This Christmas season the song that has most resonated with me is that powerful poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” Tears welled up in my eyes as I listened to Sarah McLachlan sing it the other day, particularly the final verses expressing such deep frustration and doubt, and in the next breath, a defiant and insuppressible hope. I had recently watched a documentary on the rise of the brutally violent paramilitary groups in Colombia, over the past 20 years or so, and was reflecting on how they and their guerrilla counterparts have so terribly scarred Colombia’s past and present. Hate is strong, and mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men. Often it feels like healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation are impossible concepts; it seems there is an endless supply of violent and unjust men. And it doesn’t stop with the armed conflict–it’s crime, corruption, broken homes, abuse, it’s selfishness, it’s everywhere. I look at the “real world” around me and this is what I see. And yet I know that there is another reality at work, the reality of the Kingdom, even though it’s so hard to see at times. God is not dead, nor does he sleep. The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, goodwill to men! This is the spiritual reality that must supercede the broken, failing “real world” with which I am confronted every day. I struggle to live in this hope, I stumble in and out of it, I don’t always understand it. Let the bells resound, we need to hear them. May this hope come to us again, as frail and earth-shattering as a baby in a manger.

This summer I wrapped up two and a half years of working with YWAM Medellin, staffing in our two homes for child victims of the conflict and assisting with the trimestral health and community service outreaches among displaced populations. I returned to the US for a few months in late July to spend time with family and reconnect with friends in the midwest and east coast. I arrived in time for my parents’ 40th anniversary and a family vacation in Minnesota. Then I was blessed to have a month of work while home in Illinois, assisting in a research project on how children can participate in effecting change in their communities. I was also able to share at all three of my supporting churches, and visit many individual supporters. It was deeply encouraging to spend quality time with people who mean so much to me, to catch up, reminisce, create new memories, dream together, and receive counsel. It did my soul good. And as an added bonus, I was able to enjoy some beautiful autumn leaves and weather, even a day-trip to White Mountain in New Hampshire while I was in the northeast.

I returned to Colombia in November and spent several weeks in Medellin to see the kids before they headed to their hometowns for the holidays. It was great to see everyone there again, and to see how things have progressed since I left. Although I was the only foreigner on staff most of the time I was there, over the past few months they’ve had about six Europeans arrive to help for six months to a year. They also received 11 new children a couple of months ago, so it’s good to see the ministry growing again. However, I was struck once more with the need for more men in this line of work, to provide loving role-models. The new children were so eager for affection, I couldn’t even begin to count the number of hugs I gave them. Even though my commitment is up in Medellin, I’m sure I’ll be back to visit often enough to keep up with the kids, as well as to help with the community outreaches.

My plans for the coming year are to explore new ministry opportunities, although still with the same focus on serving displaced communities and children. My hope is one day to start a new ministry in this line of work in the eastern region of Colombia, called the llanos, where I grew up. As I have visited out there over the past several years, I’ve seen very few organizations working with victims of the conflict. I hope to spend some time in the first few months of the year traveling in the llanos to make contacts with other people, organizations, and churches there to get a better assessment of what the needs are and what is being done to meet them. While I’ve appreciated my time with YWAM, and would be very open to continue working with them in the future, I would like to spend some time with another organization to observe some other approaches and methodologies. So I will be checking to see which doors God may be opening. Please be praying for me as I make contacts and look to plug in somewhere new. Also please join me in praying that God would begin bringing together a team of people with compatible and complementary callings and visions, with whom to begin a new ministry, in his timing.

I would like to thank all of you for continuing to be a part of my calling here in Colombia through prayer, giving, and support. If you are interested in supporting me financially, please send tax-deductible gifts to:

Please make checks payable to “The 600″ and include a note that it is for my ministry here in Colombia. Thanks again. May you all have a blessed Christmas with loved ones, and find time in the midst of the commotion to pause and feel God’s nearness.

Shalom, Jon

P.S. The rainy season this year has been particularly devastating in Colombia, with well over a million people forced from their homes by flooding. Several friends of mine in YWAM are raising money to help those affected by the disaster, with clothes, beds, food, water, and medicine. If anyone would like to donate towards that cause, please write me an email and I’ll let you know the best way to send the funds. Thank you!

