Let me welcome everyone we have folks from Honduras the mission and Honduras as well as folks from the United States, many from the North Texas conference, which is where I reside, but folks from other conferences and parts of the United States as well so welcome to all of you. As we move along there may be an opportunity for us to share a bit more about where we come from, and our own stories, but I do want to use our time well and be sure that we focus on the mission in Honduras today. And we have a couple of hours set aside for this summit. And before I get into the agenda and then introduce the Bishop of their own Texas conference but also of the mission in Honduras let me just tell you who I am. So my name is Andy Lewis I'm a clergy person here in North Texas, and I serve here as the director of missions, which has brought me to become acquainted with the mission in Honduras. And I've been working alongside the leaders of mission and Honduras for a couple of years now. I love my work alongside them and my visits to the country and efforts to support their excellent ministry. So again, my name is Andy.  The mission will begin with a time of opening devotion. Then we'll hear from leaders from Honduras to share with us about the state of the mission. And after they share with us there'll be time for q amp a. So as you listen, listen, please make note of any questions you have. Write them in the chat if you like I'll monitor that and lift them up that way but with the size group we have here I think we can manage unmuting ourselves and just asking our questions. Whatever you're comfortable with there is fine. Depending on the time we may take a quick break. And then, when we resume will hear from folks in Honduras and some of our admission together partners will talk about their experiences in partnership and the positive impact that those partnerships have had. Hopefully that'll be instructive for all of us who are engaging in these kinds of partnership relationships. And again, there'll be time for q amp a. So note your questions. And at the very end, we'll cover some odds and ends related to partnership just my effort to support your, your work in that regard. And that's news and to be just some logistical details to kind of share. So, we aim to be done no later than four. We'll see, we'll see how this goes. So, again, welcome. So, this should be key. Would you begin with a devotional for us. So, I think we would much rather hear from from our partners in Honduras, the clergy in the land in Honduras, the administration staff, the DS and listening to me so I'm going to be very brief about this. And I sort of was considering about what I would, what I would share with you and then I thought, you know, I think I want to share with you one of my favorite passages from the gospel since from the gospel of St. And it happens after the temptation of Jesus and it when it's when Jesus returns to his hometown. And if there's a if there's a passage that probably captures, I think, well, what the purpose of the ministry of Jesus is it may be this one, in which he refers of course to the prophet Isaiah. And Jesus filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, I'm reading from the fourth chapter of the gospel of St. Luke. And Jesus filled with the power of the spirit returned to Galilee, and the report about him began to spread through all the surrounding country began to teach and their synagogues. He was praised by everyone. He went to Nazareth where he had been brought up. He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day as was his custom and he stood up to read and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him and he unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written. The spirit of the Lord is upon me. And because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind and to let the oppressed go free to proclaim the year the Lord's favor. Then Jesus rolled up the scroll he gave it back to the attendant and he sat down. And then all the eyes of all in the synagogue are fixed on him. And then he began to say today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. And I think that when I sort of looking at who is before me on the screen and others who've been involved, not only in the Honduras mission but in mission in different ways, even in the local communities around the world that each of you probably no doubt has a purpose the Lord shared with us a few moments ago and we were sort of doing a little bantering around getting acquainted that they had done 63 in my right box 63 mission trips and other countries. I mean, so it tells you that I would think that the Schultz's have a purpose in their lives. But I would say that about each one of us who are gathered here on this call and we live it out in a different way. And I think about if Jesus for instance were to think about a mission statement of his own, he really made it in this, in this presentation or this reading from the prophet Isaiah in his hometown. And by the way, when you continue to read this, this did not go over well with the hometown folk. I want you to know that and we do know that I mean they were trying to throw him off of the cliff. Sometimes that happens when you begin to already begin to challenge or confront the powers that be the powers the world with the power of the spirit. So we have really what Jesus's mission is. And I can't think of a better mission for any one of us than to probably try to not to think that we're the Messiah I want to be clear about that, not to believe that we're the anointed one. But certainly what he felt called to do is something he passed on to his disciples has been passed on through the tradition of the Christian community for over 2000 years. What is it to knowing to preach the gospel bring good news to the poor, healing visit people in prison. And so I'm always amazed about it when I when I go to Honduras is not is how it is that folks that clergy and laity pastors and laity can be so resilient in a very challenging world. It's not that they are a challenge for for being bears the good news. It's just difficult. And over these last several months, it's been very difficult. None of us have been able to go to Honduras, and people can't leave Honduras. And in fact, we've had to show we say postpone, which is language we use in the church right now rather than cancel the annual meeting in January. And that's a challenge. But every time I go to Honduras and I'm visiting with clergy like Roberto and or lean missionaries like your your your Lynn. I'm just amazed Milton Thomas, I'm amazed at the kind of ministry that takes place in Honduras among people and always every visit I make whether it's to a congregation which happens in some sometimes it's the annual meeting I'm thinking this is a place of joy. And I think it's because people are realizing their purpose, living out their purpose in very creative and imaginative ways we're going to hear about that reason. We live at a time right now in the world, we all have a similar problems just related to the pandemic to health, keeping people say to doing no harm. And this becomes a way for us to remember that there's so much more that probably connects us than we can ever imagine, even across the boundaries of country or language, and or the way in which we even talk about our God and Christ. In this time in which everything is turned upside down. This turning of upside down that's going on in the culture may be exactly what Jesus and his early ministry. And certainly those earlier followers and the people who became the church did, they turned the world upside down as it's recorded in the acts of the apostles. So you and I, being a part of the church's mission so many different ways where the places where we live or even in a distant place. And Honduras, we're seeing the world getting turned upside down. And that can be for the good, and for good will. So I'll tell you that I also want to focus on something else and that's the word today. Think about what we're going to do in our future instead of what we're going to do today. And really every time you and I are significantly living into this mission this purpose of the Christ. We're really saying that today, even through our own work through our own responsibilities through our own faithfulness through our own witness through our acts of healing and whatever forms they take place today. This is really real the spirit of the Christ has come now. So I just want to briefly say those few words to you and thank you again for your interest in our mission to Honduras and to our partners.   