“You ARE the salt of the earth… You ARE the light of the world…”

Salt and Light… Mat 5:13-16

Jesus didn’t just command his followers to be preservers of a decaying world and light in dark places. He told them: “You ARE salt and light.”  The act of living life as a dedicated disciple of Christ is synonymous with the bringing of light and healing to those in darkness and decay.

Recently I had the privilege of serving as a juror on a court case that lasted an entire week. It was an insurance fraud ring here in South Florida (insurance fraud capitol to the country) and I was confronted with many who are in desperate need of light and healing in their lives. Witness after witness testified before the jury, but more than a testimony against a defendant I saw individuals who’s lives were absolute train wrecks without hope for anything better, surrounded by others who had similarly run their lives into the ground and were now at the mercy of the court. The need, anger and depravity were staggering… and these were the witnesses, NOT the defendant! Yet as I look around me each day I find I don’t have to be in a courthouse, or have to look very far, to find those in need of hope and healing, the very thing we are called to be.

As I work with churches, ministries and missionaries through Latin America Mission, hardly a day goes by that I’m not impacted with the brokenness caused by the very sin that we are to confront as part of God’s progressing plan for this world. LAM missionaries, and the ministries we work alongside of are pushing back the darkness where it lurks be that in drug addictions, poverty, sex trafficking, broken homes and even false teachings masquerading as hope but only resulting in deeper enslavement of those who are tempted in.

Sometimes though it’s the very carriers of salt and light that need the healing. Sin takes advantage of, and destroys whomever it can.  It’s when the consequences of sin directly or indirectly touch those who are salt and light that I am particularly thankful for Christ’s incarnate body, the Church. The groups of people throughout the world dedicated toward lifting one another up, encouraging one another on and mending each other’s wounds even as they themselves receive healing. 

This very week I’ve had the privilege of assisting missionaries with desperately ill children, losses in their family, financial disasters and pressures that seem overwhelming. Yet in EVERY case I see partner churches in Latin America, or sending and supporting churches in the US that are able to come alongside and be healing salt life giving light where these servants of God need it most.

Please pray for me and the rest of LAM’s staff as we seek to provide the support and connections to our missionaries in times of victory but especially in times of suffering.

Please pray for the Abegg family and consider joining our support team as our missionary account with  LAM has become a significant issue.  Your prayers and financial gifts are multiplied many fold in that they touch each and every missionary and ministry we are able to serve and care for. 

Easy Online Giving at:    http://www.lam.org/missionaries/abegg

Printable Form to mail a check: Link

In His Hands / En Sus manos;

Kevin S. Abegg

Latin America Mission

Director, North American Alliances

Office: 305-884-8400 x225

Missions Partnership links

Accordion or Guitar... Practice or Principal... The Gospel and Latin America

Of the various hats I have the privilege to wear at LAM's Miami Service Office, one that I have particularly enjoyed is doing the doctrinal interviews with potential missionary candidates.

Usually these meetings take place in the Miami office where I serve and where our potential missionary candidates come in for a few days of orientation to the mission before being accepted as missionary candidates. Last week however I had the privilege of meeting online with a missionary who has been on the field for 20+ years and was changing from his previous N. American missions organization to LAM. He had been working with HCJB, a ministry in Quito Ecuador that I had visited on my second summer mission trip during my senior year in High School back in 1988. He has been discipling young pastors and lay leaders for a number of years and is taking part in a church plant as well. During our conversation we touched on many themes that I had also experienced while serving in Chile, and have come up again and again over the years in working with LAM missionaries on the field. I love discussing theology when it is directly applied to daily life!

Anyway, LAM is an interdenominational missions agency, which means we work with most people and organizations who fit the standard definition of "Christian", and understand that we are saved by grace alone through Jesus sacrifice for our sins. In bridging numerous denominations and a variety of"practices" in the carrying out of Gospel ministry it's important to not only match a missionary by their ability (electrician, teacher, doctor, preacher, evangelist) but by their particular theology and practice (charismatic vs. cessationist or liturgical vs. non-liturgical worship etc).  This leads to some very interesting conversations with those who are aware of the Latin American Church panorama and those who assume it is very similar to the US. In speaking with this particular pastor I learned about his experience in planting a church in an arena where the "principal" (biblical beliefs interpreted from scripture) and the "practice" the application and walking out of those beliefs on a daily basis are so often blurred to the point of no longer being distinct one from another.   An example would be that in principal we must worship the Lord because he is worthy to be praised. The individual practice of whether guitars are permissible in worship as opposed to accordions may seem ludicrous to most, but do become issues with churches who raise the concept of practice to the level of principal.

As we wound up our conversation I reflected on how often our own churches fall into the same traps. Practice isn't necessarily bad, in reality "culture" is how we all simply do live a little bit different. But when it becomes divisive and a stumbling block for presenting the principal of the Gospel: Saved by Grace through Jesus Christ, practice is anything but what we're called to do.  I rejoiced that God had given this pastor an understanding that we cannot force our practice upon others but we must cling to the principals of the Gospel and even share these in a John 13:35 understanding of loving one another. I also thanked God that I have the privilege of working alongside of men like this who are not ashamed of the Gospel but are willing to commit their lives to it be that in Ecuador, Cuba, South Florida, all the US and the rest of the world.

