Tag: Venezuela

This wasn’t a plan …

I didn’t intend to go so many weeks without posting on ButGod.blog. It just happened, a week at a time, as so much happened around me that I couldn’t keep up. Travel. Family events, including guests. Caring for our four grandchildren. Precious times and challenging times, including unexpected severe illnesses among my siblings.

Does this happen to you? You make plans and set intentions. And then life happens. James wrote about this (4:13-15): Look here, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year … How do you knkow what your lie will be like tomorrow? … What you ought to say is, “If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.”

Today I want to share with you a bit of the fallout from the double earthquakes that rocked northern Venezuela on June 24. I’ll do this by sharing two emails I sent to a group of friends who pray regularly for Venezuela and the faithful pastors who daily pay the price of staying and serving there under conditions you and I can’t imagine. They certainly didn’t plan a double earthquake and their ongoing enormous challenges. If you’d like to join this group, receiving irregular updates and prayer requests, please let me know (debrakornfield@gmail.com).

The first email includes three ways to make this personal, by giving financially in support of the earthquake recovery effort and by praying for the pastors who are wearing themselves out serving their families, many of whom have lost everything–loved ones, homes, their church buildings flattened, their lives permanently upended. There’s a link where you can receive updates from a coalition of churches working toward recovery of their communities.

The second email is a brief report from one of the pastors we are supporting, along with 300 workers from his network of churches, Pastor Álvaro Rea. Their focus is the city/state of La Guaira, where 80% of the buildings were flattened. Please pray for their success with each of the goals Álvaro outlines. Thank you.

Email 1:

Hello friends. I apologize for taking so long to write to you about the impact of the Venezuela earthquakes on June 24. I imagine that you’ve followed news reports and know that ~5000 people have been confirmed dead, ~17,000 injured, and tens of thousands still missing (the guesstimate varies widely depending on what report you read). They are presumed dead since so much time has passed without finding them. Because June 24 was a national holiday in Venezuela, many people were at home when the earthquakes hit and therefore more vulnerable.

The “facts” I just cited, though, are just the beginning of this story for Venezuelans, thousands of whose lives have been permanently upended. As you know, the great majority of Venezuelans were struggling for basic survival before the twin earthquakes hit. Now they lack shelter, food, clothing, clean water, and health care, for starters. Epidemics are common following disasters like this one. Even before the earthquakes, there was a broad resurgence of previously controlled preventable diseases in Venezuela due to lack of vaccines, clean water, adequate nutrition, and medical aid.

You can read dozens of articles to understand the scope of the disaster. I found this one helpful from a broader economic point of view, but if you take a few minutes, you can find a wide variety of information.

Dave and I are trying to help the pastors we know in Venezuela as they and their churches do all they can to care for their people. Many of them have lost their church buildings, but that loss pales beside the deaths and injuries of their people. Specifically, we are sending aid to:

 * Pastor Álvaro Rea Ángulo, whose Las Buenas Nuevas churches in Barquisimeto and other locations are doing all they can to support earthquake relief in the city of La Guaira (pronounced with the emphasis on the “i,” Gua-EE-ra). In La Guaira, Venezuela’s main port on the north coast bordering the country’s main airport, half an hour from Caracas, 80% of the buildings collapsed. (Try to imagine that happening in your city!)

To contribute funds to Pastor Álvaro, you can use Zelle with the name Alvaro Angulo and the phone number 4076059351. He is David’s successor for leadership of his continent-wide ministry, DPP (Discipling and Pastoring of Pastors). We love Álvaro, trust him, and deeply admire his abilities and love for the Lord and for people. Specify “for earthquake relief.” Note: if you’re not familiar with using Zelle, contact me about other ways to send money to Álvaro.

*    Pastor Freddy Dávila, executive secretary of the Assemblies of God (AG) in Venezuela, who lives in Caracas and is the point person for relief efforts there. The AG are the largest denomination in Venezuela.

To contribute funds to Pastor Freddy, you can use Zelle with the name Freddy Dávila, email freddy.davila22@gmail.com. Freddy is a personal friend whom we love and admire greatly. We have known and worked with him for twenty years. Specify “for earthquake relief.” Again, if you don’t know how to use Zelle, contact me about other ways to send money to Freddy.

* In addition, our friend Oscar Peña has helped organize Hope Venezuela, to coordinate relief efforts. You can access information both for concrete needs and specific daily prayer requests through WhatsApp or Instagram. Each post includes an English translation following the Spanish.

https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Vb8XCc7IN9iqbd6FYh2s

https://www.instagram.com/channel/AbaYt1e-K8GJhot-/

Whether or not the Lord leads you to give financially, please pray! Pastors are exhausted and grieving, as they carry such heavy loads of concern for their people. 

At the beginning of World Cup games after the earthquakes, a moment of silence was observed for the suffering of the Venezuelan people. I found this heartwarming, as I knew that some people in those crowds used that moment to pray. How much more encouraging to know you pray!

Email 2 Translation of an update from Álvaro Rea

David and Débora, greetings and blessings.

