SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH GOD'S EYES

Lutheran, The, Jun 2004 by Blezard, Robert

Cultural immersion in Mexico gives U.S. Lutherans new vision for ministry

Since January 2003, Sandra Cox Shaw hasn't gone recreational shopping at the mall. It's just not her anymore. "It wasn't even a conscious thing," she says, "but I was spending less and less money."

And Kathy Storey has been giving away a lot of her possessions. "I look at how much excess I have, and I think, ? don't need all this stuff,' " she says.

These lifestyle changes reveal how much the two were transformed by a 10-day cultural immersion program at the Lutheran Center of Mexico City.

Shaw and Storey were among students from the Lutheran Seminary at Gettysburg (Pa.) who toured ancient ruins and important historical sites, attended workshops on Mexico's history and economy, visited a squatter shantytown and spent three days with an average family. They came home seeing their lives and culture with a totally new vision.

"I thought it would be my oneand-a-half credit ... multicultural requirement satisfied-and wow, I had no idea what I was in for," Storey says.

For Shaw, the spiritual highlight was her time with an extended family of three generations living together and pulling for one another.

"A real shock for me was when we got home the Friday night before the Super Bowl and [seeing] the contrast of living a very simple family life-a lot of laughter, a lot of teasing, not a lot of material goods, but just a real happy, inclusive family-and then getting hit with all the commercials for the Super Bowl," Shaw says. "I had never seen so clearly the idolatry of things, how much we value things: Drink this beer and you'll have a wonderful party, drive this car and you'll have a happy life."

The experience also inspired them to change course in their careers. Both seminarians now plan to learn Spanish and work in ministries with Latinos.

Bringing about this kind of personal transformation is the highest goal of the intense immersion program, says Raquel Rodriguez, director for Latin America and the Caribbean with the ELCA Division for Global Mission.

"It's a cross-cultural experience that can bring them back home [to] see with different eyes their own reality," Rodriguez says. "We don't only go and share, but we also receive a lot from people whom we'd never think had anything to share with us. These people will share with you life experiences, faith experiences, and strength and hope that we sometimes are missing here."

Many U.S. Lutherans visit Latin America on project-based trips-to fix up homes, create clinics or build schools. The Lutheran Center of Mexico City complements such projects by helping North Americans wrestle with deeper questions about the causes and effects of poverty.

Deeper questions

"I mean, why is it that people have to come down and build a school?" asks Kim Erno, an ELCA pastor and missionary who serves as the center's program director. "Why isn't the Mexican government taking responsibility to build a school?

"Why is poverty at this level? Why are people so desperate? Why are Mexican people risking their lives to get to the United States?"

Through workshops, speakers, and time for processing and formulating answers, the center's program explores the economic globalization that has brought low-wage jobs to Mexico and devastated the rural agricultural economy.

Under the North American Free Trade Agreement, a flood of corn from Canada and the United States (where yields are high and taxpayer subsidies support big farmers) drives market prices below local production costs, Erno says.

What's happening in Mexico is part of a larger global problem documented in Bread for the World's 2003 Hunger Report (www.bread.org). Crop subsidies in industrialized countries depress world market prices for goods and lead to hunger and economic hardship in developing nations, the report concludes.

Many Mexicans leave rural areas in search of any escape from desperate poverty. An estimated 3,000 rural people arrive daily in Mexico City, which already struggles to hold 25 million people. Erno says they often take factory jobs that pay little and are physically taxing and dangerous.

It's a perspective that contradicts a prevailing opinion in the United States that NAFTA and other trade agreements are good for everyone, Erno says. he challenges people of faith to see beyond mere economics.

"We're also calling for another kind of globalization, which is the globalization of human rights and dignity and life," he says. "How do we present that?"

Erno hopes Lutherans will begin to make deeper connections-and see commonalities in the forces causing poverty in Mexico and economic troubles at home, the similarity of woes of rural communities in both countries and the problems of urbanization faced in both.

For the center, it begins by challenging U.S. Lutherans to examine values and ask hard questions-something Shaw and Storey say they're now doing.

"What is solidarity?" Shaw asks. "What does that look like in a congregation in the United States? What does that look like in light of the letter of call that I hope to be having soon that says I am to be a 'voice for justice'?