Can we have a brief prayer together this afternoon as we start? Holy God, we're grateful for the mission that we share. And the mission is not just a mission. It is really the work of the Holy Spirit in which we all seek to witness to who you are in our lives and how it is that a vital relationship with you is able to really bring about wholeness in ways that we could never imagine. I, as so many of us are always delighted to be in each other's presence and to learn from each other and to celebrate that which you do among brothers and sisters. So for our time together and those who've gathered, I give you thanks for it's the name of the Christ and this spirit that I pray. Thank you. All right, so at this time I want to give the floor to our friends in Honduras, who are going to share with us about the state of the mission and I believe Milton Jovarez who is the unvim coordinator in Honduras has agreed to translate as needed for us. So Milton, is that still a good deal for you? Very good. Okay, so again, Pastor Roberto, Thomas, Jorlin, Milton, share with us about the state of the mission. Muy buenas tardes. Soy José Roberto Peña, superintendente de la misión y me dirijo a ustedes agradeciendo a Dios la oportunidad que nos brinda de compartir algunos datos sobre la misión y nuestro trabajar juntos desde sus orígenes, la obra metodista unida en Honduras ha sido una experiencia de compañerismo en misión. El compañerismo con nuestros hermanos metodistas unidos de Norteamérica se ha mantenido desde el inicio hasta el presente y ha contribuido en una forma muy significativa al desarrollo histórico de la misión. Muchas son las iglesias de Norteamérica que han estado en algún tipo de relación con la misión en Honduras, algunas por periodos cortos pero otras por periodos más extensos. Al presente son varias las iglesias que han mantenido esa relación de compañerismo por muchos años. Roberto, sí, para un segundo, I believe, yes, I believe your following, Milton is translating by writing in the chat, the translation if you want to look into the chat. Gracias, Roberto. Continuo, verdad, no inicio. No, continúa. Gracias, Edgar. Al presente son varias las iglesias que han mantenido esa relación de compañerismo por muchos años que ha contribuido a una hermandad más estrecha entre Norteamérica y Honduras entre congregaciones de Norteamérica y congregaciones hondureñas. Desde el inicio hemos estado juntos en misión, pero las relaciones pudiéramos decir que se han ido opinando y se han ido formalizando. El programa de juntos en misión ha sido vital en esto, dándole claridad al tipo de relación que resulta más saludable y aportando un carácter más comprometedor para ambas partes. Esto ha permitido el desarrollo de relaciones más estrechas y sólidas que contribuye al crecimiento espiritual de los involucrados a la transformación mutua y al empoderamiento. El programa tiene impacto en el pastorado, así como en las congregaciones y aún en la comunidad en la cual pastor y congregación están sirviendo. El programa en sí puede ayudar al sostenimiento de nuestros pastores a programas propios de la misión y a los programas de las congregaciones locales están en impacto. Pero debo señalar que también hay casos en los cuales la relación entre iglesias está teniendo un impacto muy notable en el desarrollo comunitario. Reconocemos y agradecemos el liderato del reverendo Patrick Fryden y les recordamos en esta hora el hermano Greg Benzini y al reverendo Andy Lewis como actual coordinador del programa para Honduras. Junto a Logisco Michael Mati, ellos han traído una nueva eservesencia para el programa de juntos en misión en Honduras. La misión en Honduras ha ido extendiéndose y madurando. Al presente contamos con 22 congregaciones ubicadas en diferentes contextos. Tenemos congregaciones en las ciudades principales, la ciudad capital de Tegucigalpa, así como en San Pedro Sula, que es la capital industrial de la República, pero tenemos también congregaciones en áreas rurales de difícil acceso. Hay presencia metodista unida en seis de los 18 departamentos. El departamento con más iglesia es el departamento del paraíso, con ocho congregaciones, siete de las cuales están en el área de Daniel. No todas las congregaciones de la misión tienen compañerismo con alguna congregación de los Estados Unidos. La mayor parte de los pastores en la actualidad son hondureños, el 86 por ciento. Mucho de ellos son producto de la misma misión. Han ido avanzando en su preparación teológica, su experiencia y algunos están acercándose a la posibilidad de una cercana ordenación. Lo cual es esencial para que como misión demos el próximo paso de convertirnos en una conferencia anual provisional. Damos la oportunidad al próximo compañero de Honduras, que va a compartir con nosotros. Gracias, Reverend Begna. Many of us are are still reading in the chat, I think getting completely caught up with all of your comments. Give everyone a moment to finish reading in English, your comments. Thank you, Milton, thank you for your translation. I believe are there others from the mission who are going to share from from your points of view. Tomas no. Tomas el siguiente. Good afternoon everyone. Yes. And I joined with Bishop and their superintendent and saying welcome once again. Milton, can you please help me with the PowerPoint presentation. Just a minute. I guess COVID has affected our technology today right now. It's extra slow, but it's loading. COVID's the blame. Blame it on COVID. It has a front and a back wide enough that it can take all the blame. So you'll just blame it on COVID. All right, we'll make this as quick and pain less as possible. It's coming. Are you able to see my screen? Yeah. Okay. Started screen sharing. Thank you. I begin by introducing the staff. First, two suspects on here. I'm sure you've seen these faces already. So I don't think there's need for any introduction. But thirdly, we have Kayla Martinez, who is our treasury assistant and accountant. And on the last on that row, we have Edwin Stanley, who's the person that coordinates construction. So these are some of the faces that you'll see as you visit us here at the mission. And then we have Joanna Madore, who is our administrative assistant and a member of one of our congregations here in the city alpha. And then we have the housekeeper Isabel Diaz. And as I mentioned her, I covered your prayers because today, she, well, she did her COVID test and it's negative, but she's a bit tired. She's resting today. And we're hoping for, well, a good rest for her and she's back in with us. Then last and most important of all, we have the people that prepare the meals and Helika Diaz and Cindy pageant. And Helika is also a member of our congregation that meets right here at the mission. So these are the people that you'll meet as you visit us in the near future. All right, the United Methodist Mission in Honduras, as you know, Roman Pena has said before, is a creature of GB jam. And we expect to receive a status at next UMC general conference somewhere between 2024 and 2025. For this, we are moving towards credentialing of pastors. This is leading, you know, pastors into ordination. And we, as we become a provisional conference, we could become a United Methodist Church as well as not necessarily a UMC church. And for all of this to happen, definitely we're, we've been working and continue to work hard towards our sustainability. Next slide. Okay. So part of our sustainability comes with common themes. They partner with us to build a brighter future, you know, in come working in congregation and