“the current us deficit is $1.7 trillion. think of it this way: if you stacked $100 bills the same height as the sears tower (1450 feet), you would need 4,769 stacks to equal the debt that our country is currently in.
or here’s another one… if you take the $1.7 trillion that the us gov’t is in debt, again in $100 bills, and put it end to end instead of stacking it, you could go around the earth a little over 66x. or you could make 3 round trips to the moon and then go around the earth almost 9x as well.”

i personally checked these, and the sears tower one is a little off… it would actually be about 4,200 stacks, but still a lot. also, it would take light almost 9 seconds to travel the distance of the bills laid end to end.

and, this is only talking about this year’s deficit, the total national debt is close to 12 trillion, so you would need to multiply all these stats by 7 to account for that figure.

my solution… we need to come up with a denomination greater than the $100 bill, asap! we’ll never get it paid off this way! i’m thinking maybe something like a $100K bill, that way we could pay it off with only four and a half stacks as tall as the sears tower… still doesn’t fit in a briefcase, but definitely much more manageable. hahaha.

hmm, now to figure out what denomination of bill it would take to make the deficit fit into one standard-sized briefcase… boy, that would be easy, just handing someone one briefcase full of money… makes me feel less panicky. maybe we could even fool them, and underneath the top layer of bills the rest could just be newspaper.

A little over a year ago I sat down with my boss, Enith, and our missionary/theologian friend, Simon, and we started making visionary plans for a emergency water project for a community of about 10,000 refugees. I think we were a bit naive in our first meetings, and the project ended up being even more ambitious than we had anticipated. But in the face of our human limitations and a global economic recession, God demonstrated his sufficiency and moved in the generous hearts of his children to provide. And in the moments of doubt and frustration, he reminded us that it was his vision to begin with and that it wasn’t so much about efficiency as it was about allowing him to work through us to express his love for this community in a very tangible way.

We divided the project into three phases. In the first phase we used the initial donation to buy the lot, drill a well 540 feet deep, and put up a protective wall around the lot. After raising funds for the remaining two phases, we built an elevated platform for the two 5,000 gallon tanks and installed a submersible pump that puts out almost 100 gallons per minute. The final phase was the installation of a distribution system with 15 access hubs; we asked the community to participate in digging the trenches for the pipe so that they would feel a connection with the project and gain a sense of ownership. It’s been a long process, with everything from complex legal maneuvers in acquiring the lot, to hours of studying flow charts for different models of pumps, to getting blisters on my soft office-work hands while swinging a pick, but on July 19th we were finally able to celebrate the inauguration of the completed water system and see people filling jugs and basins and buckets with pure, clean water. It felt good. (Check out my album here to view photos.)

At the inauguration I was able to share a short invitation to come and drink from the living waters of God’s love and salvation. The key passages were John 4:13-14 and 7:37-39 and I reflected on how Jesus takes a physical, temporal concern and in turn responds with a spiritual, eternal word. Christ constantly points us from our premonitions in the earthly symbols towards their true meaning and fulfillment, and we pray that he will use this water system in the same way. When we look at the terminology we find that the living water Jesus came to give is a fountain welling up in us, and a fountain by its very nature flows over. He did not say that a puddle, or a pool, or even a sea would fill up inside us, but that streams of living water would flow out from us. A stream refreshes a barren land and makes it bloom and bring forth fruit, just as the living waters of God’s love overflow in us to bless our neighbors and transform the spiritual landscape around us. May this be true in Villa Clemen, and may it be true in our own lives.

As I mentioned in my last update, my doctor in the US recommended that I look into getting surgery on my left knee, the sooner the better. The rheumatoid arthritis has come under control in the rest of my body, but for some reason my knee has continued to degenerate. So after the delays with the water project, I was finally able to go to Bogota at the beginning of this month to consult with a two specialists, both of whom told me that I was looking at a complete joint replacement. They told me the surgery would cost about US$8,000 (much cheaper than I had expected), but also encouraged me to look into getting national health insurance. Upon my initial conversation with an insurance representative, it appears that the basic “obligatory” plan would cover the procedure, even though I’m a foreigner and it’s a preexisting condition. It sounds almost too good to be true. I have no idea what kind of bureaucracy I could be facing, but pray with me that I truly would qualify and that I could schedule the surgery before year’s end.

I would also like to ask for your prayers as I will be renewing my visa again within a month or two. I’m still a little undecided about whether I will renew with YWAM, or if I might work with a different organization for a while to see some different perspectives and methodologies. I will definitely look to stay focused on a ministry of peace and reconciliation among the victims of the armed conflict.

