Visa acquired, Viña inspired in week's planning

SOLOLÁ — A series of speedy bus rides and efficient bus transfers whisked me back here from Mexico in 9 1/2 hours on Monday; since then my mind has had to shift gears as I’ve been immersed in planning and strategizing here at Viña Studios.

I’m happy to have made it safely home, grateful for the bus drivers who were just cautious enough to avoid accidents and patient enough to slow down to bump and bounce across dozens and dozens and dozens of speed bumps in the highways. Fortunately, I accomplished what I needed to on the trip — got my visa renewed.

This week, we have been blessed this week with the presence of Ted Hartlett, a Conneciticut-based communications consultant and Chris and Margaret Olson, from Albuquerque, N.M., who work with The Seed Company, a Wycliffe Bible Translators affiliate. Ted is the owner of Bridge Communications Group and music pastor at Hope Evangelical Free Church, Wilton, Conn. Margaret is The Seed Company’s strategic planning coordinator and field coordinator for the Americas; Chris works as its church partnership coordinator.

I can’t keep straight all the things we’ve discussed — they seem to be multi-layered —, but one thing the group did yesterday was to identify a list of 12 key projects Viña has been hoping to accomplish, prioritizing them, thinking through ways not only to pursue them, but how to communicate that vision and invite others to join us in pursuing these goals.

Some of top priorities include workshops to develop contextualized theology for the indigenous church, sociolinguistic projects including a history of Bible translation, translating a key book “Communicating Christ to Animistic Cultures,” producing contextualized videos of parables in indigenous life situations, contextualized videos of pastors teaching in animistic contexts, translating a 64-episode audio panorama of the Bible into indigenous languages and more.

We hope these projects will help remove barriers to biblical understanding and transform lives for the glory of Christ. One of the challenges we face is implementing all this good planning. We’d appreciate your prayers for wisdom and that these projects would further the kingdom of God here in Guatemala.

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Walking back to town, I noticed a view I hadn't seen before. Here's a Kaqchikel farmer spraying his crops.