in partnership through the IMT program and other ways. Right now the mission comprises of 22 congregations. We have two clinics and a school. Meaning a bit of what we're in Kenya has said before, we work mostly in rural areas, but at the same time, we're trying to be intentional on developing work in metropolitan areas. There is a new congregation that started in Topoa, which we will hear more about when Pastor Orling speaks to us. And I thank you. Thank you, Thomas. So it's, who will share next is that your land. Thank you. Hello, everyone. My name is Jordan Jimenez. I'm the director of the program. I started in February 2020 this year. And we started the pandemic in March this year. So I don't know Honduras and I don't even know Tegucigalpa much. I've been in quarantine. The goal of the program is basically to be able to consolidate a structural program for the congregational development of the local church. This is something that implies the accompaniment of the pastors and leaders of the like in the training and development of basic knowledge for the implementation of the programs in their churches. And within that, we primarily have the robustness of the Dominican school and, above all, programs in the educational line. It is important to mention that 60% of the congregations of the members of the congregations are made up of children and young people. That's why we believe it's important to be robust in this type of program. With the coming of the pandemic, we had to change the plan and implement a contingency plan to be able to work virtually. We basically attended two great needs. One of them was how we could accompany the pastors during the pandemic and how we could continue with the pastoral work. And another need was how we could respond to the needs of the community where we have certain congregations. In this sense, we started the virtual work like the rest of the churches in the world from the pandemic. And trying to use the resources available that we have in communication. And we basically started with the use of Zoom as a platform. If I want to mention that this was a challenge, it's not easy, logically, because of the conditions that we have in Honduras. We have difficulties in connection, we have very limited technology. We have little knowledge of the use of this type of resources, there are economic difficulties. And logically, there is also a lot of resistance and fear with the use of this type of technology. But we have been able to complete, since May, the working table, which is the direction of the program. And since May we have weekly meetings with all the pastors, with the pastoral body, to accompany them in the different issues that may arise. And we remember that the churches, the temples remain closed and a little guide them in the pastoral work that we can do virtually. This is accompanied by some other activities such as biblical studies, hidden services online, and training of missionaries from the regional office. Within what we have been reinforcing is pastoral care. Basically, it depends a lot on the calls and visits, logically with the measures of biosecurity. Why calls? Because communities do not have access to other more sophisticated means. People do not have a smartphone, they do not have internet. So it has been the phone call to the media that has been able to take care of people. And that is a bit like you can see what we have been doing in these times this year, which has been a difficult year. On the other hand, the direction of the program has been working on the creation of database with our missionary Amanda, who is an expert in this area, because we have been taking advantage of it and we are creating a very important database for processing, saving data, processing data for the future decision making. We believe that this is a very important area. And within the external goals that I mentioned, supporting our churches, especially with the support of food, we know that the economy in all countries has been impacted, but it lasts much longer, because the economy of the majority of families is an economy of the day-to-day. And if it was seriously affected, families were completely unemployed without any kind of income. And logically, this affects the acquisition of food. So for us, it was really a pleasure and a blessing to be able to take food to communities. And here a little so that we can illustrate the experience that we had of distribution of food in the different communities. I want to thank all the support that Honduras has been providing, the interest that they have shown, and remember what Ebreu said. Our God is not an unjust God to forget the work of love that we have done. In His name and to those who we serve. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Jorlin. Go. Pastor Edgar, are you, are you planning to share as well? Yes, I think, yeah, I'll go ahead. Whoever's next. Yeah, it's fine. I'll do it. Can I have rights to, yeah, okay, you did, sorry. Document. Okay. 30 seconds disappeared. The, the priorities for global ministries. In, in regards to the, you have a mission in Honduras. Continue to, to be more or less the same. Some of you have seen this before. My colleagues already spoke to. Most, most of them. So I won't stop. Maybe I'll just make very brief comments around them. But the, the goal is to become a provisional conference. That will, will by discipline and require to have at least 10. Elders and being able to sustain a budget. For at least 50%. And we, we are working. They are working the mission is working diligently towards that. The, the North Texas on your conference has been very supportive from, from different angles, certainly, but Bishop and some partner churches and leadership like Andy, but also the, the board on the order ministry accepted to be our corresponding annual conference for the purpose of the provisional team. And they've been very, very supportive and very insightful. They, they appointed a person to bridge and have worked with us in setting the requirements and, and the, the credentialing process, the parameters on training and so on and so forth. We're very excited about the advancement. We, we definitely feel we will have a first class for ordination of local elders and mission in 2021. The one, one highlight of the, of the priorities, I will say, and of course, priority number five is the approval of provisional right now is actually approval of local elders admission. So I will, I will highlight that. Another, another thing that I wanted to share with you is closes up and the, the collaboration that the regional office for dec burden that the missionaries assigned into the, the regional office have, have also offered we have one missionary original missionary working with children at risk and we have another missionary working with low migration and we have another missionary working them have been very working very closely with the mission, mostly through a Jorlin's office. So they've been, I'm very grateful with my colleagues in the last years, last year, last two years, their participation has been very instrumental. And the final highlight is that precisely your Len did not mention it, but let me share that part. The last highlight is that because of programming needs, the programming office has been working by clusters, by regions. And as Roberto mentioned, as Ren Peña mentioned, there are 22 congregations in six of the 18 states or departments. And here you have the geography of the country. And so we have presence in six, right? So the one highlight is we are working with Bishop in regionalizing the work, formalizing the regions, or discretizing, if I may, formalizing the regions in those three regions, north, central, and east. As Roberto mentioned, most of the congregations are located in El Paraíso. But we're hoping that by 2021 we will have formalized these regions and work regionally, programmatically, and many other ways. So help us God with that new system. And finally, I would like to take the opportunity, the privilege, given that Roberto is also a global missionary, Roberto will be