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July/August 1990 Newsletter
COLOMBIAN CHRISTIAN MISSION
Dale and Jeanie Meade
In the jungle and prairie of Southeastern Colombia
Volume 18, Issue 7/8 July/August, 1990
PRINTER PROJECT
With our little computer, we have been able to make great improvements in our bookkeeping and correspondence. While at Grad school, I took a class in desktop publishing. Our goal is to ultimately use the computer as a typesetter. We have always published our own material in Colombia. We have done this with a typewriter and a mimeograph. This method is rustic and inefficient as well.
The computer will make the work much faster. It will enable us to make revisions much easier. In order to use the computer for this project, we will need a laser printer. While the name sounds exotic, it is basically a photocopier connected to a computer. It will reproduce what the computer has in its memory. Technically, it will not produce typeset quality. A machine to do that would be over $15,000! But in Colombia, the quality would be far better than anything we have ever done before.
Right now we are using an inexpensive dot matrix for some things. For letters we are using an old printer discarded by an insurance agency here in town. Our goal is to purchase the laser printer this fall. We can begin using it immediately, both for our mission correspondence and for writing and publishing in Spanish. We can begin to publish and ship finished works to Colombia soon after the printer is on line.
The total cost for the printer and the software to run it will be about $3,000. If you, your Sunday school class, or church would like to help preach the Gospel in Colombia through the printed word, please send any contributions clearly marked for the "printer project". The printer will enable me to use some of what I have learned at Wheaton, it will help us put the computer into full service, and it will greatly improve the efficiency and quality of our printing ministry in Colombia.
BACK TO COLOMBIA
On August 8th, Lord willing, Jeanie and I will be heading back to Colombia to renew our visas. We had made tentative plans for this trip as soon as it became evident that we would not be able to return this summer to Colombia for our next three year term. We had been unable to make definite plans until now. The reason was a lack of funds for airline tickets. June and July were relatively good months for love offerings and by the time you read this, we should have the tickets paid for.
None of the children will be going with us. Since Susy and Alex are Colombian citizens, so visas are not problem with them. Wendy, however, will lose her permanent resident visa. That means she will probably never be able to return to Colombia for anything more than a visit. That probably will not be a major problem though. She is a junior in high school and would probably want to finish her schooling here, rather than receive her diploma from a correspondence school. Besides she has never been able to overcome her fungus infection. As long as she has that, she could not return to the tropics. God has always provided for our needs. Right now the "needs"must not include a permanent resident visa for Wendy.
The political situation in Colombia has remained tense and unsettled. The cocaine cartel continue to wage its war of terror against the government and the population. While we are in Colombia, we must travel extensively. We will be in Bogota for a few days to meet with the Colombian leaders and with the other missionaries. Then we will travel by bus to Villavicencio in order to check up on the work there. We also need to pay our taxes. We will need to take care of any paperwork that is required in order to renew our visas. Then we will return to Bogota.
When we leave Bogota, we plan to travel to Cartagena and Barranquilla on Colombia's northern coast. We are still making plans to open a work in that region when we return to Colombia. We want to check our different sections of the city where we might choose to locate. We also hope to look into schools. If there were any decent schools in the coastal cities, and we expect there are some, that fact would greatly ease the burden of teaching the children ourselves. From Cartagena we will fly back to Miami and then on to Cleveland.
This itinerary will get us back to the United States just before school is to begin at Wheaton. There will be only a few days to unpack from our Colombia trip and then pack for going back to Wheaton. We are trusting in the Lord for his protection on the trip. Everything must work like clockwork in order to return and make it back to the Wheaton College Graduate School on time for classes. Things seldom operate that way in Colombia. We would appreciate your prayers during these next few weeks!
HARVEST TIME
Normally, when I talk of harvest time, it is to relate the number of baptisms we have had. Here in the States, harvest time also has another meaning. With a missionary's salary and a family of five, we depend heavily on a garden in order to eat. We have planted a large garden and the harvest has begun.
We have already canned over forty quarts of green beans. We are processing and freezing broccoli and cauliflower. We have our cabbage fermenting in the crock to make sauerkraut. We hope to finish canning our sixty quarts of green beans and work on peaches before we leave for Colombia. It even appears that our trip will fall during a lull in the harvest so that we will not loose any of the crops. Corn, tomatoes, and lima beans should be ready after we come back. Apples will come on in the fall.
Our primary concern is still the harvest of souls. Our focus is still on Colombia. But while we are here in the United States, harvest time has another meaning also.