New Spanish Curriculum Making Impact in Latin America

OAXACA, MEXICO (February 10, 2003) - The open-air classroom is humming with the chatter of children's voices as they work on their craft projects. Games have been played, the story of Noah and the Ark has been told, a Bible verse has been memorized and prayers have been said.

It sounds very much like any typical Sunday school class in a North American Covenant church. The difference is that these kids are speaking Spanish and the open-air classroom is situated in a mountain village in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. It is the culmination of an incredible 12-year project that reflects more teamwork than a Super Bowl championship club, thanks in large measure to the efforts of one young, energetic and extremely committed woman.

For the past two years, Damaris Adame has been traveling the length and breadth of Latin America training Sunday school teachers, working as a short-term missionary under the auspices of CIPE, the Confraternity of Hispanic Covenant Churches that represents both North and South America. "She knows more about the Covenant in Latin America than any other living person," says Nancy Reed, coordinator for Hispanic church relations for the Evangelical Covenant Church.

Adame's travels and ministry have generated enough engaging statistics to delight any baseball fan, covering Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, El Salvador, her native Mexico and the United States. In most cases, she has visited each country twice - some three times. She has stayed in more than 75 locations, training nearly 1,000 teachers - that figure was expected to have doubled by the end of her term - and has hauled and sold hundreds of Sunday school books. "This has definitely been a good fit for me," said Adame, who received her teacher training at North Park University, giving up a position at a prestigious Spanish immersion school in Chicago to respond to the Lord's call in her life.

"Through rain and rigors, friends and fleas, home and hunger, she has diligently gone forth in this calling to support Christian education in Latin America," Reed observed. For the better part of last year, Covenant short-term missionary Katie O'Connor traveled with Damaris to aid the task of reaching Spanish-speaking children with God's love.

The Spanish language Sunday school curriculum project began when Adame was still in junior high school in Central Mexico. "In a Christian education class in Medellin, Colombia, in 1988, I asked the question, 'What are your greatest needs in terms of Christian education?'" said Covenant missionary Margie Swenson, who directed the project for more than ten years. That discussion identified two major needs - trained personnel and curriculum. "Little did I know that that discussion would result in a 5,000-page curriculum that today is being used in almost every Spanish-speaking country in the world, across denominational lines, in secular as well as church settings," Swenson adds.

After outlining lessons and writing during her home assignment in 1991, she connected with Hillcrest Covenant Church in Prairie Village, Kansas, through Evelyn M.R. Johnson, who at that time served as executive director of the Department of Christian Education and Discipleship. Pastor Stan Olsen and members of the church supported the effort, hosting (in 1992 and 1996) two-week writing workshops, bringing together educators from across Latin America to help shape the curriculum. "We had almost 50 Hillcrest members involved in a myriad of ways," Olsen recalled. "We were deeply blessed as a congregation, and commitment to missions was deepened greatly through this cross-cultural experience.

"At those workshops, we discovered Pia Restrepo's gifts of writing, administration and editing," Swenson added. Now a Covenant missionary in Spain, Restrepo was then a student at North Park Theological Seminary and became a key player in the overall project, helping Swenson edit the lessons for grammar and becoming the "voice" for the curriculum in Hispanic churches in the United States and Canada. Following a number of years of field-testing and revision, the final curriculum was first presented in May 2000 during the CIPE triennial conference at Alpine Covenant Camp in California. It was later dedicated during the Covenant Annual Meeting in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Pastor Luciano Silva of the Covenant church in Tome, Chile, is one of thousands now benefiting from the curriculum. "They have been very much welcomed by the churches where we have shared them, including our own congregation where we have used them in a mission work with the children of fishermen of a small cove," he said. An educator himself, Silva is working to have the curriculum approved under the New Educational Reform for use in Chile's public schools. "What is great about the material is that it is easy to use and always comes accompanied by a didactic aid or craft, which is a great help and time-saver in working with children," he added. The material is divided into four age groups: ages 3-5, 6-8, 9-11 and 12-14. Each age group has a three-year cycle that never repeats itself, providing fresh teaching material for the full 12-year span.

Young people were taught the curriculum through Christian education classes at both of the Hispanic Covenant Bible College sessions in the summer of 2001 in Ecuador, as well as this past summer's sessions in Mexico. Adame has also taught in the Covenant Seminary in Quito, Ecuador, and arrangements have been made with all of the Covenant seminaries in Latin America to grant credit for teachers completing the training. She returned last month to train children's workers and church leaders during a two-week conference. Support comes from receiving churches and "home" churches in North America - Community Covenant in Shawnee, Grace Covenant in Chicago and Hillcrest.

Adame comes from a family of Christian educators. "Her mother is the director of the David Livingston School in Cuautla, Morelos (Mexico), a small, flourishing Christian school, whose name gives you an idea of where her parents are coming from," Reed said. Her father is pastor of the developing Covenant church in nearby Oaxtepec.

"God has answered all my prayers and more," Adame says of her call and ministry. During college, she volunteered as a translator with MERGE Ministries at the border between McAllen, Texas, and Reynosa, Mexico. She remembers one night during her second year of college having a sense of call to make a more lasting impact on lives than one-week mission trips. It was during the two years of teaching in a Spanish immersion school in Chicago that she developed a vision for the "ideal job" of training others. Little did she know what God had in store for her. "I have experienced things I never would have imagined and I ended up going everywhere."

Adame returned to North Park Theological Seminary this month to pursue an M.Div degree with a focus on Christian education. "I feel responsible for what I have seen and I want to keep helping with the needs of children," she says, expressing her desire to see a growing sense of teamwork involving nationals from each country and missionaries as they work together to disciple children and youth across Latin America.

(Editor's note: Dennis Carlson is a Covenant missionary to Mexico who also spent time in Congo.)

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