retiring this year after 20 years of service. He's been working with the mission for more than 20 years, for sure, because he came first as a volunteer of the Methodist Church in Puerto Rico. And then 20 years as a global ministry of missionaries, he will, at the end of the month of January, will be retiring and remaining in the country. So we will continue having the blessing of his comradeship and brotherhood and the blessing of his hermanda blessings. Thank you. Amen. Thank you, Edgar. On behalf of everyone, Roberto, thank you for your ministry. Are there others from Honduras? Milton, were you hoping to share as well? I think we've heard from everyone from Honduras, except for you. Yes. Let me share my screen. Hello, everyone. Sorry, I haven't read everyone by name, but I've seen some familiar faces. I just wanted to say hello to you all. So this is my presentation so you can have information about what we're doing in terms of teams and, of course, something to mention. It's that everything or mostly everything has changed since March, of course. So we're still in the process of changes, constant changes. We still don't have everything figured out in terms of teams, because we work with a lot of agencies such as governmental and churches and the superintendent office, the mission office. And so we have to have a lot of compatibility in all of the parties involved. And so welcome to the VIM area or park. This is the team that it's almost like working with us, not full time, of course, mostly when we have teams. And probably I know that some of you have come here with teams and some of you have not yet. So but when you come, these are the phases that you'll probably see when you arrive. These aren't like the first phases you'll see. And we have, of course, myself and then we have Carla and Jorge and Maritza that they are always part of the staff. It's translating and leading teams and when we have multiple teams in country, then we go separate ways and stuff. And these are the medical staff that work along with me and the teams, because of course, we do a lot of medical brigades around the country. So we have to work with him by hand with the governmental staff and also with private or independent, higher doctors, professionals that we have to work with so we're able to have a medical team. This is a little bit of where we go and where do we serve. And as you can see, we serve anywhere within the Honduras territory. We're not limited. If we're invited for an opportunity to engage and serve in mission, then we go. And this is an interesting pictures because we were having multiple teams during that time. So it was really unique and very special to see one team putting together the things for the team that was coming after them. So it was a very nice dynamic to see. And I thought it was nice to share it with you. Who can serve and how do we serve? We welcome volunteers of any background that have a heart to serve. And you can see a picture there in that was in Subirana with one of the passers that leads the teams that go there in Subirana. And how do we serve? We serve in partnership. We involve and work with the local community as much as we can as a way to show them that we are there to walk with them and encourage them that they're also team members and who can join and do good for their own community. Unfortunately, in this picture, the patient that it's there had a nice moment and a nice experience that I thought it was good to share with you. The ways we do ministry through it's it's these are some we're not limited just to those of course we as we listen the kind of ministry that people want to do then we try to match according to the needs of the communities. And that's why we say in constant communication with passers and their communities and other organizations that we work with and in regards of teams. So you can see these are the type of work that we do medical and in other type of work. These are pictures that you can see the different teams into different projects and activities we have in around the country. Some of them are in Subirana and others in Zihuatepeque, in Fotelerios, in Tegucigalpa, in Ciudad Espanja. It's it's a lot of locations to name them all, but just so you can have an idea. These are also another experiences that we have with groups that will be my presentation. So thank you very much for your attention and hope to see you guys sometime soon when the quarantine is suspended and where we're all able to travel and work together. Melton, thank you. I believe that wraps up the presentations from leaders in Honduras. And I want to mention real quickly, I've received a request in the chat for any and all of the PowerPoints that you all put together and shared. If there's a way for you to send those to me, I would be happy to distribute them to everybody who's on the call today and those who were interested but unable to join us on the call today. So Melton, you and I can talk more about that later, but hopefully we can work toward gathering those PowerPoints. Right. So before we take maybe just a five minute stretch break, I do want to create some space for your questions. So as you listened to the mission superintendent to Thomas and Edgar and Milton and Jordan, did that raise any questions for you? Anything you'd like to hear more about? Holly Bando, I'm interested in hearing a little bit more about, I know we're going through a process of kind of reopening and engaging in more activities in person, trying to put safety things in place. And I just wondered how all of that process may be working with the Honduran churches as well. Yeah, great question. I know that that Jordan has been working on that. I mean, they developed a resource for the congregations and perhaps she can speak to that and Thomas Jordan. La pregunta perdón la pregunta es este cómo se está viéndolo de la apertura de las iglesias y todas esas cosas y las actividades que se están teniendo en la situación. Okay, Milton, vas a traducir en el chat. Sí. Okay. Sí, sí. Desde mayo trabajamos en una guía para las iglesias, una guía para la reapertura con normas básicas para una reapertura segura de acuerdo a las condiciones que el país vaya presentando. Y es algo que hemos estado trabajando con cada pastor. Y hemos tratado de acompañarlos y ofrecerles todas las herramientas que puedan que tengamos a mano para que ellos puedan hacer este plan para tener una reapertura segura y ordenada que pueda que no represente un peligro para las personas con la apertura de los templos. Entonces, en este momento los pastores que en sus comunidades tienen mejores condiciones de contagio o a diminuir el contagio perdón, están presentando sus planes, los estamos revisando, los estamos retroalimentando y siendo presentados a superintendencia. Hey, Andy before the break, I think Thomas might be answered. Thomas, you there? So is, okay, is COVID-19 spreading still or is it has, has the rate of increase slowed slowed down or what. It's still spreading. The rate of increase in some areas is becoming a bit less, but it's combination wide it's still spreading. Which areas is it less in. Well, like here in Tegucigalpa it has, it has kind of. I don't want to use the word normalize but it's not spreading as fast as it was spreading. Okay, but you have places like in the Bay Islands where it's spreading like wildfire. A lot of tourists there. Well, beyond the tourists the locals. Okay, it's just spreading you know it's amazing it's like every day it's over 100 cases, like almost every day. And Don, Don Lee and San Pedro. It, like I say again it's still spreading but it's like that kind of normal where we real the country is reopening. You know it's spreading but not as not as rapidly as in other areas it's kind of down to a normal. Okay. That's helpful. Thanks. Do you still have a very strict quarantine in the country like you cannot go out. Actually, the quarantine is it's slackening up because first they were doing remember one digit. It all depended on the end that your ID number the ending digit they were doing one every 15 days. Now they, they've