I would like to thank all of you for continuing to be a part of my calling here in Colombia through prayer, giving, and support. I’m overwhelmed sometimes by the loving generosity so many have shown me. If you are interested in supporting me financially, please send tax-deductible gifts to:

The 600
23955 Beard Ave
Lakeville, MN 55044

Please make checks payable to “The 600″ and include a note that it is for my ministry here in Colombia. Thanks again, may you know the wholeness of God’s blessing.

Shalom, Jon

As I was reading Nouwen’s procession from loneliness to solitude, I was struck by the degree of detachment and yet the deep communion in which he describes it. And suddenly I realized that I can’t recall clearly the last time I felt heart-sick lonely. And I thought of the short times I spent with you in Chicago in December and how fulfilling they were and how un-needy. Could it be that I’ve come to a degree of healthy solitude that I don’t feel the same need for the presence of others, but rather a deep contentment when those opportunities come and a peace when they have passed?

I have been afraid of this un-attachment, and perhaps I am still a little bit skeptical. I wonder if I have just become distant or calloused, if I have put up self-sheltering walls. But as I read tonight, I felt that I really identified with what Nouwen was describing. As I reflected on my many friends, and on my family, I believe that I still love them just as deeply, or even moreso, and I’ve just learned to feel the embrace of Christ closing all the temporal and spacial and personal space between us.

I don’t know how God is working in me, and I don’t know why now, but I think that the drought has passed. There was no thunderstorm… just a change of scenery as slow and unremarkable as the shift from southwestern deserts to midwestern plains. But I look to find green and gold suddenly surround me. And I emerge not to some place that I thought I needed to struggle back to, but to a glade that opens upon a world of need and hope and ministry, under a sky filled with a new sense of the sufficiency of God’s grace.

More recently I’ve been working among conflict victims in rural Colombia, listening to heart-wrenching stories of abuse, torture, killings, displacement, disappearances. It’s hard to find the words at times, or the spirit in which to say them, but I truly believe that forgiveness is possible, and that it is essential to finding our way towards justice and peace. But I believe that healing forgiveness and reconciliation must issue from God’s grace, and we in the church must show the way. Until we are ready to lay down our rights, our pride, our dissentions, and our bitterness within the body, we have no word of truth or grace for the world. If we cannot love our brother, we cannot love our neighbor, our enemy, or our God (1 John 4:20).

Forgiveness and love are so closely bound. Ultimately, forgiveness is an expression of love, and only by participating in Christ’s divine love will we be able to reach out in true forgiveness and humility across our wounded relationships. Let us receive God’s forgiveness deeply in our hearts, and remaining in his love, let us forgive one another from that sacred place and move forward in unity. May Christ’s love compel us to be agents of reconciliation in the broken and fallen and hurting world (2 Corinthians 5:14-20).

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been back in Colombia for a month and a half already, after being back in the US over Christmas and January. It was a good time, seeing family and friends and my little niece (who had her first birthday in December). I also had the opportunity to visit and speak in several churches and church groups, an opportunity to share more of what is happening in Colombia and what I feel God is calling me to be a part of here. And I was also very grateful for some downtime in which I was able read some very insightful articles and watch some interesting documentaries on forgiveness, non-violence, and reconciliation.

Just a couple of weeks after returning in February we had our first health and community assistance outreach of the year in Uré, a town that has suffered much at the hands of the armed groups. We had a fairly small team this time, but were very blessed with health professionals, attending almost a thousand patients total between medical consultations, dentistry, blood work, and pharmacy. Besides medicine, we also served the community with counseling, clothing, legal advice, agronomy, haircuts and lice treatment, workshops, etc. In meeting these needs, we also had the opportunity to share God’s love and gospel with them.

One of the key elements of the outreach is to open a space for those who are dealing with loss, grief, and rage for the terrible injustices they have suffered. We listen to their stories, share their hurt and their tears, and invite them to begin the process of forgiveness, if they feel ready. One woman had lost a son, tortured and killed by an armed group, who also beat his younger brother and left him handicapped. Between sobs she kept asking, “How can you forgive that? How can I forgive what they did to my sons?” All words feel like they ring so hollow. Another elderly woman had lost both parents and six siblings in a massacre of her family when she was just 17, and had already chosen to forgive in her heart, but decided also to make a public witness of it during a peace ceremony the final night.

