Author Archives: alanfoster

We´ve enjoyed being at home in Catrigandí for a short time, although its a lot of work to re-habitate a house that is largely exposed to the comings and goings of the jungle. I got two sealing 55 gallon drums to toss our stuff in while we´re away. Best $20 I ever spent.

The capacitor on the washing machine Pastor Einer gave us exploded, so Colleen has re-mastered washing in the river, which is actually a very useful and necessary skill to have here… both for practical and social reasons. Of course, they don´t carry that part at our dry goods store at the end of the road, so the impending gratitude is growing daily as we await the part and washing consumes more of our time. 

Colleen started her first basket weaving with the help of our dear friend, Andrea. This is another important social/economic activity that should help her develop relationships. Some of the larger baskets can take a year or more to complete with the artist working daily and sell for thousands of dollars. Kalea also continues integrate well. Non-toxic markers are always a big hit.

We travel tomorrow with Neldo and Obdulio to Villa Caleta to repair the components of a photovotaic powered water system. Please pray for safe travel and open doors to good relationships… also that the weather will cooperate. Rivers are beginning to flood as we get into the wet season. We had wait a while to cross the river to get home the other day. I may have to fab a snorkel for the old car.

There are certainly some beautiful parts of creation here. “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the works of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” Psalm 19:1-4.

Paz y Gozo,

Los Fosters

throwing children into the river! I think there were 25 lined up waiting their turn.

Trip to Platanares

We´ve recently accompanied a group of 10 talented, loving, Spirit-filled folks from Canada over a span of two weeks… over highways, byways, rivers, and ocean. We enjoyed seeing them bless the communities they visited, encouraging the churches, sharing testimonies, songs, and laughter with the people they encountered. This has been an encouragement to us with regard to the impact of short term missions and how God can use our efforts and willingness to go wherever He leads.

Back to our House

coloring with Luris at our home in Catrigandí

We are getting settled (sort of) back into our house in Catrigandí. Kalea is integrating and adapting better than we ever imagined, and she has showed a willingness to try new languages, foods, and is making friends everywhere she goes. Colleen makes a small attempt to hide her disgust when Kalea sees the fresh, fried fish and politely requests the eyeballs to start her dinner. I guess it goes to show that taste is also a matter of perspective and a learned behavior like so many other things.

Off to Yaviza

We will be heading back to Yaviza soon to accompany Pastor Einer´s wife, Girlesa, and their 2 adopted children while he goes to Colombia for gall bladder surgery. I will likely make a couple of community visits while Colleen and Kalea remain in Yaviza. Please pray for Einer´s health as well as our safety and sanity. All the traveling can be exhausting and none of us enjoy being apart from our families.

Peace and Health,

Los Fosters

The day before leaving SC to come to Panama, we were asked a poignant question in Sunday school, “How can a person run to church and at the same time away from God?” Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan immediately came to mind. Although the text doesn’t explicitly state it, chances are that either the priest or the Levite that passed the beaten fellow that day were literally going to “church”, that is, their temple, while leaving another human being to die. The ensuing discussion which followed that question produced a statistic: only 20 % of churchgoers are Christians. Myself being rather fond of numbers, and having personally given up on quantifying salvation, I listened curiously for what would qualify the 20%, hoping to be in that number. Faithful church attendance, regular Bible reading, and tithing were mentioned, and I couldn’t decipher if there was more. Trying to aggregate this new information with the story of the Good Samaritan was giving me a mental cramp. Jesus speaks often of the religious people of his day, saying things such as “they like the chief seats in the synagogue” (Matt. 23:6; Mark 12:39; Luke 20:46), “they study the scriptures diligently” (John 5:39) and fruitlessly, and when Jesus mentions tithing, it is always to rebuke the religious leaders of his day. It would seem that we get little or no celestial treasure for church attendance, Bible reading, and perhaps even tithing. Of course, I don´t intend to discourage these practices in the least, which have been handed down to us to help us draw nearer to God and each other. I only intend to remind myself that my measuring stick is inadequate and that every person has been created in God´s image and has the potential to carry His Spirit. God works through people that are not even in the church, and I may only be able to take part in what He is doing to the extent that I can recognize His hand.

We´re off to a whirlwind of a start here, accompanying the team from Forest Grove Community Church. Their actions and attitudes thus far have been an inspiration to us and to the people we´ve visited. Thank you for praying for us and for this team. We´ve had a little setback in the bowels department, so the team has continued upriver to Vista Alegre while we wait in Yaviza for our guts to work properly again. Thanks again for your prayers.

Amor de Cristo,

Los Fosters

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Click on the arrow in the upper right corner of the pdf to expand in a new window.

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Sunday a week ago, we were asked one of my favorite questions: “How can we pray for you?” And my short-sighted, narrow mind spawned a predictable response- my health, my support, my awareness, my, my, my… Not that there is anything wrong with praying for those things, and not to diminish the importance of those things in my little world, but being asked that question by a sanctuary full of people, I really wanted (in hindsight) to lay something big on the table, something that desperately needs prayer, something that is drastically affecting the work of the church in Panama and beyond, something so far out of our hands that divine intervention seems to be the only answer, something that has made Satan laugh and Jesus weep since long before I was born.