God bless and have a great weekend!

Please prayerfully consider supporting our ministry with Latin America Mission. Click here to visit our support page. 

In His Hands / En Sus manos;

Kevin S. Abegg

Latin America Mission

Director, North American Alliances

Office: 305-884-8400 x225

Missions Partnership links

Back To School In Colombia

Whenever Possible I like to share what LAM's Latin Alliance Ministries are doing since that's the very reason we exist as a mission. This is from a recent LAM publication. Please take a moment to watch the video, it's impacting and encouraging. 

God bless!
In His Hands / En Sus manos;

Kevin S. Abegg

Latin America Mission

Director, North American Alliances

Office: 305-884-8400 x225

Missions Partnership links

From Latin America Mission:

Dear friends,

These past couple of weeks, nearly 20 million students went off to school at colleges and seminaries across the United States. It's a fall tradition so woven into the American fabric that many of us mark time by it.

Ubaldo Restán is an educator, too. But for many of his students, coming to fall semester classes would have meant risking their lives.

Restán trains pastors and church leaders in Colombia, part of a project LAM has partnered with since 1982. He's one of our heroes, really. The pastoral training program he runs has enabled thousands of Christians to receive ministry education without having to leave their cities or villages.

For many of the students, there was no way they could afford a "traditional" education. For many others who live in rebel-controlled regions of Colombia, there was just no safe way they could get to class. It remains one of greatest challenges facing the Colombian church.

Restán (and his great staff) are doing something about it. We think you'll be inspired by their story.

Thank you for you prayers for the persecuted church, and for praising God with us for these stories of community transformation.

Read the story and watch the video.

Blessings,
  

A few highlights from this week

Before ending the week I want to take a few minutes to share some praises and prayer requests:

• Costa Rica suffered a 7.6 magnitude Earthquake this week. Amazingly there was relatively little damage for the significantsize quake and there have been no significant loss reported to us by our missionaries or Alliance Ministries. See: Tico Times Report.

  

• We have weekly meetings with the "Alliance Staff" (those who work directly with our missionaries or the ministries that they are assigned to or churches that send them as missionaries).  As our vision and mission is to work alongside the Latin Church we now have staff spread throughout Latin America in the US, which creates scheduling complications. A recent Alliance meeting included staff logging in from California, Arizona, Miami, Costa Rica and Panama.

• Claudia and I have the privilege of providing pre-marital counseling for LAM missionary Heather Braden who is preparing to marry Rigoberto Maradiaga in the next few months. Similar to my previous note, modern technology has made it possible for us to meet with them though we are thousands of miles apart in different countries. What a blessing it's been to share about the covenant of marriage and the unity of two cultures that Claudia and I represent and the two of them will represent.  We've enjoyed passing along the successes the Lord has given us as well as the failures we've learned from. Please keep them (and all of us) in your prayers.

Thank you for your faithful support and encouragement. 

God bless!

In His Hands / En Sus manos;

Kevin S. Abegg

Latin America Mission

Director, North American Alliances

Office: 305-884-8400 x225

Missions Partnership links

Abegg Family & Ministry News Catch Up

It's been a while since I've written, so here goes the catch up: This has been a busy season at LAM and within our immediate as well as extended family. 

My father had spinal surgery a few months ago following a very difficult year of severe back pain due to crushed disks that resulted in multiple extended hospital stays, a 5 week stay with us in Miami to provide care and then finally getting him set up in an assisted care facility back in CA. Since the surgery he's doing much better overall though there are many difficult decisions ahead.  Please continue praying for wisdom on how to provide long-distance care for him as well as my mom at this point in their lives. Also, we ask that you would pray for the financial ability to visit both sets of family in CA and Chile in the coming year.

At home we are nearing the end of remodeling due to flood damage this past January. It's been a long, exhausting haul but we have been back sleeping in our bedroom for over a month now and are in the home stretch with re-tiling the shower and installing shelves, closets etc.

Jeremy and Nico Help Out

At LAM there's never a dull moment. Over the past year the "alliance team" (those who navigate the details of partnering with Latin ministries our missionaries servealong side of as well as the sending / supporting churches in N. America) has expanded from myself and the president to a desperately needed six person team. It's been a labor of love in clarifying work flow, job descriptions and seeing longawaited projects begin to take flight. Part of this is a brand new branch of Alliances to help develop and coordinate Short-Term Team (STT) efforts. We are approaching this in the same way LAM approaches long-term missionary assignments, with our primary concern being that potential team opportunities are developed to assist a Latin ministry's long-term vision, mission and goals.  From that perspective we work on equipping a N. American team that meets the immediate and long term needs of the Latin ministry. Please be praying for this new team to work together well as we move forward.