In preparing some scriptures to share with the circle of victims who came, I was struck again by the close relation of divine love and forgiveness. Forgiveness can seem like a difficult and nearly offensive thing to preach. But this is certainly a key, recognizing that just as our human love is incapable of loving an enemy, so our human sense of forgiveness just isn’t sufficient; we may be able to let go of some of the pain, be released from the chains, find joy again, but without drawing on God’s grace I don’t think we can ever really come to know full peace and reconciliation. Our forgiveness is only possible by participating in Christ’s forgiveness, and only in recognizing it as an expression of his love–even for our enemies.

I keep finding a deeper and deeper appreciation for the ways that God allows us to participate in his divine nature, and calls us to be his true sons and to be perfect, as he is perfect. If only we would enter into it more fully and more faithfully, and help the broken ones to receive it.

Besides continuing to be a part of the outreaches this year, I also am helping out in the office here with translations and fund-raising, and trying to spend time when I can with the children in our homes, often tutoring in English homework. We are working to finish up the well project from last year, too. It’s been a growing and sometimes a frustrating process, but we continue to see God’s provision in it. We’re almost there, just trying to work down the estimates on the pump and the distribution system a little bit to make budget. We just need to trim a couple thousand dollars and we can finalize it. Then we hope to have a dedication ceremony there in Villa Clemen to share about Christ’s living water.

I also should share that while I was back in the US, I had the chance to see my former rheumatologist and get an MRI of my left knee. Unfortunately it was pretty bad news. No more sports for me, limited walking (which is tough here in Colombia), and I’m to look into surgery options as soon as possible. So once the water project is done I plan to see some specialists here in Medellin and also in Bogota to see what can be done. Please pray for me as I simply don’t have the finances for an expensive surgery, that God would open doors to doctors who might be able to give me reduced prices.

For those of you who have been supporting me financially, or for those interested in making donations, please note that my sending organization has changed. Some close friends of mine recently began a non-profit to handle finances for their work in Honduras, and offered to let me join them. So the new information is as follows:

The 600
23955 Beard Ave
Lakeville, MN 55044

Please make checks payable to “The 600″ and include a note with it that it is for my ministry here in Colombia. Thank you all so much for your continued interest in my work and calling, and for your prayers and support. It’s very meaningful to know I have you all behind me.

Shalom, Jon

Merry Christmas! The weather here in Illinois with the early winter has been a bit of a change; just over a week ago I was in Cartagena enjoying the sun and waves, and my first day back here at my folks’ barely crept above zero with ice sparkling on all the branches and fences. It’s great to see family again though, and to get good old holiday home cooking.

The Christmas season has been sudden and short for me this year, as I’ve been so involved in other things there in Colombia. I arrived just in time to enjoy some Christmas hymns at church. The hymns and the Old Testament prophecies have been resonating deeply with me, as though something in my soul has been waiting to hear again those great words of hope and goodwill. I would invite you not simply to read, but to reflect on the lyrics of my favorite Christmas song:

O holy night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of our dear Saviour’s birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
‘Til He appear’d and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.

Fall on your knees! O, hear the angels’ voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born;
O night divine, O night, O night Divine.

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother;
And in His name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
Let all within us praise His holy name.

Christ is the Lord! O praise His Name forever,
His power and glory evermore proclaim.
His power and glory evermore proclaim.

I’ve always had a special place in my heart for this hymn, but it seems to find a way further into my core every year, and I lose myself in the tension between triumph and longing. This song is all I pray for in my life, in Colombia, in the US, in all the unwhole places of the world. If we as the church would internalize and live just the Gospel presented in these few lines… we would sweep the whole earth off its feet in such a beautiful reconciliation!

As we approach the New Year, I thank God for the many wonderful opportunities and gifts he gave me in 2008. And I look forward to see what doors he will open for me in 2009. I will again be filling out grad school applications to pursue Peace Studies, and am praying that God would provide financially if this is the path he has for me. I will be returning to Colombia in early February to continue working with conflict victims in Medellin, and we’ll see how things develop for the second half of the year.

I want to thank all of you who have participated financially in the clean water project for the displaced community in Montelibano. I appreciate the sacrifices you have made in this tight economy, recognizing that the need we may feel is still far less acute than many of our global neighbors; we are still raising funds, so if you feel led please continue to send donations. By the end of December, we should have enough to buy the pump and build the platform and tanks. A great piece of news I received just before coming back to the US is that the community of Villa Clemen has now officially been recognized by the local city government, so this investment is of greater worth than ever, as it will now be part of a long-term solution. This does, however, have implications on our plans for the distribution system, and we are looking into partnering options for the water to be brought to each of the 2,000 homes, although at this point we ourselves can’t take on a further financial or logistical commitment beyond the 15 key points we had promised before. I hope to be back before the inauguration of the water system, and to share the meaning of Christ’s living water with the community.

