THE

LIVING LETTERJanuary 2012

A note from LCMS Missionaries James and Christel Neuendorf, January 2012

My grandfather was a tool and dye maker, he owned a business appropriately called “Modern Tool and Dye” and my dad grew up working in the machine shop. My brother is an engineering student and all my uncles on that side of the family tend to work for companies producing software tools or machinery. I guess you could say that producing tools runs in my family. (I seemed to miss the mechanical aptitude gene though; we’re still cleaning up from the last time I changed the oil in our motorcycle.)

Recently my position with the mission was adjusted to include new responsibilities and a shiny new title; “Creative Outreach Specialist” instead of the old “Communication Specialist”

developing a very special set of tools, to be used by missionaries around Latin America.

Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Spain. The

and brainstorming to come up with plans for some creative outreach materials for use by our

take on was the production of a group of tools

included designing a website for the mission to interact with the public, as well as writing

people into contact with God’s word through

be called “Chitachay”, but more on that later.

Of course mission is all about communicating the Gospel, but when it actually comes to it, there are a lot of cultural barriers to understanding the Gospel that need to be overcome. For starters of course we have the challenge of language, not just the differences between English and Spanish, or even the regional differences in the sorts of Spanish being spoken, but also the subtleties of language which are often lost or mis-communicated even when strictly communicated within our own culture. Everyone comes into a situation with their own preconceptions and ideas that affect how they receive the message. For countries like Peru, these can cause for some pretty spectacular misunderstandings even when

MEDIAINMISSION

“There are a lot of cultural barriers to understanding the

Gospel...”

the message seems to be clear, from a strictly linguistic sense.

Of course the message we are sharing is about how Jesus saves us from our sins by dying on the cross in our place and then raising from the dead. While it’s an incredible story, it seems fairly straightforward to those of us who grew up in the Lutheran church. However the context in Peru has led to an idea that Jesus on the cross is a scary image, that it demonstrates the overwhelming wrath of God and should shame us into robotic obedience. Jesus is a judge and will punish us all unless we worship his mother Mary, who at the

“Madeinusa” about a town where once Jesus dies on Good Friday, the whole town gets a weekend where they are free to sin, since after

all, temporarily God is dead and can’t see what is going on.

So how do we share the good news about what Good Friday is really about, without it getting mixed up with all other concepts people already have in their context? The answer is to approach the same story from a different or new angle, giving people a chance

time. In our case, we have chosen to stay with imagery from the Bible in order to make sure

is doing for us. We chose to tell the story of Jesus death and resurrection by telling another story from the bible that foreshadows that crucial moment in the history of the world, The

to retell the story as though it took place in the Andean context, using the ancient Peruvian style of dress and way of life to connect with secular Peruvians in a unique and fresh way. For most South Americans, movies made in their own language, let alone their own country are very far and few between, usually only one

“The whole town gets a weekend where they are

free to sin, since after all, temporarily God is

dead.”consequently the existence of one makes it a big topic of conversation throughout the country.

which means “Beloved Lamb” in Quechua, the local indigenous language which is spoken by millions of Peruvians and is considered the Peruvian heart language, (although Spanish is much more widely spoken).

shooting in the city of Arequipa later this month) the mission team in Lima will set up several public showings and aim to get the movie on television and in select theaters; to get the city of Lima (population, 11 million) talking about the movie and interested in the

Son to die in our place.

For those who are interested in the full

with this month’s newsletter the full English text of the script (the shooting script is in Spanish). I also intend to shoot a series of short video blogs detailing the shooting process on the ground during

the Dominican Republic as we begin editing and post-production.

This is just one example of the types of projects that I’ll be undertaking as the “Creative Outreach Specialist” for Latin America, we’ve got tons more in store for Spain, the Dominican Republic, and other places around Latin America. If you’d like to be a part of helping make this project in Peru a reality, feel free to contact us and let us know what you are able to do. We are particularily in need of people to help with Sound Design, Coloring (digital post production), Digital Special Effects (we need to matte paint a night sky), and we also need a violinist and classical guitarist who have access to a recording studio.

