Dear friends in our supporting congregations:
      It's been nine months since Hurricane Mitch smashed through Central America, yet responding to the disaster continues to be the biggest priority in our lives. It's hard to think of anything for very long around here without reflecting on how it relates to Mitch.
      Both of us have been involved in helping the Christian Commission for Development to redefine its ministry in past months. CCD is working in well over 400 rural communities, more than quadruple the villages where it ministered before Mitch, and that expansion has not been easy. Emergency relief work is intrinsically different than long-term development, but CCD has nonetheless tried to take advantage of the emergency to empower people in rural communities in ways that will make for fundamental and long-lasting change.
      Lyda has played a key role in training more than 200 village leaders in how to manage post-traumatic stress. Each of these people, trained in several-day workshops, became "multipliers," training others in their respective villages and regions. Enough time has gone by that follow-up workshops have been held to evaluate their experiences and acquire new skills, and Lyda is encouraged by the way the training has equipped people to deal with more than just the immediate crisis of the hurricane. Indeed, it presents a whole new paradigm for how poor communities can use resources at hand to provide psychological and pastoral care for their members.
      Lyda has also helped CCD take a hard look at how gender has helped, and hindered, a holistic response to the storm. This has ramifications that are economic, psychological, and spiritual. Lyda helped organize a gathering of Central American church activists who gathered in Tegucigalpa in May to examine how gender issues have affected their responses to the storm. Related to this, she's continued to help CCD design its ministry with women who are victims of domestic violence, a problem that's on the rise in the wake of Mitch. CCD is finishing the construction of a large shelter for women in a village outside Tegucigalpa, and Lyda has spent much of the last two weeks working with an Italian psychologist to design how CCD will work with the women and children who come to live in the shelter.
      Lyda has also continued to teach one course at the Honduras campus of the Latin American Biblical University. Her winter quarter class was on “post-disaster emotional recovery.” This quarter she's teaching an introductory course on the Hebrew Scriptures.
      Paul continues his perverse journalistic fascination with the disaster's impact on the region's politics and economies. Besides writing at length about these issues, he's also assisted foreign journalists who come here to write, or produce radio or television programs, about the aftermath of Mitch. He's found some time to sneak off and write about other issues in the region, from the elections in El Salvador to the struggle of the people of Vieques-a small island off Puerto Rico-to halt the bombing of their island by the U.S. Navy. Paul has continued to assist CCD interpret its ministry to funding agencies and the international press, and is giving the initial briefing about post-Mitch Honduras to volunteer work brigades arriving from the U.S. to help rebuild houses.
      For those of you following the continuing saga of Paul's hypoplastic anemia, the numbers continue to climb ever so slowly. All the blood numbers are still below normal, especially platelets and white cells, but they are moving inexorably in the right direction. Thanks for your prayers for healing.
      As a family, we did escape to Guatemala for Holy Week to visit friends. Since the kids got out of school in mid-June we've attempted, not very successfully according to them, to spend more time with them. But we've managed to take a child along on several trips to the countryside, and Paul has taken them exploring a few times in the cloud forest behind our village. We still struggle to balance family life with the never-ending demands of work. It has always been a difficult issue for us; since Mitch it's even tougher.
      We appreciate the notes and letters that have continued to arrive from many of you. We unfortunately haven't always done a good job of answering them, but want you to know we appreciate the love and support that you've shown in recent months both for us as well as for the people of Honduras. We also appreciate the generosity that you have displayed. The United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) has committed well over $2 million to help CCD minister to people affected by Mitch. Those are dollars you deposited in the offering plate late last year. And several of you have made other contributions (to CCD's gender work during the emergency, for example). Please know that your concrete expressions of solidarity have been essential in helping Hondurans to rebuild both the physical infrastructure of their villages as well as to nourish hope during very trying times.
      If you're interested in a good look at CCD's ministry in response to Mitch, Church World Service has produced a 10-minute video entitled “Building Hope.” It's available at no cost by calling CWS at 1-800-297-1516 extension 38, or on the Net at www.churchworldservice.org. This video is an excellent resource for congregational gatherings. (It's one of the resources that Paul has helped produce.)
      Those of you in the PNW conference who are interested in coming to Honduras to help rebuild homes will have at least two opportunities in coming months. Wallingford UMC in Seattle is organizing a group for the beginning of December (contact Barb Buys at buyssfe@earthlink.net), and Joanne Coleman Campbell, a pastor in Tacoma, is organizing a group for March or April (colecamp@tacoma.net). Other opportunities will become available, and we'll let you know about them. If you're interested in organizing a team, let us know and we'll put you in touch with the right folks. And we look forward to welcoming you to Honduras.
      Over the longs weeks and months since Mitch, we've experienced a wide range of emotions as we've wrestled with the personal stress provoked by Mitch and worked alongside Hondurans affected in so many ways by the disaster. Part of what has kept us going is the resilience of the poor who refuse to be victims, the quiet determination to survive that has been just as important in the wake of Mitch as the tons of emergency food and the stacks of cement blocks for new homes. It's a determination that shows well in Paul's photos (such as the shot of two young women pushing a wheelbarrow full of mud that appeared on the cover of the April issue of Response, the magazine of United Methodist Women). Despite suffering so much, a tremendous reserve of courage and tenacity remains. Material resources will continue to remain scarce, but there is no shortage of will to overcome. Witnessing that, along with the encouragement and support that you provide from the north, keeps us going.
 
 Shalom,
 
 

 Lyda and Paul
 
 
 

Lyda Pierce & Paul Jeffrey
Apartado 21, Colonia Kennedy, Tegucigalpa, Honduras
Voice: home +504-236-9187; office +504-239-9951
Fax: +504-232-3189
Email: lyda@datum.hn pablito@datum.hn
Website: www.gbgm-umc.org/honduras