A very important announcement I need to make is that, effective immediately, I will be receiving all financial contributions through Great Oaks (GO) International. I am so grateful to the ACTS Foundation for the years of service they have provided for me, they have been wonderful. However, a close friend of mine has begun this new non-profit and has invited me to join them there, and I’m excited for the opportunity. I will be receiving donations through a branch of Great Oaks called The 600.*

So PLEASE, take note of this new address:

The 600
23955 Beard Ave
Lakeville, MN 55044

Please make checks out to “The 600″ and, as before, write in the note section of the check that it is for Jon Captain, or include a separate note in the envelope. Thank you for your attention to this very important detail. For those of you who have one of my prayer cards, or if there is one at your church, please paste this new address over the old one to avoid any confusion.

For any contributions towards the water project, please contact me directly about where to send them. Thank you again for your generosity, and for your faithful prayer support.

Shalom, Jon

* The name comes from the band of 600 men who chose to follow the anointed king David through hardship and persecution before he was recognized and seated on the throne. We too choose to follow the true King in a world where most do not recognize him, and hope by God’s grace to be heroic and sacrificial as David’s men of valor.

As Christmas is coming up in a couple of months, we’ve started talking now about how we’d like to have pure, clean drinking water for these families as a sort of Christmas gift, and maybe to help them keep that New Years resolution not to ingest life-threatening parasites this year. In the US our Christmas giving is often centered around the rather materialistic reference point offered to us by a consumer society. And while it’s exciting and fun to receive crisply wrapped presents, I’d like to invite you this year to consider another outlet for your goodwill. (I would recommend asking others to give you this gift, rather than presuming that your loved ones’ faces will beam with philanthropic joy at receiving a pretty new note on Christmas morn.) Perhaps you could make a simple Christmas wish list that looked a little something like this:

1. Give clean water to the sick and needy in my name
2. Wooly reindeer house-slippers
3. A Slinky

Pretty simple, and yet significant, right? Who really needs more? I would seriously love to receive this gift (hint, hint, nudge, nudge). And it’s a great way to “shop early” and avoid those awful lines at the check-out. But seriously, if we want to meet the deadline for having the water project completed by early December, we would need for you to do the Christmas giving a little ahead of time–say, by the end of October or early November. The information for making a tax-deductible donation is as follows:

YWAM
PO Box 3000
Garden Valley, TX
75771-3000

The check itself should be made out to YWAM, but please be sure to mention on a separate note in the same envelope that it is a donation for YWAM Medellin, Colombia. Then if you could please email me to let me know the amount, I can be sure that it gets put towards the well-project. I will also be drafting a nice little donation certificate that could be put in a stocking or under the tree. Thanks so much for your consideration and generosity.

Matthew 25:35, 40 “For I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink…. Truly, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”

Shalom, Jon

P.S. Please share this at your work-places, schools, churches, etc. And please do it SOON! Thanks!

Please forgive me for being so long in writing to let you all know how I am, or even where I am, what I’m doing. It has been a good year so far, and a busy one. I have been much more directly involved in working with victims of the civil conflict and have been able to expand my knowledge of what’s being done in Colombia for peace, who is doing it and how. It’s been exciting to arrive at this place where so many of my passions meet… peace, justice, reconciliation, children, church, community development.

In February I returned to Colombia to join the YWAM ministry in Medellin that I made mention of in my last update… um, last year (again, I beg your pardon, I’ve been remiss). We have a boys’ home and a girls’ home for children who come from displaced families or who have been orphaned by the conflict, about 20 children in each, between the ages of 6-18. The civil conflict in Colombia leaves many victims; sadly the most vulnerable are the children, who are often forced from their homes with their families, who lose fathers and mothers to the ruthlessness of the armed actors, who are in danger of being conscripted by the illegal groups, who are left in dire poverty after moving to refugee shanty-towns where they are exposed to all types of abuse, where they are surrounded by contexts of violence and dark, turbulent futures. We are trying to rescue children from these shadowy places, and from the prisons of their pasts.

