Healthy Relationships 101: Sex education 

ELKHART, Ind. (Mennonite Mission Network) — After school, 14-year-old Doris Diaz tosses her books aside with one thing on her mind: her daughter.

Doris lives with her parents, and visits her boyfriend occasionally — but she is in the “vast minority of those whose boyfriends are still in the picture,” says Alyssa Rodriguez, who serves with Mennonite Mission Network in Ecuador.

Doris’s story isn’t unusual. Ecuador joins Venezuela and Colombia in having the largest population of teen mothers in Latin America. According to a study by Ecuador’s public health ministry, 17 percent of girls ages 15-19 have at least one child.

But in the Jardines del Inca (Gardens of the Inca) neighborhood, “teen” mothers are as young as 10.  

In an ecumenical effort to establish healthy relationships between Ecuadorian youth, Quito Mennonite Church started a center called Vida Juvenil (Youth Life). Rodriguez lives in the neighborhood and is one of the leaders at the center. She began her assignment with Mennonite Mission Network and Central Plains Mennonite Conference in March 2013.

In its early stages, Vida Juvenil is still developing relationships in the community. Program personnel try to emphasize their love and concern for all people, regardless of church affiliation. Rodriguez said that some people in the community worry that the center will impose its theological perspectives on people who are Catholic. “We’re just trying to help people,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez said that often pregnancies result from sexual violence. At Vida Juvenil, Rodriguez addresses this by leading workshops about healthy relationships and how to deal with conflict. The first workshops addressed basic terminology and myths related to sexuality, to equip people with the vocabulary to talk about the topic.

“Sex is taboo,” said Rodriguez. One woman that participates in Vida Juvenil didn’t receive sex education until college. Others received the education, but didn’t pay attention. Currently, the Ecuadorian government suggests teaching sex education at age 10.

Vida Juvenil’s workshops are for teens, but also adults.

Cesar Moya, the pastor at Quito Mennonite Church, explained the importance of working with parents. “It’s like people drowning at one end of the river and your solution being to pull them out afterward. We’ve got to start from the beginning to prevent [these] problems from occurring in the first place.”

Since teen mothers have extra responsibilities and little extra time for homework, Vida Juvenil seeks to help girls finish their studies before becoming mothers. According to Rodriguez, some teen mothers work during the day to support their children, and attend school at night. So grandmothers often raise the children.

Above all, Rodriguez wants to provide youth with a haven. “A place to feel safe, and turn to if they have questions about the topic, about relationships, if they’re feeling abused,” said Rodriguez.

Healing God's Earth: Rural Community in the Context of Urban Civilization

Rural communities and traditional cultures throughout North America and around the world are being systematically dismantled by the forces of urban civilization. It is no new phenomenon. For over four millennia, the powers of urban civilization have been playing God, oppressing people, and exploiting the earth. This long history has brought us to the brink of disaster in the current economic, ecological, and energy crises confronting the dominant global culture.

This book reads the Bible through the lenses of rural communities. The Bible has something to say about the origin and character of urban civilization and the dynamic of its relationship to rural communities. Both Israel in the Old Testament and Jesus in the New Testament were engaged in the formation of rural communities of faith living as alternatives to the dominant cultures of the urban civilizations in which they lived.

It turns out that local, face-to-face communities, both rural and urban, along with traditional cultures of all stripes, are God's chosen instruments for the subversive, nonviolent disarming of urban civilization and the healing of God's earth.

Endorsements:
"Healing God's Earth makes an important contribution to our task of caring for creation. S. Roy Kaufman writes out of a specific Christian tradition (Mennonite), vocation (pastor), and social context (farming community) and in doing so articulates an applied biblical theology that speaks to all Christians. Though Kaufman's critique of 'civilization' is sharp, he gives far more with his life-affirming vision of shalom based on a careful interrogation of both Testaments."
  —Ted Grimsrud, author of Instead of Atonement

"A beautiful capstone on the career of a faithful rural pastor, Healing God's Earth retells the biblical narrative championing the rural struggle for faithful witness to God's hope for the world against the backdrop of urban dominion. As a corrective to fixations on urban ministry, Kaufman ignites a necessary conversation that helps rural and urban dwellers alike to grasp the importance of faithfully subversive face-to-face communities as God's chosen agents of mission in the world."
—David Boshart, Executive Conference Minster, Central Plains Mennonite Conference

"Out of the midst of our global, technocratic, and urbanizing civilization, S. Roy Kaufman issues a clarion call to local, incarnational, alternative community. Healing God's Earth is an insightful and incisive work of prophetic and pastoral biblical theology rooted in the Anabaptist Mennonite narrative. It is also an essential text for people of Christian faith and for all people everywhere as creation waits with eager longing to be set free from its bondage to degradation."
—Matthew Yoder, Pastor, Menno Mennonite Church

Our monthly newsletter, The Sower/El Sembrador, includes an update from the Pastoral Leadership Committee, faith formation resources for your fall programs, and news of another Fellowship and Learning Tour to Ecuador.  Also check out our new staff pages.  Hover your cursor above right on Our Organization, then Staff, then click on each title to see what your conference staff can do for your church.

To subscribe to The Sower/El Sembrador, email office@centralplainsmc.org.  

Here's what one participant wrote to Shana after the workshop:

We are happy to introduce Brady Peters, Church Relations Associate with Mennonite Mission Network. Brady is a new member of the MMN staff and will our primary contact with MMN. Brady spent a weekend with us and we are excited to commend him to our conference congregations as a partner in resourcing our congregations in embracing their mission call. Feel free to be touch with Brady any time! See Brady's profile.

Read César and Patricia's 2013 Semi-Annual Report in either English or Spanish.