Fostering Relationships across Cultures

Connections are important, especially when I come across awesome people engaged in creative, powerful ministries in vastly different contexts and doing similar types of work.  I see opportunities for intercultural exchange and mutual learning.

About a year ago, Greg and I traveled to Puebla, Mexico, where we learned about dry composting toilets and wood-saving stoves made from adobe. These “technologies” are increasingly important because of a scarcity of water and deforestation due to an increase in agribusiness.  We learned about many of the injustices experienced by people in rural communities, which often contributes to migration and displacement, both internal and external. 

From Puebla, we continued to Chiapas to visit colleagues in ministry there at the Seminario Intercultural Mayense, or Mayan Intercultural Seminary (SIM), and we discovered similar challenges: scarcity of water, changes in climate, and migration.

Rural communities in many parts of Mexico and Central America are hard hit when young adults, especially men, migrate north seeking better economic opportunities to support their families.  This leaves women as heads of households, grandparents left to raise grandchildren, and young children growing up with insecurity.

Many of our CBF Field Personnel who serve in rural settings in the US face similar challenges as young people grow up and move away.  Their hometowns often lack opportunities for adequate education and employment, and those who stay often feel stuck.  They may work with migrants or refugees, who struggle with finding their place in the rural US.

Which brings us back to connections.  We were introduced to new health and community development models for ministry through the Tree of Life Center in Puebla. We know well the work of CBF Field Personnel Rick Burnette in south Florida, Jessica Hearne in Danville, Virginia, and Jenny Jenkins in Haiti. All are involved in community development through health initiatives and sustainable agricultural projects.

And both the ministries through the Tree of Life Center as well as those of CBF Field Personnel seemed a good fit with the work our friends were doing through the SIM (Mayan Intercultural Seminary) in Chiapas, Mexico, as they also engage in community development ministries.

The Chiapanecos wanted to access the same training we had had in Puebla.  We arranged the training, and Jenny Jenkins and I traveled along with them to Puebla for the week-long training at the Tree of Life Center.  (Read more about that experience at https://www.gregandsuesmith.com/post/improving-life-in-rural-indigenous-communities)

The experience came full circle in January 2024 as Rick, Jessica, and I traveled to Chiapas and learn more about the SIM’s community development ministries in Los Altos de Chiapas.  While quite different than rural ministries in the US, the two groups saw much overlap in their ministries.

The team from the SIM became our teachers for a week.  Not only did we get to see first-hand their community gardens, but we also participated in the pilot project for building the dry composting toilets.  Specifically, we helped with the second toilet by making adobe blocks for the walls.

The Community Development Initiative in Chiapas is designed to address living conditions in indigenous communities and villages by providing composting latrines in areas with no access to running water, and to explore other community development needs alongside the SIM and its ongoing ministries.  The hope is to decrease the incentive for young adults to emigrate from their homes, to strengthen and maintain family units and to create more stable and growing local communities in Los Altos de Chiapas.

The SIM’s short-term goal is to build five toilets in areas where they currently have gardening projects and established relationships.  Each toilet costs approximately $600 for the basic supplies provided by the SIM.  The SIM helps with the initial construction and helps local families learn how use and maintain the toilets, following the model created by the Tree of Life Center.

While building toilets or stoves is rewarding and an easy way to involve volunteers or show quantitative results, the real impact is through the connections and shared experiences.

The ministry leaders in Puebla had the opportunity to interact with indigenous leaders from Chiapas, another state far away and very different than theirs as they spent a week together at the Tree of Life Center.  They had had limited interactions with Mayan peoples whose first language wasn’t Spanish, and they had many questions.

For the trip to Puebla, two of the four leaders from Chiapas had never been on a plane or outside their own state.  They flew to Mexico City, met Jenny and me, and we traveled by bus and van to rural Puebla.  During the week, we were all provided with all the, training, tools, and expertise to start our own projects.

When Rick, Jessica, and I traveled to Chiapas, the SIM leadership then had the opportunity to share their knowledge and expertise with those of us from the US.  Just as they taught the local communities the value of caring for the earth through the lens of a Mayan worldview, they taught us the same.  We learned about the depth of their spiritual connection with the earth itself.

And we as CBF Field Personnel had the opportunity to engage in ministry alongside colleagues who may not share our language or culture but who shared the same sense of call and of passion to reach others for Christ by ministering to holistic needs.  We worked together, ate together, prayed together, and worshipped together.  The friendships and connections we made have impacted our lives for the better and infused each of us with renewed energy for our diverse ministries.