Repairing Lives in the Slums

The trailer for the documentary film Reparando shows quick-shot images of leaflets falling from the sky, crowds of people fleeing the police, tattoos on the back of a gang member in Guatemala City, a man playing with his family, and the "Doll Lady" picking the arm of a baby doll from the garbage in a dump.

Filmed with the support of Joel and Marilyn Van Dyke, Christian Reformed World Missions missionaries stationed in Guatemala City, Scott and Amelia Moore spent more than two years gathering footage and doing interviews for the documentary, which premiers in cities across the United States in October.

Christian Reformed World Missions and the Center for Transforming Mission have a partnership called "La Estrategía de Transformación" (EdT, "Strategy of Tranformation," in English), which is directed by Joel Van Dyke and based out of Guatemala City. The EdT is a grassroots training initiative up and running in six countries throughout Central America and the Caribbean that provides training and demonstration projects and seeks to sustain national leaders serving the “least, last, and lost” of their respective cities and nations.

Weaving through the stories in Reparando are people and ministries who are a core part of the EdT network in Guatemala City that have been faithfully serving under the radar for many years. Reparando seeks to lift some of these stories up and place them before the world as examples of God’s scandalous and magnificent grace leading to amazing transformation in very hard places.

A definition of grace espoused by the EdT is that "grace, like water, always flows downhill and pools up in the lowest places." The film is an invitation to the viewing audience to "take a swim" in the deep reservoirs of God's grace found in some very surprising places and people.

"These ministries are often 'unknown' by the church and others around the world but are making lasting, eternal differences in the lives of the people of Guatemala," says Scott Moore.

The film was produced and directed by the Tennessee-based Athentikos (meaning "authentic" in Greek), whose founders, Scott and Amelia Moore, have adopted two children from Guatemala. During their trips to Guatemala in the process of adopting their boys, they were exposed to Guatemala City and the network ministries of the EdT through their relationship with the Van Dykes.

As a result of vision captured during those visits, Athentikos was born and has become a team of media professionals and volunteers who produce inspirational stories for viewers including individuals and organizations responding to needs (www.athentikos.com).

Athentikos also wants to inspire viewers to respond by giving financially or by joining the work already begun through participation in Vision Trips to Guatemala to interact with the places and people in the film in a very up close and personal way.

In information about the documentary, the filmmakers write that "on the morning of June 18, 1954, the US CIA dropped leaflets in Guatemala City demanding the resignation of the president. Guatemala was ravaged by Civil War for the next 36 years." But, out of this time of war, "hope is rising. In the midst of incredible odds, victims have been transformed into champions who willfully embrace the pain oftheir past to help repair the next generation."

Reparando follows the lives and ministries of two members of the Strategy of Transformation network and the birth of a unified vision of collaboration together as they put the "incarnational" theology they have been exploring together in the EdT to the test.

The working metaphor for the film is framed around the microenterprise work of a woman who works in the garbage dump and who is affectionately known as the "doll lady." She finds and/or buys discarded parts of destroyed and mutilated dolls from the landfill and then carefully and meticulously washes, restores, redeems, and repairs them (hence the name Reparando), framing the Gospel metaphor for the film.

"This metaphor of scandalous but beautiful grace is woven in, out, and through the stories of two absolutely amazing leaders from our network whose lives and ministries during the course of the film project have formed into a strategic alliance of work in the largest slum in Central America," says Van Dyke.

Fellow CRWM employees are helping to get out the word on the film. In a letter sent to many, CRWM’s Latin America regional director, Joel Huyser, said: "Many of you know about the exciting work that Joel and Marilyn Van Dyke of Christian Reformed World Missions have been doing in Guatemala coming alongside grassroots leaders who are pouring out their lives serving what others have wrongfully dubbed the unredeemable ‘least, last, and lost.’ The ministry was featured in an article written by Joel and Kris Rocke in Christianity Today this past April as part of a special series in Global Transformation leading up to the upcoming Lausanne Conference in World Evangelism in South Africa this coming October," says Joel Huyser.

Van Dyke and Rocke will author a forthcoming book with Square Inch Press (Faith Alive Christian Publications) entitled The Geography of Grace: Street Psalms and the Poetry of God in Hard Places.

Reparando will be shown at Celebration Cinema Rivertown in Grandville on October 13 at 7 p.m. and at Celebration Cinema North on October 14 at 7 p.m. It will be premiering in Nashville on October 21 and screened at the Kansas City Film Festival on October 6. This past August, it was selected and screened at the Grand Rapids Film Festival. It also will be previewed this fall in San Diego,Indianapolis, Philadelphia, and Hot Springs, Ark., among many other sites.

"My sincere hope and dream is that these two theaters events in Grand Rapids will be full . . . I am so excited about this story and the potential it holds to bring transformation at so many levels," says Husyer.

See information about the film at www.reparandomovie.com, Scott Moore, the filmmaker, says that the documentary explores such issues as: Why do people join gangs? Why do children live on the street? What caused the rampant poverty? What caused the enormous slums? When did all of this begin? What should we in the United States know about our involvement in Guatemala that we need to take to heart?

For more information about tickets for the Grand Rapids showing at 7 p.m. at Rivertown in Grand Rapids, Mich., on 10/13/10, visit: Rivertown.

For information about tickets for the showing at 7 p.m. at Celebration Cinema North, Grand Rapids, Mich., on 10/14/10, visit: Celebration.