August 2022 Newsletter

Hi friends!

About GARY:

You may remember that this year Gary was given permission by the Seminary to spend half his time on the SUN project of Wycliffe Associates. He is working his way through the entire Old Testament as a final editor, checking for consistency of phraseology. It’s taking up a lot of time, energy and thought. You can imagine that it comes up a lot over meals or drives too! It’s interesting work from an intellectual perspective, but wonderful to know that it is spiritually meaningful.

Videos about SUN that you might find interesting:

SUN Program at a glance – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LPosz4RTUA

What is SUN? – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCCSZsfZ-Xc

About KAREN

Thank you for praying for my new focus on social media! God has put it on my heart for some time now that it would be important to develop a strong social media presence with my new ministry Levanta La Voz. Since my entire focus is to train church leaders how to combat sexual abuse, the information about what we offer has to get in their hands. And we’ve been told many times that social media is the place to communicate with younger generations. Since the ESEPA seminary did not have enough students to run my program this year, it has given me time to work on this new part of the project, and with the help of my coach Nikole Hahn from WorldVenture, it is finally in progress.

I know that many of you use social media, but you may not know that your involvement can make a big difference in our ability to spread the word. If you will get involved on my social media and encourage family members and friends to do the same, my posts will actually be visible to more people in the general public. (I honestly do not understand how it all works, but I know that it’s true.)

These are the specific actions that will help me:

Look up my social media sites and click “Like” or “Follow” (whichever appears on the site)
Read the posts and respond somehow – give a reaction such as “like” or “love”
Leave a comment on posts that you appreciate – it can be a question, an observation, or something else related to what is in the post. I will respond to you, and hopefully we can generate some interesting and helpful conversations
Share posts with other people that you think may find them helpful, especially leadership in your church
Encourage friends, family members and church leadership to follow our pages. I am writing things that will be helpful to teens too, and they love to find new places to follow! PLEASE encourage the teens in your life to take a look.

Levanta La Voz means “Raise Your Voice” in Spanish and is a quote from Proverbs 31:8-9, where we are told to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. That is what this ministry is all about – speaking up for those who cannot speak up about sexual abuse. It is pervasive in our society today and it seems that most men and women in our world are hurting from some sort of sexual assault in their past. As representatives of Jesus Christ, we should be ready to call sexual harm evil and we should be ready to apply the Gospel to those who are hurting because of it.

I have English and Spanish social media pages with the exact same material.

I also have Facebook and Instagram pages with the exact same material.

These are the exact locations:

Facebook.com/LevantaLaVozEnglish
Facebook.com/LevantaLaVozEspanol
Instagram.com/LevantaLaVozEnglish
Instagram.com/Levanta_La_Voz_Espanol

I, Karen, will be flying to Manila, Philippines, to co-teach a course for the Child Safety and Protection Network. This is an exciting opportunity to prepare new workers in the field of child safety, as well as collaborate with coworkers.

I am also planning to teach my 8-week course starting in mid-September. This is a free course, meeting by Zoom for a 3-hour lesson each week. It is designed to prepare church workers for how to prevent sexual abuse and respond appropriately if it happens. Why is this important for church workers? Because everything we do reflects what Jesus Christ would do, and that means we must be safe places and safe people. Because we can all use more information about how to make our churches safe locations, how to help our workers be safe people, how to train our parents to protect and help our children, and how to help our children learn safe behavior.