Articles

An important part of our work here with CPT is reporting on the conflict here in Colombia. The United States is expected to send 700 million dollars in aid to Colombia this year, most of it military aid. Therefore it's crucial that people in North America know what's going on and how our tax dollars are being used.

Below are links to some of the articles that Michele and I have written:

Aerial Fumigations-- "I Wish the Pilots Were More Intelligent"
by Michele - December 16, 2006

Miners Return Home
By Michele and Joel Klassen - November 9, 2006

The Power of Prayer - CPT holds witness against Fumigations
by Nils - November 1, 2006

We'll add more articles to this blog as we write them.

Accompaniment work

Here are some pictures from a community meeting Michele and I accompanied a few weeks ago. One unique thing about this trip was that that Michele and I got to work together, a first for us so far on the team.




Here's the canoe we rode in to get to the meeting (along with 80 or so other people).
Michele and I are on about halfway down on the right side of the canoe, wearing red CPT hats.




Here's Michele lining up for breakfast before the community meeting.




Here we are taking a break from the meeting with Ana Patti, another accompanier with Peace Briagades International. (And no, that's not beer we're drinking, we're at work.)

Pictures of us doing accompaniment

Here are some pictures of us doing accompaniment work, one of the biggest things we spend our time on here in Colombia.



Here's Michele with our teammate Pierre and our canoe driver, getting ready to leave in the team's canoe for a few days visiting river communities.





Here's a beautiful sunset on the river.





In addition to travelling by canoe, we also travel by bus, by truck, by riverboat, on foot, and by mule. Here's a picture Michele took on a recent trip. See if you can guess what type of transport she was using (hint: look for the ears).

Merry Christmas From Nils and Michele

Howdy!

I (Nils) said I wasn't going to do a blog, because I didn't want the responsibility of updating it regularly. Michele and I have been sending out an e-mail message about once a month, and that seems to be working pretty well. However, as I've started to think about photos we want to share, I've realized that this might be a better way to share them then attaching them to an e-mail message.

So, I can't promise you that we'll update this blog regularly, but at least you'll get to see some pictures of our life here.

Michele has had two Christmas dinners in the last few days. On the 24th, she and our teammate Erin were visiting families in a river community, in one of the areas we accompany. A family from the community invited Michele and Erin to stop and have Christmas dinner with them. Here's a picture of Erin sitting down to dinner with the family.
Here's the Christmas dinner Michele and I had togther here at our house in Barrancabermeja with our teammate Pierre and his family. Our dinner was on the 25th, although around here most people's celebration is the evening of the 24th.

Peace on Earth!