Last month I had the opportunity to travel to San Jose Costa Rica where LAM is hosted a summit of LAM Alliance Ministry leaders and Latin missionaries. (That's LAM missionaries who are Latin as opposed to Gringo). 

LAM: An Amazing Heritage of LATIN Missionaries and Ministries 

To quote LAM president Steve Johnson: "There will be  just over 40 of us gathered to help us discern His [God's] unique and ongoing place for us in the future of Latin America…In particular, we place a high value on the voice of our Latin leaders and missionaries. After all, they have their fingers directly on the pulse of how God is moving in Latin America. For this reason, we will gather for a "conversatorio" -- a large round table to deal with several key questions that will inform the leadership of LAM as we look to God's role for us in the future alongside the Latin American Church. The forty men and women who will be there include current missionaries, retirees, and a former LAM president. They hail from Mexico, Costa Rica, Panamá, Colombia, Perú, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, the U.S. and even Cyprus. They areprofessional missiologists, theologians, pastors, student leaders, as well as leaders in many areas of integral mission. Of the 40 participants, only five will be "gringos," and we will try to speak softly so that others may speak up."

Lunch with Elizabeth Sendek (Biblical Seminary of Colombia) & Victor Rodriguez (Christ for Miami)

This was an amazing time! Unprecedented in the history of the mission and a re-affirmation as to why Claudia and I originally decided to join LAM, and what continues to make LAM distinct to this day. It is a mission focused not on "going to" Latin America but on "going WITH" Latinos in what the Lord has called them to do in Latin America and the rest of the world. There are immense complications in working this way as opposed to simply directing specific project efforts from North America, but the fruit was so amazingly evident during these meetings that I was all the more convinced that the Lord continues to go before us. 

Claudia and her Home School co-op class

Please be praying for the work ahead, there is more than any of us can handle in our own strength, but we know that would doom us to failure anyway.

 I ask you also to pray for the Abegg family health, energy and finances as we step into another year of Home Schooling and Claudia tutoring for Classical Conversations (home-school co-op). We have some financial recovering to do following the home repairs and are confronting a slow, debilitating decrease in support that has occurred over the past year as churches and supporters navigate tighter finances. 

Please consider joining our financial support team by using the links below, or if you would be lead to give a special gift during this time.

Thank you and God bless!

Online giving:    http://www.lam.org/missionaries/abegg

Printable donation link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZR3KoboDB_uHW-N_IRmLCNQ0XCfgPgBu6Y6p08GMOa0/edit

In His Hands / En Sus manos;

Kevin S. Abegg

Latin America Mission

Director, North American Alliances

Office: 305-884-8400 x225

Missions Partnership links

Move forward in Faith, Remembering What God Has Done

We're getting ready for Board Meetings here at LAM this Th. and Fri. That means I need to prepare to show what I've done over the past 6 months and project into the next 6 months to a year what I will be doing. Sometimes the work pause for these meetings twice a year appears to come at a very inconvenient time,  and I'm tempted to think that I could better use my energy for the demands on my desk, in my inbox and that blinking light on my phone. However, I have found that the preparations this past week have forced me to remember what God has done, consider what He is doing and make sure that I and the things I am responsible for are ready to follow Him in the future. Israel often forgot what God had done, which made it nearly impossible to see what he was doing in their present. I'm reminded that one of the principal reasons I was drawn to missions in the first place is having a daily focus on ministry and a reminder of the Great Commission at hand.  This still holds true, even if that ministry is an e-mail, a missionary contract or any one of a hundred mundane tasks I need to perform, and that must happen to lay the groundwork for more "fulfilling" conversations or events that I so enjoy. Those "that's why I'm here!" moments. 

I wanted to share with you something that one Dr. Allen Yeh, one of our Spearhead attendees recently wrote regarding his missions experience. I found it very encouraging and I hope that you, wherever you happen to be or what the Lord has you doing, will find it encouraging as well: 

"One reflection I had: without doing something meaningful in life, life seems pointless. Yes I enjoy entertainment, but if I were the richest person in the world and just had endless entertainment, I think I'd grow frustrated with the emptiness of it all. If I were a workaholic, there is definitely meaning to be had in one's work, but work is also necessary for money and as such sometimes feels mercenary. When I do ministry, especially when I do missions (fulfilling the Great Commission), I feel like I'm part of something greater, something more than just about me, something that is of God and for God and for others. May my life never just be work and vacation alone, that endless vicious cycle which is known as the rat race! When we do ministry for God and neighbor (otherwise known as the Two Great Commandments), that's where it's really at."

Dr. Allen Yeh

Associate Professor of Intercultural Studies and Missiology

Biola University's Cook School of Intercultural Studies

Founder & Chairman of the World Christianity consultation at the Evangelical Theological Society

I hope your day goes well and that you are able to serve wherever the Lord has you. God bless!

In His Hands / En Sus manos;

Kevin S. Abegg

Latin America Mission

Director, North American Alliances

Missions Partnership links