Wednesday, July 15, I returned to La Guaira with my wife Aura, my daughter Mariangel, and an electrician from the church. We went to install power inverters at three locations—run by local churches—that serve as aid centers and shelters.

Afterward, we traveled up to Caracas and visited an industrial technical school in the working-class district of Catia. The school is sheltering around 150 families who have been affected by the crisis and have a family member in need of medical care. A pastor who works with us, along with his church, is providing spiritual support there. We plan to train them in trauma processing and child sexual abuse prevention.

If you would like to join us through prayer or by contributing to the travel, support, and resources we will continue to provide, here are the areas of action we are focusing on. Please support us in prayer for each of these goals:

1.  Respite for pastors: We want to offer five-day rest periods at retreat centers for local pastors and their families, who are already showing signs of extreme burnout (“compassion fatigue”) after days of sleeplessness while responding to the crisis.

2.  Light and water for shelters: Equipping churches serving as shelters with solar-powered generators and water purification systems for the community.

3.  Health, mental and spiritual: Creating spaces for therapeutic and pastoral support to help people process their profound grief and anxiety.

4. Child sexual abuse prevention workshops, utilizing various strategies and educational materials; this is an urgent need given the vulnerability of the youngest ones amidst the catastrophe.

5. Reconstruction: Helping to rebuild—in safe areas—churches, parsonages, and the only Christian school in the central region of La Guaira.

We will carry this out with a group of over 300 volunteers from various congregations across the country.

Every prayer and every contribution—no matter how small—counts in bringing eternal hope amidst such great pain.

Thank you so very much for your prayers and your financial support.

Gratefully,

Pastor Álvaro Rea

Heroes in Venezuela

But God never abandons us May 26, 2023

Hebrews 11:26, 13:5-6 Moses thought it was better to suffer for the sake of Christ than to own the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to his great reward. … For God has said, “I will never fail you, I will never abandon you.” So we can say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper, so I will have no fear: What can mere people do to me?”  

I usually post just twice a week, but I want to share a situation with you that’s happening right now. We could substitute the names “Otto and Idagly” for Moses in Hebrews 11:26: they too have chosen suffering rather than treasures in the way the world evaluates priorities. I wrote about them way back on October 11, 2020, so you might want to re-read that post.

Otto leads the Pastoring of Pastors movement Dave helped start in Venezuela. For a long time, as a husband and dad who cares deeply about his family, Otto has nurtured the dream of a house of their own. And now that is coming true!!

Currently their family of five lives in Idagly’s parents’ home, sharing the space also with Idagly’s sister and her family–12 people in a five-bedroom house. This means their two adolescent girls share a small bedroom with their brother, and Otto has his office in his and Idagly’s bedroom, and all twelve people share the kitchen, living room, and bathroom. 

Yuliana, Idagly, Eliam, Otto, Eliany

Otto created a plan eight months ago to build a four-bedroom house (one bedroom to be used for his office). An architect projected it would cost $15,000. We tried to raise money for this, but people responded with only $8,000, so there was no possibility of initiating construction.

With runaway inflation, the cost increased dramatically. Inflation in Venezula was 436% in April this year compared with April 2022. Think about that for a minute.

However, people leaving Venezuela have been selling their properties at a loss to obtain cash. A four-bedroom apartment became available in Otto and Idagly’s neighborhood for $23,000. We told them to jump on it. We “borrowed” $15,000 from our own retirement account to complete the cash payment. Otto and Idagly received the keys to the apartment two days ago! They want to paint and repair a few things before moving in after they are with us in Bogotá for a leaders’ retreat June 8-14.

Dave and I have been thinking and praying about a repayment plan that would work for Otto and Idagly. We gave them $2,500 as a gift, leaving them $12,500 to repay. That’s an enormous amount in a country where right now the minimum wage is equivalent to $5.40 per MONTH and they are understandably nervous about this. The proposal we have sent them is that they repay us $100/month, which would take them until the end of 2034. (That’s more than a third of what they receive through our Multiplying Grace effort.) Any month they are able to pay more, or any time someone makes a $100 contribution, their debt will be reduced by one month.

Would you enjoy helping them with this debt? If so, please send your gift directly to us. We can’t give you a tax break because we used personal money, not ministry money. You can send us a check (contact me through Messenger or debrakornfield@gmail.com for the address) or use Paypal or Google Pay. I’ll try to update you monthly on progress toward resolving this debt. 

Imagine how amazing it will be for this family that has chosen to STAY in Venezuela to care for pastors to have their own living space. Imagine Otto, leading a nationwide ministry, having an office of his own.

I think Otto and Idagly’s situation helps us understand why almost a quarter of Venezuela’s population has left the country, including most professionals. Recently public school teachers went on strike, protesting salaries of about $10-$25/month. University professors earn $40-$60/month. President Maduro said no and ordered them back to work, asking them to be content with being “heroes.” Wouldn’t you leave too? There’s no way for one person to eat at those salary levels, even only eating rice. And most of them have families.

Every time I read a story like this, I appreciate Otto and Idagly and our other Venezuelan pastor friends more, for their determination to stay in Venezuela to serve and care and give. Truly, they are heroes in the Kingdom of God.