Can’t do any of those things but still want to help us out!? There are other ways you can help out, primarily by praying for this project, in many ways it is way over our heads but we know that God will guide us in making it happen and using it to touch lives. You can also help this project and

through your gifts, and your encouraging words! -James

A note from LCMS Missionaries James and Christel Neuendorf, January 2012

In October, I had the privilege of returning to our old home in Panama! Our friend and fellow LCMS missionary Bruce Wall and his family had packed their stuff from Panama to ship to Peru last March. Due to the challenges in obtaining visas, their things didn’t actually get sent to Peru! Since they were stuck in customs, it was decided to unpack Bruce’s shipping container and take what he could in his suitcases to Peru and sell the rest in Panama.

IELPA and President Milton Castillo

to unload and sell the stuff Bruce decided not to bring to Peru. I was able to help Bruce organize the items while also being able to check in on the administration of the items still open in

It was very productive with long days and great conversations with old friends. To say the least, I realized how much I missed Panama; the people, the city, the way of life. It’s very different here in the Dominican Republic and change does take time, I still very much miss Panama.

I ended up getting sick towards the end of my trip with a high fever which wasn’t too bad, except I was suppose to go from there to Venezuela. So I had to cancel that trip and wait about three days to return to the Dominican.

capitol city. However that allowed time for recovery and more time to spend with some dear friends. -Christel

ON THE ROAD

Frankentrost In The Jungle

A note from LCMS Missionaries James and Christel Neuendorf, January 2012

Surreal doesn’t begin to describe it. Buried in the green jungles of Argentina is a large community of Lutherans closely related to those I grew up with, Weisses, Heinleins, Beirleins, Schmidts, Neuendorfs and Muellers. Blond haired, blue eyed, and with thick german accents, worried about their crops of sugar beets and whether the rains will come or if the rain

topics, even of all things the same accent (though in Spanish instead of English). Also, parakeets and monkeys...

How did this happen? What was I doing

chicken dinner and listen to Polka? Let’s handle these one at a time.

In December I traveled to Buenos Aires, Argentina to shoot a documentary for the Lutheran Church of Argentina about their

seminary and the needs that they have. As a church body they are facing a crisis where they have simultaneously a shortage of pastors and an increasing capacity and opportunity to become involved in local and foreign mission. The seminary in Buenos Aires is a key component to making this happen, so they asked me to come produce a documentary about the seminary to promote its role and to generate support within Argentina for the seminary. I

the gravity of any problem you need to connect it to a human story. I asked where a good example of the need for more pastors could be found and they sent me to Misiones, Argentina, in the far northern corner of the country just bordering Brazil and Paraguay. This is essentially the lower Amazon, and if anyone has

is also the area depicted in it.

documentary in Misiones was that oddly, there is a much higher density of German Lutheran immigrants living in the province, and there are very few pastors to go around. I visited my old friend Pastor Horacio Witzke (we met in Paraguay a year or so ago) who is serving an overwhelming 9 congregations. These congregations and their members are connected over long distances, by roads from a sedan’s worst nightmare. (And we drove a Volkswagon...)

The area of Misiones is actually pretty impoverished and there are very few resources to go around, we stopped at 3 restaurants one

checked the town’s two gas stations daily to see if they had any gas, you could never get a full tank.

You see, the same groups of Lutherans who moved to Frankmuth and Trost and Hilf

etc. in Michigan also went to Argentina and

than in the resource rich United States. During World Wars I and II even more

in Argentina, swelling the populations and the need for Lutheran pastors to see to their spiritual needs. As I’ve explained in other articles about our good friends in South America, they eat a lot of beef, pounds and pounds of it, seasoned with sea salt and cooked on a

have a good old fashioned German Chicken Dinner tm. at a member’s home, but two parrots that lived in their house kept stealing the chicken off our plates... (would that count as cannibalism?) I was also introduced to an exotic new fruit at the dinner that they said had just arrived from foreign parts and they were starting to introduce it in the area. It was called an Arandano, and it was a blueberry.

I mentioned that they grew sugar beets but really their largest crop is Tobacco, especially the variety used in cigarettes. (Here in the Dominican Republic they mostly go towards making cigars.) These farmers depend on tobacco as a cash crop, since they mostly eat what they grow they need something that sells in order to buy things that they can’t produce at home, like soap or clothing.

Their main buyer is Marlboro and in a textbook case of Globalism, they are seeing

prices plunge on their precious tobacco crops as the U.S. demand for cigarettes goes down, the hunt for a better cash crop is on.

