The holiday season has arrived, with all the joys of Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, and, for our little family, birthdays! With the joy comes some stress and increased busyness, too; but Christmas is my favorite holiday. I love the joy and wonder, the wondering and the waiting of the Advent and Christmas season.
I believe that a major value that Jesus taught about was peace, and in Belize, FUM participates in a peace-making organization called AVP (Belize). AVP stands for Alternatives to Violence Project. It’s an organization based in the United States, but through the tireless efforts of several people, many of whom are or have been connected to FUM, Belize got our own branch of the organization a couple of years ago. AVP gives workshops to help people develop skills to solve conflicts in peaceful ways.
Our very own Chris Luben—school warden, facilities caretaker, and pastor-in-training—was one of the founding members of AVP (Belize), and he is currently one of three active AVP facilitators in Belize, the other two being Sam and Becky Barber, former principals of Belize Friends School.
I was able to sit down and hear an update from Chris about what’s been happening with AVP and it’s just wonderful, so I decided to devote my entire newsletter this month to what he had to say.
|
|
|
|
Murals on the wall of the prison.
|
|
AVP has done several workshops in the last few months. The government contacted them to run a workshop in Belize’s prison, to work with gang leaders that had been preventatively detained during a recent state of emergency in Southside Belize City. Chris told me that now when he meets any of these young men on the street, they greet him with excitement and call him by his “positive adjective name” (“Blessed Belize” is Chris’s)—and sometimes they have even changed their own nickname to the positive names they chose in their AVP workshops. Chris said it’s amazing to see these tough guys transform throughout the workshops as they became comfortable enough to show some vulnerability and let their guards down enough to be silly or serious, even in front of members of opposing gangs.
Pathlight International is another NGO working in Belize, especially in Belmopan, and they requested a workshop as well. One of their members, Bev, connected so deeply with AVP workshops that she told Chris she’s using what she learned every single day in her work with local teens. Pathlight has requested the advanced workshop and Chris is hopeful that Bev and her husband will even become workshop facilitators.
The government again called AVP to ask for workshops for community leaders. Counselors, social workers, teachers, officials from the Department of Youth Services, and other local leaders are participating in workshops and sharing ways that AVP is helping them as they work with teens that are often traumatized and in deep need of peace themselves. The government is working with AVP to try to establish a system in which local community members—not professionals, simply influential members of various neighborhoods—can be trained through AVP. The hope is that when there’s a conflict, these leaders can be called on first, to try to handle the situation peacefully, rather than bringing in the police, an intervention that often escalates the stress level of a situation.
Listening to Chris, it was clear to me that the Holy Spirit is working powerfully through AVP (Belize). Chris’s main concern moving into the future is that they have too few facilitators. Chris asks for prayers that God will raise up facilitators of Belizean nationality to help share the load of the many workshops that are being requested right now. He’s also concerned about funding for traveling throughout the country. The facilitators are working on a volunteer basis and they don’t always have the funds to travel to other parts of the country for workshops; Chris envisions a future where there are enough facilitators all throughout Belize that a workshop can happen anywhere and there will be local facilitators nearby!
|
|
I asked Chris if there was anything in particular he would like to say to American Friends, and this is what he said: “One thing I would like to say to the Quakers, especially those who got me started in it, Loving Linda and Rock ‘n’ Roll Rob and all that whole crew, I’m very thankful for participating in the program and for the growth that they have given me and for the passion, because I’ve seen the work they’ve put in, the dedication they put in. They did it selfless, they did it just giving their time, and I’m thankful for that. That’s what I’ve learned about from the help that Quakers gave me. It’s supposed to be a selfless job, where you have to give yourself and eventually that cycle keeps on going. So I want to thank them for the help they gave us, the time they put in, and [I want them to know] it wasn’t fruitless. It’s producing fruits in Belize…At the completion of every workshop here, individuals say, ‘I want to take this back to my community. Oh man, I love the “I” messages. I love the transforming power [of taking responsibility for my own feelings.]’”
Instead of ending with my usual “Joys and Concerns” this newsletter, I want to leave you with Chris’s: Please join him in thanking God for the transforming power of AVP in Belize, for all the help and learning he himself received from this program, and for the support AVP is still receiving from Friends in the United States. And join him in prayer for more Belizean facilitators to join AVP (Belize) and make even more workshops possible!
Thank you, everyone reading this, for the various ways you support our ministries here in Belize. Thank you for your love, your prayers, and your financial support. From the bottom of my heart, I wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
|
|
Thank you for your love and grace.
Much love,
Nikki
|
|
|
Ways you can support us:
Click here to support FUM's Covid-19 Solidarity Fund.
Did you receive this newsletter from a friend or posted on social media? Click here to sign up.
Click here to support Belize Friends School.
Click here to support my ministry!
Thank you!
|
|
|
|
|