begun to do it to per day so we're. We have access out at least, you know, like twice twice almost twice in a week. And then more and more of the economy is remaining. So, even though the cases are still spreading the countries to a point where, okay, we have to we have to find our way in this and live with the pandemic. Basically, that's the message that that is being sent, you know, we have to live with this. We have to find a new normal and live with it. Thomas, this the system you are describing is different than what we're working with at least in Texas. I want to tell you a little more about how that works, or how that's been working where, based on the digit on your ID, what does that you're allowed to do on those days or what, what are you not allowed to do if it's not your day how does that work. You're based on you can you can do that in person banking. You can do in person banking you can go to the supermarket. You can do basically anything. But one of the institutions that is really strict when it comes to attending you according to the ending digit are the banking is the banking institutions. Some of them would even let you go through the auto, auto, auto teller. If it's not your digit. So this is what is happening, but what what's happened also like the supermarkets they're not a strict anymore. You can show up any day and your temperature is taken and you go through all the biosecurity measures that they have in place. And you can have free access and hours have been extended as well. You're not first of curfew was until 5pm now it's until 8pm. I was, I was looking at the COVID cases and Honduras and they sort of let's gradual slow down like 480 new cases yesterday in the country that were reported. So they've been hired that you see sort of in the graph that the UN puts out, I think it's the United Nations or who you see this sort of gradual decline but it then it goes up and down along the line. Yeah, basically we're learning to live with it. Okay, so for the second half of our time together the focus is going to be specifically on church to church partnerships. And that's been a real focus for the North Texas conference as we've entered into this relationship with the mission in Honduras, but we know that there are folks from other conferences who have been at this for some time. And we want to listen to them and learn from their experience. And I mentioned at the beginning, as they share if you have questions that you want to ask them about about your partnership that either that you're engaged in or at least considering getting started with and note those and to speak to that after their presentation so I think first pastor or lean and Mike Craig are going to talk about their partnership and again Milton will translate as needed I suppose. So in terms of partnership I, I would defer to Orlin and let him go first. Thank you. Well, No extra experience. Yeah, oh my experience. Con con la iglesia de Estados Unidos has sido una gran bendición para la iglesia de la semita y para la comunidad en general y alcanzando hasta la ciudad de Tokoa. Ya que yo no ha permitido trabajar juntos. Unir. Nuestras vidas para poder alcanzar aquellos que lo necesitan. Mike es una persona que verdaderamente está pendiente de nosotros al igual que todo el equipo. Corazones y manos. Es una relación que no solamente cuando ellos vienen a Honduras a tenemos y no que nosotros nuestra comunicación es fluida es semanal muchas veces diaria. Hemos compartido buenas experiencias cuando han estado con nosotros en la semita. Compartimos nuestra cultura en cuanto a comidas. Los involucramos en la cocina para que ellos puedan cocinar también. Hay varios proyectos que hemos desarrollado en conjunto. Y gracias a Dios hasta el momento todo lo planeado ha salido bien. En mejoras al templo de la iglesia. En seguir alimentando a la niñez en la semita con un comedor infantil que se alimentan. 80 130 niños diarios con un almuerzo. A raíz de la pandemia. No está habilitado lo que es el centro de alimentación al igual que el templo está cerrado. Pero nos ayudaron con raciones de alimento que beneficiaron a las personas de la iglesia como también a las personas de la comunidad. Se entregaron más de 300 raciones a las familias en este tiempo. Gracias a estas personas que Dios ha puesto en nuestras vidas. Al igual que el año pasado este año se culminó un centro de inclusión para niños aquí en la ciudad de Tokoha. Ya que no había un centro que atendiera a esta población necesitada. Y se ha trabajado en conjunto con la iglesia de Azul Iván en construir este centro. También se ha ayudado con equipo al hospital de la ciudad de Tokoha al igual que el centro de salud de la semita. También se han hecho aulas, se han construido aulas en el centro de enseñanza en la semita. Y gracias a este equipo que ha estado pendiente en las necesidades que nosotros tenemos en la comunidad y en nuestra ciudad. Ha sido de mucha bendición y son muchas las cosas. En el principio de esta pandemia estuvimos un tiempo unidos. Los hermanos hayan estado unidos juntamente con la iglesia acá en Seivita. Estuvimos en un tiempo de retiro espiritual de ayuno ayunando los unos por los otros. Atiendo la palabra de Dios, mensajes de Dios, un día al igual que nosotros hemos estado pendientes de ellos y ellos de nosotros hemos tenido esa comunicación siempre. Y son muchas, muchas las palabras que puedo decir. El tiempo es limitado y sé que hay muchos planes que tenemos para el futuro. Este año pues no fue posible desarrollarlo que es la construcción del templo en la ciudad de Tokoha debido a la pandemia. Pero es un proyecto que está en nuestra mente y nuestro corazón desarrollarlo. Y con la ayuda de Dios todos juntos podemos, podemos lograrlo. Somos un solo equipo. Tenemos una misma visión y una misma misión. Gracias. Mike. Would you like to add? I'll just add a few things and just, can you hear me okay first? I think my internet may be unstable. Loud and clear. Oh, thanks. If you can hear me smile, Milton. He is my so I will. I would just like to address number one that pastor Orlan has been a huge blessing to the church and and he's a local pastor from the area which has been a huge blessing and we've been in partnership now I think for 11 years that we've been working there but in I am T partnership only probably for the last six or seven years. One thing I think that we learned early was the more we faded back in the partnership, the more God blessed the mission. And as pastor Orlan mentioned, the local church is running a feeding center feeding up to 130 kids a day. We were able to build a special needs school in the town of to go up. We're preparing to build a new church, where he will be a pastor there as well as in. But I think the partnership aspect is important to build on we, we not only partner have learned to partner better with the local church and through trust and relationship, but also with the mission with Thomas and Milton. We've grown that relationship with with pastor Roberto Pena. He's worked with us as well. Also, one thing we don't want to overlook is partnership with the local government has paid huge dividends for us. One way that we can kind of have helped me that presence. For the church is is to get those relationships with the local school and the government and the local hospital, the central day salute, and kind of foster relationships there as well. A few years ago, we adopted a slogan one mission one team. And when we adopted this we all wear the same t shirts and under my scrubs I have one of these t shirts. And the local church members wear that t shirt. And when we run run a clinic, I think we've had up to 25 volunteers, not working menial jobs working side by side with us in every aspect of the medical missions, where that where is appropriate, and just doing a lot but not allowing them to step forward and us to step back. I think has been the key to the blessings that we've received in these growth of the ministries that we're, we've been able to attain there and this is a very small rural community but we're moving into the more urban to go. And I'll stop there. I will say the regional growth is a blessing. Not only will be partnering in Honduras, but we've been able to bring in three to four partner churches in the United States, which we plan to work side by side with as as we move into to coa. So, having them partner the Wisconsin churches partner with to coa, we would stay in Los Abita but yet we overlap and we work together and we share missions together. That's good news, Mike. I don't have really I'll just leave that open for questions or during their discussion time if anybody has any questions but I will say the mission and the partnership is, it's just been a tremendous blessing and, and allowing more than and the church to step forward and lead us changed everything. Let's pause there just for a moment while their experience with partnerships fresh. Are there any questions that you all have for pastor or lean or for Mike. I have a question for or lean or lean. When. It's. Iglesia Nueva. En pieza. Entiende. La Iglesia Nueva. I will. