New Year, New Projects, New Challenges
In this our first Newsletter in 2006 we want to bring our supporters, friends and prayer partners up to date on our ministry and the ministry of the Lutheran Church in Venezuela. We still continue to travel to different parts of the country teaching intensive courses to students enrolled in the ministerial training program of our Venezuelan Church. Travel has been made more difficult due to the partial collapse of the main bridge on the super highway connecting Venezuela’s international airport down on the Caribbean coast with the city of Caracas, 3000 feet above sea level. Heavy rains helped put the bridge out of commission and to washout hundreds of homes.
This has made getting from Caracas to its airport a hazardous adventure – traveling over winding back roads or going down the old La Guaira road that snakes through some of the most crime infested slums in the Caracas Metropolitan Area. Consequently, missionaries and national workers have been forced to make long bus journeys rather than fly.
Many people forced to evacuate their homes due to landslides in La Guaira and in the neighborhoods bordering on the old la Guaira road have been left homeless. In order to find a place to stay many have been invading vacant or partially vacant buildings in the central area of Caracas – taking them over and claiming squatter’s rights. Buildings are being invaded not only by the homeless but by groups of professional squatters who make a living by taking over properties and then reselling them at a profit. To make things worse a group of invaders has taken over the building belong to El Mesías Lutheran Church in the Altagracia neighborhood near downtown Caracas. The invaders claim to belong to one of the many revolutionary organizations that have sprung up like mushrooms after a summer rain. You will remember that El Mesías is the congregation was the church formerly served by the deposed president of the ILV. Pray that our church’s lawyers will be able to recover the property.
This has made getting from Caracas to its airport a hazardous adventure – traveling over winding back roads or going down the old La Guaira road that snakes through some of the most crime infested slums in the Caracas Metropolitan Area. Consequently, missionaries and national workers have been forced to make long bus journeys rather than fly.
Many people forced to evacuate their homes due to landslides in La Guaira and in the neighborhoods bordering on the old la Guaira road have been left homeless. In order to find a place to stay many have been invading vacant or partially vacant buildings in the central area of Caracas – taking them over and claiming squatter’s rights. Buildings are being invaded not only by the homeless but by groups of professional squatters who make a living by taking over properties and then reselling them at a profit. To make things worse a group of invaders has taken over the building belong to El Mesías Lutheran Church in the Altagracia neighborhood near downtown Caracas. The invaders claim to belong to one of the many revolutionary organizations that have sprung up like mushrooms after a summer rain. You will remember that El Mesías is the congregation was the church formerly served by the deposed president of the ILV. Pray that our church’s lawyers will be able to recover the property.
posted by Rudy at
7:30 PM
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