Dear friends in our supporting churches:

      This is not the normal missive from our home in the mountains of Honduras. I write this letter from Geneva, where I'm finishing five weeks of work in the coordinating office of Action by Churches Together (ACT), an international alliance of church-sponsored disaster agencies.
 In the last year, our experience in the wake of Hurricane Mitch has become of increasing interest to others around the world experiencing disasters of all sorts. In November, for example, I helped lead a workshop in Venezuela for communications staff from Latin American and Caribbean members of ACT. In January, I returned to Venezuela to provide coverage of the flooding and mudslides there and work with Venezuelan partners in responding to the tremendous challenges the disaster put before them.
      I came to Switzerland in late March as a consultant to the ACT staff, whose office is located in the headquarters of the World Council of Churches. I've helped coordinate coverage of emergencies in places like Kosovo, Mozambique, and some other places I'd never heard of. We've paid special attention to those “forgotten emergencies” that may have faded from the front page but where millions of people still suffer.
      After a few weeks of sitting at a desk, as news of the continued famine in Ethiopia garnered the world's attention, I went there to write about and photograph the situation throughout the country. You can find some of what I produced on ACT's website at www.act-intl.org/news.
      Being here gives me a better appreciation of the challenges facing agencies like the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) in coming years. Although I was critical of some aspects of UMCOR's initial response to Hurricane Mitch, today I'm very pleased with how our denomination is responding in Central America to the long-term challenges the hurricane left behind. One of the keys to that appropriate response by UMCOR has been improving its ability to listen to local partners on the ground in the wake of emergencies.
      My experience in Geneva underscored the changing nature of disasters throughout the world. Global environmental change linked with persistent injustice are creating situations where “natural” disasters are creating more refugees every year than political conflict. Indeed, in 1998–for the first time–there were more “environmental refugees” in the world than political ones.
      Our response as people of faith must involve not only the efficient provision of relief to the victims. We must also intentionally grapple with our relationship to the global systems that damage the environment, manufacture poverty, and undercut sustainable economic development. That means that in addition to raising money for UMCOR, our congregations must wrestle with public policy issues and consumer choices that are linked directly to the quality of life of people in the south. It does little good to give money to help rebuild houses in post-Mitch Central America if political choices made by our Congressional representatives or the choices we ourselves make every time we buy coffee or hardwoods will lead to those houses in Central America being destroyed in the next storm.
      Geneva is one of the more expensive and allegedly sophisticated cities on earth. Coming here from Tegucigalpa (and coming back from Addis Ababa) provides a good perspective on the digital divide. On the streetcar I ride to work in the morning, most people have cellular phones. At my office, I have a continual fast connection to the Internet. It's wonderfully efficient, but my emails to Lyda back in Tegucigalpa often go unread for several hours or a day or more because either the phone line to our house is down or the local internet service provider is out of order. 
      Seen from Switzerland, our connection in Honduras seems primitive. Yet the Internet connectivity we enjoy there puts us in a small elite in Central America. Most of the people in the world have never made a phone call, let alone surfed the Internet. A billion people in the world cannot read and write. That's one-sixth of the global population who are automatically excluded from taking advantage of such technological change. Add to that number those who have no access to phones, or who live in Third World countries where local elites are braking technological advances because they threaten the monopolies they have enjoyed for a long time. The digital divide widens, and appears to grow wider everyday. Faster and faster modem speeds have little relevance for hundreds of millions of families that don't even own can openers. For us, it's a constant challenge to reflect on how we can use the tools of technology to support genuine change, to support Gospel values, and not just as toys for those of us who are privileged to have access to them. 
      Living for a few weeks in Switzerland has also made me feel sorry for people who live far away from beautiful mountains, cheap French wine, and abundant Swiss chocolate, but that's another story.
      Working with ACT both in Geneva and in Ethiopia has made me appreciate the advantages of belonging to a global church, a faith community that acts locally but also thinks and responds globally. Just as Lyda's and my ministries in Central America are vitally linked to the ministries you carry out in your neighborhood and community, so are we all linked to how the church responds to flooding in Mozambique or militarism in Puerto Rico. That's exciting to me. But it also forces me think in new ways about what I do, and the complex relationships that stretch between us over so many miles.
      From the edge of the Alps, a warm greeting to you all. Know that Lyda and I keep you and your ministries in our prayers at all times. May God's peace be your constant companion.

 Shalom,

 Paul