and English, Spanish, and cultural studies at the Blas Pascal High School, a Christian high school run by the Presbyterian Church here in Yucatan. Martha has just returned home after two weeks in the Canary Islands (she did not see any canaries) where she was helping her sister who had just given birth prematurely to a baby girl. Both her sister and the little girl are doing fine. To complete our family update, Kristen has a year and a half to study before finishing her nursing degree. Please keep these young people in your prayers as they make these transitions in their lives.

The exciting news for the mission work is always that the good news of our Lord Christ is being proclaimed. On June 24 the seminary graduated six students who are off to five different Mexican states. Then on July 5, Peninsula Presbytery, one of 13 in the area, ordained four men to the ministry of Word and Sacrament. One of them, Juan Carlos, was a special student from Nicaragua and is now the first ordained Presbyterian pastor in that country. Peninsula Presbytery has been planting a church in Estelí, Nicaragua, for the past six years and they will now have a full-time Nicaraguan pastor. I was invited in the next few months to return there for a second workshop in spiritual formation. Pray that I can find a few days in my calendar.

A girl named Lucy in Obregon, Chiapas.

Two excellent work teams from North Carolina have been here in June and July. Westminster Presbyterian Church from Durham spent a week in Sabancuy, Campeche. They stayed with local families, poured a concrete floor, did house-to-house evangelism, and led a four-day vacation Bible school. Great work Westminster! And First Presbyterian of Kannapolis was here in Merida with us. They poured an awesome porch for the future Sunday-school building, led vacation Bible school in two churches, and explored the cenotes of Yucatan. Cenotes are underground caves from which the ancient Mayans collected water during the dry season. Today the caves are still a source of water but also make fascinating swimming pools.

What else is happening? A big deal for me is we are now chanting the Psalms each Sunday in the liturgy of Door of Salvation. Many Presbyterians will say “what?” or maybe “boring!” but I think it’s important to restore our roots to the apostolic and Jewish origins of our faith. With so many different Pentecostal groups offering a complete mishmash of different theologies and practices, Presbyterians of the Reformed tradition need to clarify their identity. The early church was in fact both liturgical and sacramental, despite what our Puritan ancestors thought. I have been trying to teach my students to be watchful of are two extremes. One is scholasticism that attempts to “reason” a way to God. The other is the pietism that attempts to “feel” a way to Him. The wonderful thing about the Psalms is they are a powerful example of how to keep both of these together as we worship the Creator of all that is.

Chol children in Niche Ha, Chiapas.

This summer we have found scholarships for three sisters to travel to England and Santo Domingo to live in religious communities. For years we have been trying to be the midwife for a Presbyterian-Benedictine community in Mexico. These new sisters will be leaders in Merida and in a new community planned for the southernmost Mexican state, Chiapas. Please pray for the planning of a missionary house for women and the purchase of a farm that will be a co-operative community that can offer a place for retreats, alcohol recovery, and produce organic foods.

Do you like quotes that make you think a bit? Here are two I have run across recently. “The earth does not have imperfections that heaven cannot cure” (Thomas Moore).  “The world is full of heaven and God burns in every common bush, but only those who see take their shoes off; the rest sit to gather blackberries” (Elizabeth Barrett Browning).  I found both in a book called The Cabin by William Paul Young.

May the peace of our Lord and His infinite love overwhelm you with joyful marvel.

The 2009 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 275