A few years ago, fifteen to twenty people travelled from the United States to another country to build a village house for a missionary family. Many of the participants had construction experience. The building project lasted several weeks. By the time these Americans left, the village house was almost complete.

The July 15 coup in Turkey has brought the name of Fethullah Gulen and the movement which bears his name to the attention of the international community. On an almost daily basis, we read news reports of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, blaming Gulen for fomenting the coup and calling for his extradition from the United States. Since the late 1990s Gulen’s hizmet (service) movement has been very active in the U.S., running a network of 146 charter schools¹, about 50 local interfaith dialogue groups and numerous cultural centers across the country. (C.A.S.I.L.I.P.S. 2014).

Your language is valuable,” I told the young people gathered at the conference. It was the annual youth event for a particular denomination held in Kenya in August 2016. Around one hundred youth attended. After explaining the value of their language to them, I asked them a question, in answer to which I expected them to confirm that they appreciate their own languages. A senior church leader, also in attendance at the conference, answered in their place. In short, his answer was, “We should not value our languages.” 

In order to better understand the reality of the Latin American missionary family, it is necessary that we Latins set aside our tendency to incorporate into our imagination the picture of an Anglo Saxon missionary family. Instead, it is time we work on looking to learn from the life experiences of Latin American families who have immigrated to foreign countries. It is only with this image in our cognitive constructions that we can begin to visualize more clearly the particular needs of our Latin American missionary families.

In the Gospel of Luke, we read the account of a young Jesus who went to the temple in Jerusalem, and sat with the teachers “both listening and asking them questions” (Luke 2:46). After his parents found him in the temple, Jesus returned to Nazareth with them. Luke described Jesus’ growth in the following way: “And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men” (Luke 2:52). Physicians appreciate Luke’s focus on three dimensions of health in this verse—physical, emotional, and spiritual. 

The words “The End” immediately conjure up the last page of a book we simply haven’t been able to put down. There is nothing that comes after “The End.” It falls of the page into the unknown and so we avoid thinking about endings much.