Hola! (That's about the extent of my Spanish.)
All kinds of interesting insights into MRTs from Chadd's introduction to us below. I think I'll reframe from my comments for now and ask you - what do you see in what he has written that seems important as we think about how MRTs function?
John
Intro to Guadalajara MRT
My name is Chadd Schroeder. My wife Nancy and our three daughters, Morgan, Natali and Ceci have lived in Central Mexico and have understood ourselves as missionaries to the people here since 1991. For the last 12+ years, we’ve lived in Guadalajara—a large Mexican city of about 7 million people.
Over the years, we have always worked with a team of other U.S. missionaries and Mexican leaders. But especially for the past 5 years we have understood ourselves more as an MRT instead of a traditional missionary team. Instead of all working on one church or one project, we have transitioned to see ourselves as a grouping of trans-local workers with a common vision to see healthy incarnations of Christ throughout our region even as each of us is involved in different local ministries or projects and with different communities of Christ. For the past few years, we have typically met together every two weeks to connect with one another and to listen to God together. The relationship and practice has been very helpful.
Our MRT for now is made up of four families: Cory and Toni Burns, Tim and Kim Rush, Gerardo and Carola Garcia, and my family. The ladies are encouraged to connect with us fellows when possible—but family duties sometimes make this difficult. It seems that we are in a strange and new time for us. The Rush family is on furlough in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They hope to move back to GDL in summer 2010. The Burns family is planning to go on a one year furlough this summer—and then return to GDL in 2011 for a new mission assignment. The Garcia family is Mexican. They are very involved in local and trans-local ministry in Guadalajara and envision themselves likely in GDL for many years to come. Gerardo is limited in his understanding of English—but a gifted and proven Mexican leader. Finally, my family is planning to transition to Texas in July 2010. However, after so many years of life and ministry here in Mexico, we are stretching ourselves to envision an ongoing ministry of some kind to Mexico—perhaps as “Non-Resident Missionaries”—even as we also feel God’s call to flesh out Jesus with others in Texas.
I think this MRT experiment with you is timely. Because of so many transitions with missionary families, we had stopped our intentional practice of gathering as an MRT (though we remained connected through phone calls, CO2 relationships, etc.). But through this experiment with you all, God seems to be urging us to begin anew the practice—perhaps as a way to remain intentionally connected and strategically praying for our region even as we move into a new chapter of our lives as apostolic workers. Because of our geographical challenges now and in the near future, we have decided to meet every 2 weeks for our gathering on Skype. For the moment we are using the name Equipos de Misioneros Translocales (EMT) to articulate the idea in Spanish. We translated Kent’s document in Spanish using that name.
I wonder what God will teach us and do among us in the next few months.