That something is the armed conflict in Colombia. In the last half century 600,000 individuals have died as a result, and upwards of 3 million have been displaced, including Wounaan and Emberá that now reside in Panama. Our friends.

“You have three options,” a 5-year refugee and now church member in Vista Alegre, Panama was told, “grow coca, leave, or die.” He and his family left. FARC (the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia- the largest faction) guerillas continue to move freely in and around the Panama-Colombia border and have been a deadly thorn in the side of villagers and mission workers for decades.

Now, the Colombian government is once again engaged in peace talks with the FARC, and peace marches have been held this month in cities throughout Colombia demonstrating tremendous public support for an end to the bloodshed.  Rather than try to decipher the complex social and political climate that has resulted from this hodgepodge of ideologies and economic interests, rather than trying to figure this one out, it seems like the best thing to do is pray. Pray against pride, pray against greed, pray against envy. Pray that individuals would respond to conviction and trade their swords for plowshares. Pray for Peace.

This week, Thursday, May 2^nd is National Day of Prayer for the U.S. of A., a tradition which pre-dates the country itself, having been first established in 1775 by the Continental Congress as “a day of publick [sic] humiliation, fasting, and prayer” to seek God´s favor for the nascent country. Subsequent wars and difficulties prompted the nation´s leaders to return to this practice before it was signed into law in 1952.

I invite you to pray (and fast if you like) with me this Thursday for a peace agreement to be reached between the Colombian government and the forces which oppose them. I also ask for us to pray for transparency, clarity, and wisdom for the leaders which make decisions affecting this situation, be them Colombian, U.S., or otherwise. And I ask that we pray for the individuals in the conflict zones, that they would respond to conviction and choose peace and life over conflict and death.

Blessings and Strength in Solidarity,

the Fosters

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Our apologies for the late notice. We´d like to invite you to a Missions dinner at:

Mt. Tabor Baptist Church Fellowship Hall

401 Tabor Road

Westminster, SC 29693

March 3, 2013

6:00 pm

featured speaker: the Fosters (Faith and Fruit Ministry)

menu: Beef Stew, Vegetable Soup, Cornbread, Dessert

Join us for dinner and an informative presentation about Faith and Fruit Ministry, the Foster´s outreach in Panama. Dinner will be served at 6:00 pm and will be followed by the presentation. A love offering will be taken at the conclusion of the presentation.

For more information, contact Daniel Capps at daniel@barnabasx.org

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Starting in the late 1700´s, South Carolinians have been referred to as sandlappers. According to some accounts, George Washington coined the term in 1791 in reference to people living in the lowland and piedmont areas which were so poor they ate clay to supplement their dietary mineral intake.

José Gaitán is almost 76 years old. Those are his hands weaving the basket at the top of our webpage. He marvels that my Grandmother, who turned 90 yesterday, helped pick up this strange new food he is eating (a pecan), and I´m not sure he believes me when I say that she still drives a car. He has stayed at our house for the last 5 months taking care of it, supposedly, which is next door to his son´s house, and now we are roommates. His health has been failing for the last 10 years, and he doesn´t see or hear very well. At this point, he can no longer weave hats either, and he´s left the gas stove on twice already since I´ve been back. I think he enjoys  the indoor faucet, the shower, the composting toilet, and the canned food we left for him. He grinned and played with the light switch for several minutes when I showed him how to work it and tried to explain the small panel I had placed on the roof. I felt dumb as he marveled at the can opener after I returned, and I realized that I had not taught him how to use it. He described it as ¨pura ciencia¨ [pure science] and declared it far superior to opening cans with a knife.

José´s first paying job was cutting down mangroves with an axe. He earned 8 nickels a day. A shirt cost $2.50. Pants $3.00. Food was ¨cheap¨. He saw someone reading at age 15 and decided to invest one nickel in a pencil and another in a notebook, and he learned to read and write somewhat, but he never received any formal education. In the evenings, we talk about theology and sometimes he tells a story…

When José was a child, he ate dirt. His mother, the family disciplinarian, tried to break him of this malicious habit. He was forced to drink tobacco infused urine as punishment for eating dirt, which he elected over being beaten, but it was no use. José continued to eat dirt. At about age 8, José´s conscious (with the help of his parents and numerous siblings) convicted him to feel that dirt eating was an undesirable behavior that must be changed. Therefore, José, at that young age decided, ¨today I´ll eat dirt, but tomorrow I will not.¨ So for a time, José would eat dirt one day and not the next. With this successful exercise in self-control under his belt, José decided that he would now go two full days without eating dirt before eating it again. This transition was also successful and, gradually, he increased to 8 days without eating dirt and then to total abstinence from dirt eating. It was a milestone.

What seemed to stand out for José in this chapter of his life was the very young age at which he actively implemented a program of discipline and self-control in order to achieve his goal as well as the self-awareness that accompanied decision-making process.

What stood out for me was that he was so poor he ate dirt. I shared the SC sandlapper history and José nodded, ¨Yes, there were many of us children to feed.¨

We then had a good chuckle that one of our neighbors, older than José, had tried to convince him the other day to wash his face with urine to cure his headache. Culture, belief, and practice continue to change, and while navigating this environment with understanding, patience, and respect here in Panama can be challenging for us, it affords many valuable opportunities to peer into the idiosyncracies of our own culture and understand who we are.

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