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. More. It is an official parley. para la iglesia en tokoa ahora o es una agro-dramaxence is there a building there es una edificio ahí ahí en tokoa es una iglesia edificio pasó no tal vez debemos aclarar estamos hablando de dos comunidades en tokoa en la aldea la cedita por muchos años hemos tenido templo si ahora el objetivo de la misión es abrir una iglesia en la ciudad para esto gracias a dios ya tenemos por las gestiones del pastor algunos viajes que dimos allá ya tenemos el solar para la construcción de la iglesia en tokoa pero debido a la pandemia la construcción no ha podido empezar en tokoa no hay ninguna estructura la estructura está en la aldea la feita y ha estado por muchos años claro que se ha ido mejorando la gracias I will state that while while there is no building we were able to get the land donated through our partnership working together with the local community in tokoa the land was donated we were able to build together the special needs school on the same property so the church and the special needs school will have a relationship utilizing each building the special needs school will do devotions daily in the church and the church will be able to use the special needs classrooms for Sunday school vacation Bible school those things so another collaboration and partnership thank you Mike or lean gracias well I have one question for both of you over the 11 years that you all have been in partnership how do you how do you stay in communication and maintain the relationship between your church leaders between your churches in between your actual travel and visits to the country what do you find works the best personally I find between our larger missions I'll occasionally travel myself or with a small very small ahead team we call them an ahead team and kind of do some of the prep work I think that's very important that person-to-person contact otherwise we use what's up and chat back and forth frequently very frequently I think I saw a question from Carrie Lynn Lucas she's asking to Mike how you involve laypeople from your church in the relationship oh boy we have large teams and in multiple locations and we not only utilize the translators from the mission but but typically wherever we're working there will be church members walking side by side with the with the team members so our relationships are have been amazing frankly a little church in a little village they they take time off of work they they commit to our missions just as we commit to the missions for the time that when we're traveling and so those relationships are very strong the lay the laity in our church or the team actually also sponsor kids for school through the becas programs so we have built relationships through that as well so there's there's very strong relationships between the church and and we truly we truly are a sister church with last to be to end in our church so Mike can I ask a follow up question to your answer sure I just am curious so are you finding what I'm hearing in your answer is the the lay involvement came primarily through travel was the was the like primary way of getting the interest and then from there the investment has come so you're asking the lay people back home the support back home is is is that correct okay yeah so we've involved the church and on a lot of different levels one is the scholarship another is very project specific marketing plan if you will when we built a wall around the local school we had be a brick in the wall and when we sponsor kids we have I think we have about 125 children sponsored through the becas program and when we go down we take communication back and forth with us so we tie people in as much as we can and keep them very involved and then obviously through our mission reports and church services as well so we've expanded now I said we added three or four new churches but I think we actually cross I would say six or seven churches total supporting us and we're ecumenical by the way we allow other denominations to join us in our work did that answer your question yeah it did I just you know the the thing that I'm noticing with the start of my partnership it's very pastor to pastor and so I've been wanting to get some ideas on how to get my lay people at my church involved so that's helpful thank you sure I see Mike Lisch has put a question in the chat Mike you wanted to speak to your question I think that was actually Jason okay very good Jason right well there you are sorry multitasking over here so Mike as I was listening in I was I got really excited about the impact obviously that you guys have had a hat I had an opportunity to do over the 11 years but we're just getting started and so I'm just I'm thinking about how much this needs to be a relationship and not just one directional and so to create a strong base if you were starting over again what are what are those absolutes what are the things that you would say this needs to happen to be able to get this started right you know that is great I think building that relationship the pastor to pastor relationship and a level of trust I think just getting people on the ground and and relating getting into the community more so than just within the church getting into the homes visiting kind of learning the area and and expanding your mission way beyond the church walls and way beyond the Methodist congregation and making those connections in the local government that was huge and the local school the principal and I became very good friends and unfortunately he just passed away from COVID this year so we have a great relationship in the school we go everywhere we go to the Central Day Salud we go to the hospital and I think just establishing those early relationships is so important but then as soon as you do that I think stepping back a little bit and making sure that while we say coming in low that that you're coming in you know with with the attitude of a servant leadership and and deferring to the locals and the local church I think is so important and establishing that trust with the church in that regards that you're not coming in like we do you know heavy with all our ideas and plans and you know not that we don't do that still but we do it more subtly and gently maybe I hope that's helpful thanks Mike we have another person on the call who I think is sharing some wisdom in the chat in response to Jason your question about a deed you want to you want to share what you wrote in the chat or sure I mean my name's D and I'm in the West Ohio conference so we don't have an official partnership with Honduras yet and we've had some other partnerships and so one of the ways that we've been able to get laity engaged both from our congregations and congregations on the ground is just using actually sometimes simple technology whether it was Skype Zoom or WhatsApp we've had small groups who have done Bible study we've had prayer meetings together and when you're praying you don't it's like you don't have to you don't have to all speak the same language