Newsletters

Date: July 3rd 2008

On being an accompanier
by Susan Webb
June 21, 2008

What's it like being a participant in the Colombia Accompaniment Program? This was the burning question in my mind through the month of May as I prepared to spend June here in Barranquilla. It is the question I receive with every e-mail from family, friends, and church members who are holding me in their thoughts and prayers. It's a practical question about the everyday activities and living conditions, a question about the definition of our mission, its challenges and how we are meeting them as individuals and a team, a question about Colombia itself, what it looks like to North American eyes, it's a question about Colombians and Colombian Presbyterians, what are they like, how do they treat you? It's a huge question.

Having spent close to three of the four weeks we will be here, I will offer the following responses. Being an acompañante is being the guest of the Presbytery of the North Coast in Barranquilla. Being welcomed and acknowledged by everyone attending church and Presbytery events and anyone coming through the doors of the Presbytery office where we can be found during some time most week days. Being given shelter in rooms on the grounds of the Universidad Reformada where for now the Presbytery office is also located. The accommodations are modest by US standards but comfortable and even luxurious given the inclusion of AC and wireless access. Being oriented to these new surroundings by generous hosts. It means having lots of gracious folks who you have just met offer their time and energy to seeing you are comfortable and safe, doing things like taking you back to the airport to recover a missing bag.

Being an acompañante means facing all the small challenges of living day to day in a foreign place. Learning the money and what things cost, the food and how your body will react to it, adjusting to the weather, the bugs, sleeping in a different bed, and taking cold showers. It's being exhausted at first due to the expenditure of energy these simple things demand. It means putting aside the nagging concerns of your personal health and comfort to be fully present to what is before you.

For some of us being an acompañante includes trying to understand and be understood in a language we are not that familiar with, in a culture with its own manners and codes of conduct in some ways similar but different from ours. It means feeling like you spend a great deal of time in a cloud of unknowing as you try and follow conversations, sermons, speeches, and hardest of all, questions which you're not sure you understand much less know how to respond to intelligently. It means struggling to use words you do know to try to convey what you haven't the vocabulary for, leading to the thrill of success and frustration of failure. It means learning the power of gestures, facial expressions, smiles and laughter, and very simple exchanges to establish connections that without words make you feel welcome and included. You learn the power of focused listening and appreciation for those who struggle with you to find understanding.

Being an acompañante means being on a bus packed with boisterous Colombians, all of whom are ministers and elders enthusiastically singing praise songs on the way home from a Presbytery meeting. A meeting where there was worship including the sharing of milk and honey along with the voicing of dissent and struggles to come to agreement that were not fully resolved. It means finding how much our churches share in their attempts to be a community that respects and values diversity of opinion on and understanding of the call to be God's people.

Being an acompañante can include sitting in on a class at the Universidad Reformada where students share their understandings of Liberation Theology. Being interviewed by students at the Colegio Americano shyly practicing their English and hearing a range of maturity and sophistication in their concerns and opinions as they respond to your questions. It means hearing in the descriptions of mission of both these Colombian Presbyterian institutions the desire to empower their students to work together in building a society responsive to the needs of all God's children.

Being an acompañante this Tuesday was finding salvation in the man coming toward me with a mule and the offer of a ride when I'd already climbed farther than my body was willing to go and the end of journey was still distant. A journey that took us to see the land on which the group of displaced people the church has been working with hope to establish a new community. It was feeling privileged to share their hope and excitement at the possibility of establishing homes in this beautiful spot and awed by their willingness to take on the challenge of farming the hillsides, the progress they have made in doing so, and the ease with which they traveled what seemed to me a horrendous commute. It means feeling uncomfortable about having and "needing" so much when you see others doing with so little other than their willingness to work hard and help one another. It is the gift of being with people who offer you the best of the little they have and are clearly grat eful for just your attention.

Being an acompañante means learning to expect plans to change and things to happen when they happen, regardless of designated times. It means days filled with time for reflection and lots of emailing, days that demand all your energy and patience, when getting back to the air conditioner becomes your idea of heaven, days that include poignant moments of sharing across cultural divides and a few hours at the movies forgetting you are not at home.

Being an acompañante is the opportunity for Bible study with Alice Winters, the Presbyterian missionary from the U.S. with over 30 years in Colombia. Hearing her scholarly analysis of the stories and concepts in the Old Testament becoming the source of direction and hope for the people of Colombia. It's an opportunity to connect your story and the stories you hear with God's story.
Being an acompañante is a chance to hear your fellow acompañante's story as you share in this process of discovery and the challenge of a month apart from those you share with regularly. It's a chance to reflect on what you've left behind and what you hope to go back to. It's a chance to consider what is really essential here and there.

Being an acompañante is to engage in the ministry of presence. It's not about changing, fixing, or even helping. It's not about analyzing or diagnosing, recommending or advising. It's about being there as wholly and fully as possible, present to God's movement within you and those you came to stand beside.