Besides just meeting the children’s physical needs, we want to open spaces for them to process their grief, to come to be healed by God’s love and grace and peace, and to find their freedom in forgiving their victimizers. It’s really so much to ask. One of the teenage girls we care for was the daughter of a pastor in the midst of a conflict zone, a man of valor who stood against violence and oppression. Under the cover of night armed men came to their home, seized her father in front of the family and took him to an adjacent hill. She prayed fervently to God in all her terror and helplessness and desperation, not to let them kill her father, even as she heard him being tortured. But in the morning he never returned. It’s impossible to imagine the pain, the confusion, the betrayal, the rage that she must feel, how her faith must be shattered. I don’t have the answers she needs. I don’t think anyone does. I suppose it’s not about answers. But we offer up our hope and frailty to God, and pray that his grace, peace, and love might slowly avail in her heart to know his compassion, the way he sits beside her and shares her suffering. I invite you allow the same prayer to resonate in your souls for the many other lives like hers.

Besides the work with the children in the homes, we have organized two five-day health and community assistance outreaches to settlements of displaced people in the north-western region of Colombia. The idea is to meet needs through medical and dental service, emotional and psychological counseling, grief and forgiveness processes, children’s Bible school, evangelistic services, veterenary and agricultural assistance, etc. In the second one this year, we were able to raise the money to drill a well and put in a clean drinking water project in a community of about 5,000 displaced people… which is still under construction. This is a part of the work where I really feel alive, meeting direct, urgent needs and doing community development. And I’m a country-boy at heart, anyways. I usually wish I could just stay on in these communities when it’s time to leave. The needs go so much deeper than what we are really able to address in so few days.

In June and July I had a God-send opportunity to join in the research efforts of a doctoral candidate from the US, named Michael McGill, who is doing his thesis on how children can participate and take initiative in peace processes in countries and communities that have been affected by internal armed conflict. I helped extensively in the field research–interviews, focus groups, translation of materials, etc–and learned so much, as well as greatly expanding my own network of people and organizations working in this area. It was so encouraging to me how God provided this opportunity, so perfectly related to themes I am interested in pursuing in graduate studies.

Financially I wasn’t able to afford grad-school for this fall, but hopefully with this experience the doors will open for assistantships that might help me afford it for next year. I will be applying again to various universities over the winter, to start in the fall semester, so please be praying for God’s leading and provision in that process. I hope to pursue a Masters in Peace Studies, with an emphasis on children’s issues, community organizing and development, or the church’s calling and involvement in peace and reconciliation. The three schools I’m most interested in are Notre Dame, Eastern Mennonite, and American University.

In August I had to leave Colombia to renew my visa, so I took advantage to visit the new project of a childhood friend of mine who has recently begun a eco/adventure tourism lodge in the Amazon jungle of Peru, called Amazon Expeditions. It was neat to hear more of his vision for investing in the poor local communities through potable water and other development projects, while also promoting awareness of environmental issues in an place of such pristine and exotic beauty. I had always had the dream of traveling the river, so I caught a boat from the southern-most tip of Colombia up to the city of Iquitos in Peru. After about a week there, we also went to Cusco and Machu Picchu; on the pre-dawn road-trip from Cusco to Machu Picchu we watched a full moon set as the sun rose on the other horizon, over rugged snow-capped peaks and desert mountain scenes of adobe houses and country-folks tending goats and alpacas. It was the most perfect aesthetic moment I’ve experienced in years. From there I went on alone to Quito, Ecuador, to process my visa. It was a little slow coming through, but I finally received it and am thankful to be back in Colombia now, to continue working in Medellin at least through the end of this year, and quite possibly next spring, as well.

The final piece of news I have to share with you all is that I have a beautiful little niece! Her name is Ellie, and I was able to be back in the US in December when she was born. She had a rough first week, but is a very healthy, happy little girl now, and has just started crawling. It’s tough to be away and feel like I’m missing so much, but I get to see her squirm and smile via web-cam every now and then, so that helps.

I’m sorry this email has such a “news bulletin” feel to it this time. So much to inform about. That’s a little boring, I know, but I’ll try to do better about getting these out a little more often and so make them a little more reflective.

Thank you all for your prayers, love, and support.

Shalom, Jon

walking now
the road beneath us, the scenery
slowly passing, (that tree,
passing, the gravel crunching,
steadily passing).
it won’t be so long

and we will arrive.
at the transformation of all things,
we are suddenly
subjects,
and find that we always were.
we have such powerful wings,
sparks splashing
from every glowing feather.

even as we are walking
or awakening,
we become aware
of our own subtle soul,
there now, smiling.