right it's like you there's somebody that would kind of like share that but it's like you know being able to pray together and so we really many of our places particularly in the Volga district in Russia that's how we got started we had youth group to youth group relationships and partnerships that got developed and started that way as well and so we never particularly with the Volga district partnership we never really started with projects and we didn't start with money it was really building that relationship with each other and I mean our congregations and they're in West Ohio they're in rural areas and urban areas who are connected and there's just as a strong just a strong relationship and so there's just been a lot it's been rooted in in relationship and so it's not mattered when the clergy have changed in our congregations because it wasn't it wasn't rooted in the personality of the pastor so it was really was the lady to lady so those were just some things that that we've done for for what it might be worth great thanks D I'm good to see you at first church in Oak Ridge Tennessee said we started up the program with laity in 203 since that point we have sent out 73 mission trips and mission teams into the world and it's been all laity once in a while we can beg one of our pastors to go with us but 80% of the time we don't even have a pastor with us so it has been all laity driven that's great but I want to be sure we get an opportunity to hear from Sherry Hunt as well Sherry thanks for being with us on the call today and Sherry's gonna share a little bit about her and her church's experience with partnership hi so I'm Sherry I am at Morningstar Church we are just outside of St. Louis Missouri and our church has been going to La Haga the La Haga area since 2004 I haven't been here that long but they've had a long partnership going and I'll tell you a little bit about how our partnership has evolved and we don't have the benefit of a strong technological connection ability because where our partners are they don't really have internet access they don't always have electricity so we've had to be a little bit more creative mostly I just email Milton and beg him and say hey can I can I talk to somebody because I can't get in touch with anybody and he works very very hard to get in touch with the pastor of our church pastor Marvin so some things that we've done in the past that didn't work as well that we have shifted on we had tried to do community water systems to help with clean water which was great initially but then discovered that the maintenance and upkeep was problematic because things would break and they didn't have a way to fix it they'd have to wait on us and so it wasn't sustainable same with sewing ministry we tried that but then things would break and they didn't have a way to fix it and we didn't really know anything about the market making and selling things and St. Louis Missouri is very different than making and selling things in La Haga Honduras and so we learned that the hard way but we what really changed for us in 2017 we sent a small team it was just actually me and two other people to just it was just a listening trip we didn't plan any ministry activities at all we just went and listened and we spent a good bit of time with our partner church we also got to travel to I think we got to talk to about 17 different pastors we just did a tour of Honduras and talked to as many as we could and asked what has worked well what hasn't worked well what do you wish that teams knew when they came to Honduras we also just asked what are the needs of your community what do you love about your community what makes you love living here so that we could learn as much as possible and the phrase that we really took back from that was put your plan in your pocket one of the pastors said that to us and we've kind of adopted that of yes we want to have a plan but we also recognize that Honduran pastors know their Honduran congregations and communities much better than we do and so all of our prep work is in vain if it's not actually what the community needs so that's kind of been our approach since then and we like I said technology isn't a luxury that we have with our partner church but when we are there we have some really intentional conversations where we just sit down with pen and paper and say okay what are your hopes and dreams for your church how can we support you what would you like to see from us and it's been really really cool to see that grow Pastor Marvin does an amazing job administering to his community so we are thrilled to get to support him and one a couple of cool things that we've been able to do through that because of not having the ability to talk to him all the time this summer actually he needed his bike replaced he pastors two congregations one in the hagua and one in the squafa and is going back and forth so having a bike is very very necessary and it needed repair or replacement and so what we did is we actually our children's ministry raised the money for that just as a way to continually connect the church and to teach our kids about it which is great and we are also we had planned this summer to do some kids ministry training when we were there so kind of getting to say hey look at what these kids are doing here because they love you and so that was a really cool thing we have also we've done this once and we plan to do it again because we do a lot of medical clinics hired teams in Honduras when we're not able to go so we've hired Honduran doctors and pharmacists and we always work with Honduran pharmacists when we go but just hired them to say we have not forgotten about you just because we're not there especially right now that's really important and where our churches are and they don't really have great access to medical care so it's extra important so that's been kind of a unique approach where when we first did that there were some people in our church that really had a problem with it and I think it came down to a little bit of pride of it's not about us being there but it's about the relationship and the work and making sure that people are being taken care of and making sure that their needs are met and the the last thing I wanted to briefly mention just asking questions has been huge for us our last trip we were able to do an eye clinic for the first time and that started because we were talking about what needs does your church have and they said well training is a big issue and we said okay why and he said well literacy is a really big issue that you know it's hard to when we bring over training materials well if you can't read them they're not useful and so we started looking at the challenges facing literacy and one of the things he said was well a lot of people can't see they don't have proper eye care and so we said okay let's start there kind of with the intention of we're not looking to have a really exciting fun one-week thing we want to have lasting impact in the community and meet means that are going to carry on not just to be like the fun party bus for a week but to really help where the need is knowing that there's going to be things that it takes a long time for us to see the results of and that's okay because it's not about us so yeah there's been a lot of cool things that we've been able to do we've been able to learn a lot from Pastor Marvin and the way that he takes care of his congregation because ministry is tough no matter where you are so getting to learn from him has been really great but yeah those those are kind of the highlights of our of our partnership and I hope I didn't talk too fast can ask Milton that he's the one trying to translate in Spanish on the chat. Sherry thank you but again I want to pause for any questions any follow up questions that any of you have for Sherry. Sherry I just want to say I appreciate just your transparency about the learning journey that your church has been on in this partnership and the lessons y'all have learned I love that phrase put your plan in your pocket that's good a good reminder okay