A letter from Tim and Gloria Wheeler in Honduras
August 2010
Dear Friends,
The text in 2 Thessalonians 3:13, “But you, brothers, don’t be weary in doing well,” and again in Galatians 6:9, “ Let us not be weary in doing good” spoke to me in a special way recently when I read it. It made me think and reflect on the idea of doing good, and I realized that there is never enough and we are never done. Given as instructional for the people they were written to by Paul, I found it interesting to think about the very idea of not getting tired of doing good in our context today when the norm may be self-interest or self-survival. In relation to our activities in the mission field, the command represents a huge challenge. Just when we think we have done what we are supposed to have done and can slide along and sort of slack it for a while, we are told no, we need to get up the next day and every day and do everything we can do to do good.
I then made the transition in my mind and applied this same concept to a community development framework. The idea was powerful and important as a concept of solidarity among people in a community development process but also as building blocks of a positive process in a continuum. The appreciative inquiry approach tells us to look for what is going well, and then build on it with a vision for the future that can be best achieved by using the core values that we hold together as a group or community. Doing good and having a positive experience even on a small scale is important in changing the experience of long-term poverty in which people don’t have a lot to feel good about. By being intentional and bringing out the good, as we are told here, and by not becoming “weary in doing well,” the positive can be expanded and multiplied in making the process stronger.
Don Rubio explains the “greatness” taking place.
I have been visiting the community of Mongual, in western Honduras in the Department of Lempira, with visiting groups of North Americans. After the third visit the reflection about doing good here started to speak back to me in the words from the people of Mongual and their experience as a community and a group working together to improve their lives. Each time we visited they took the people to home after home and showed us the good that was being done and how it was changing their lives. Now there was a strong sense of hope for a better future. Under the direction of Fundacion Puca, a nonprofit, named after the mountain that looms over their village and provides water for several municipal areas, they have improved their environment by protecting a part of the mountain as a natural reserve, allowing it to reforest naturally. At the same time they are improving their own livelihood with improved farming practices and animals. A community leader I have gotten to know recently explained the good being done as “bigness.” His name is Rubio Bernardo Torres, and he is in his 60s. Once again we were placed in a learning situation by people living in poverty who have put into practice in real terms the instructional from Paul on “doing good” while we are only beginning to deal with it in theoretical terms.
A participant from a visiting group who simply put down the words and phrases that she heard people say when she visited them explained it this way:
Don Mino Caceres, 82 years old, shows his joy. He hadn’t owned a cow since being a boy.
BIGNESS (by Kelly Keena)
Welcome.
What is the best of what is?
Although we are poor,
We have something to give.
We have bigness
In our trees.
We have bigness
In our people.
I want to be a good father.
I dream of education for my children.
I received a cow and passed on the gift.
I received the gift.
I will receive the gift.
I walked for one hour and thirty minutes to show you my gift.
Our businesses are thriving and doing well.
We just received training —
Would you like to see the first tablecloth off the loom?
You’ve motivated us to move forward.
We did not know weaving.
I have not had a cow since I was a young boy.
We are shy, it is difficult to speak in front of groups.
We have a responsibility to
pay a debt to women who suffer from inequality.
We have value.
We work hard.
Your visit is a gift.
We have bigness here.
Let us hold up the people in places like Mongual as we recognize the “bigness” that they have achieved and that their lives are part of now, based on doing good and not becoming weary.
Yours,
Tim and Gloria Wheeler
P.S. Daughter Grace finished her second year of medical school and passed the boards with flying colors. Pamela finished her micro-bio degree and got a job in her field. Marsha and Andrew continue graduate programs and are tending their garden.
The 2010 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.281