What kept going through my head the whole time was just this, “I could have grown up here instead of where I did.” What if my family had gotten on the other boat? God sent us to North America and them to South

his plan in place. God bless our brothers and sisters in Misiones; and I hope those exotic blueberries work out for them! -James

“but two parrots that lived in their

house kept stealing the chicken off our

plates...”

A note from LCMS Missionaries James and Christel Neuendorf, January 2012

Yesterday we rode behind a guy on a motorcycle in our neighborhood herding about seven cows down the road. It’s that moment where you say to yourself, “That’s not how I would do it, but I guess that would work.” For some reason I feel like that moment sums up our Dominican experience in a nutshell.

If you didn’t know, you’d assume that the Dominican Republic is just another Latin American country where they eat tacos and speak Spanish. You may know it as a tropical getaway where “all-inclusive” are magical words and you can get your hair braided on the beach, or if you’re a fan of baseball you probably are a fan of the Dominican Republic, but there is a lot more to the island than that.

It’s true, you actually can get tacos here (although it’s far from a typical dish), people do speak Spanish, you can’t walk down the beach without tripping on a resort (or ten), and baseball is at the very least held in the same regard as the Catholic Church, and much more widely attended. But there is so much more to the people here and their daily life that we have yet to discover.

These last few months James and I have been trying to soak all of these things in. Upon arrival we were overwhelmed by how nice everyone one here is. Dominicans are friendly already but Santiago, where we live, is considered the friendliest city on the island.

However, as with most new experiences, the honeymoon period soon passes and reality

sets in. Learning to speak Dominican Spanish became a very humbling experience. It’s like starting over with “Spanish 1”, asking people to repeat things and say them slower only to be more confused, (imagine lots of new words, but hopelessly slurred).

rules of the motorcycle versus the car (emphasis on vs.) were challenging. Getting lost on public transit and paying double as you stayed twice as long on the route is no fun and ultimately, you end up seeing things that make you just ache inside.

The Dominican Republic shares the same island as Haiti - “Hispanola”. Over the last century there has been a turbulent history of conquering each other, installing and overthrowing dictators, and a lot of killing. The end result is that in the Dominican there is strong sense of dislike against Haitians. It’s a cycle of society that we are just know learning more about and understanding at a different level, but some things are very evident. There is a distinct class difference and many Haitians are given hard labor jobs and become dependent on a rich Dominican (a

THEMOTORCOWBOY

“For some reason I feel like that moment sums up our Dominican experience

in a nutshell.”

Patron) in order to survive. Many Haitians came to work in “Bateys” which are areas of living where people can

work and immigration papers. Usually they end up with neither and are stuck living in horrid conditions. Slavery never really ended, it just changed its rules.

According to ‘Dominican Today’, “The Caribbean region is the world’s second highest zone in the number of HIV AIDS patients, and the Island of Hispaniola, shared by Haiti and Dominican Republic, has 80% of the cases.” On top of this, the Dominican Republic is the fourth largest exporter of prostitutes in the world (www.dr1.com).

You don’t have to go very far to see the hardship people face on a daily basis. You may not know their story but you can see their faces, you hear their voices, you see the kids begging on the street. You see people very clearly living a life that you wish you could change for them but you changing someone’s life can’t happen .... you can’t take someone’s life away and replace it a new one.

You can’t, but God can. You can give food to those in hunger, you can give clothes, you can give toys, and money, and all of those things God calls us to do, but without the sharing of Gospel, those actions are meaningless. Without the sharing of the Gospel you still leave an empty life of pain with no meaning.

I realized that the aching I felt, the thoughts and images I can’t shake from my mind are what the Word of God is for. It’s for those who are in need of the amazing love that Christ offers all of us, and with that in mind, we keep going, we keep sharing and building relationships to share this incredible life-changing story. -Christel

PRAYER  REQUESTS

-­  Hogares  Luteranos  del  Buen  Pastor  (Group  Home  here  in  the  Dominican)

-­  Leaders  in  the  the  Dominican  Lutheran  Church

-­  Peru  Film  -­  Chitachay  -­  travels,  production,  sharing!

-­  Opportunities  for  relationship  building/Gospel  sharing

A note from LCMS Missionaries James and Christel Neuendorf, January 2012