well so we have about 20 minutes left we want to reserve some time at the end for Pastor Roberto to share a closing devotional word for us I believe that was on the agenda and so with the minutes in between I just want to share a couple of things about these church-to-church partnerships the General Board of Global Ministries puts these kinds of partnerships under the banner of in mission together you may have heard that phrase today I am T and basically that's GBGM's way of describing these relationships of these partnerships as ones based on relationship in a spirit of mutuality and in part empowerment the way that you've described they heard people describe them today so from a North Texas conference point of view I guess fun news to share and that is that we are adding depending on how you count it as of now two to four new US partners to the mix first United Methodist Church of Denton has agreed to be a partner church and they're in the process of discerning which church they're feeling called to partner with that doesn't already have a partner but they're definitely supportive and something exciting about that particular opportunity is that first Denton has a Latinx congregation that's a part of them and so let us add some richness to the partnership and the relationships that will happen there and then the second is from St. Andrew United Methodist Church in Plano they're they're one of our larger churches in terms of size in the North Texas conference and so they have signed on to partner with three congregations and it looks like they'd like to partner with Don Lee Central and Fuente de la Luz also in that Don Lee area and then obviously with the guidance of the mission would be interested in helping to plant another church that can be a satellite there in Don Lee so again depending how you count it we have two to four new partners to celebrate and others that are in the works I know when when I visited a year and a half ago and we began laying some laying the foundation for these church to church partnerships in North Texas we dreamed about a goal by the end of 2020 of identifying a US partner for every congregation in Honduras and I think we're really close now which is really exciting and again we give thanks to God for the way God's working in the midst of this partnership not just in North Texas but in the United Methodist Church all around so those are just some celebrations and many of other of our North Texas partners are on the call today as well so I wanted to with just a couple of minutes that I have left before I turn it over to Pastor Roberto so let's see I want to share my screen and just point you to something so I can pull it up here it is so this is a mission together you know document a covenant that in North Texas we've developed kind of adapting something that came from GBGM and it begins by laying out some of the values that make for a healthy covenant relationship and the examples we've heard illustrate those values beautifully but here's another way to put it in writing and then it basically lays out some what we hope would be expectations for a healthy partnership with communication and give some ideas and examples for how to communicate and also things to do when having those virtual times of getting together and then it describes some of the financial pieces to the partnership I know we've learned as we've listened to the mission that find it the financial part of the partnership is is a potential pitfall and it's a it's a in a way to inadvertently just sort of get that relationship a little wrong and so try to be real careful to say here are the good best ways to go about that part of the partnership and just some of the nuts and bolts for how to live into that so I just wanted you to see this North Texas folks but really for all of our US partners so that you know are aware it's a resource that is available to you if you think it'd be helpful to share with others kind of what this partnership can look like or if you're inviting others to consider being a part of a church to partnership again this is a resource that I'd be happy to to share in conversations with other IMT coordinators recently in other parts of the world we had this discussion about the role of a covenant and it was really interesting in some contexts having a covenant upfront it spells out the nature of the relationship was really crucial it was appreciated it was needed in other contexts they said it to use the words we heard earlier it's okay to begin with that but keep it in your pocket and just live into it knowing it's there but you know don't rush into getting everything and writing because that's a great way to sort of squelch the spirit of relationship that you know we're trying to nurture so again I offer that resource but offer it you know with those caveats and sort of hold it loosely but it does give give us a helpful direction and again I'm happy to happy to share that with you if you're interested alright so again one last time for questions are there any questions from folks on the call about about these church to church partnerships about our relationship with the mission in Honduras I have just one more question sorry if I'm the person that dominates today I'm curious with so many pastors that are in the ordination process in the Honduran church if there's anything from our end like my partner church pastor is in process but is there anything that folks at the mission could advise or any of the pastors on here as to how we can be a helpful resource to our pastors going through that process other than just like general like cheerleading for them hey can I answer this question I think that Amy Spar who is our board of our day ministry rep from North Texas probably is the one to have that conversation Andy do you think so if you want me he's on the call I am on the call and I'd be happy to talk with you Karen in awesome I did see we had one other question in the chat from Lauren Eichler who's from Prosper UMC and she asked just curious to learn more about how your church was able to hire locally in Honduras when your congregation wasn't able to travel just would love any learnings you can share about that process so Sherry yeah so honestly Milton probably did most of the work on that we kind of just reached out to him and said you know what can we do how much is it gonna cost and we try really hard to keep track of medications and when we do our medical clinics we keep records so that we kind of have a guess of how much we'll need and we have awesome pharmacists that you saw in the slides about staff that do most of that as well and do a really good job of knowing that medications and amounts that we need so yeah that's the main not so late add to your plate but my main advice is just ask Milton so yeah we've done that we did that a year ago because we just weren't able to send a team and then we were supposed to go this July and obviously we couldn't and are working on sin hiring to replace the trip that we were supposed to take this summer with potentially having to do that next year as well awesome that's helpful thank you so much Andy Andy I'm gonna have to leave for the next appointment I just wanted I want to thank everybody I said something that Chad especially wants to say gracias para supernente Roberto para su trabajando we appreciate you very much Roberto gracias we will talk soon okay bye bye thank you Andy thank all of you yes my pleasure all right so I think as we wrap up our time together I want to step aside and ask us Roberto to share a closing word with us I want to express my appreciation to Andy and everyone that took the time to put this together el hermano Mike Craig I saw Luciona una time set up Mike Craig mentioned something about a shirt in el día de a year utilizaba usaba yo una camiseta que les fue regalada por un yesterday I was using a t-shirt that was also given by a team hace muchos años y no recuerdo que grupo fue many years ago I do not even remember what team that was pero la camiseta tiene un texto pequeño que dice trabajando juntos para construir un fundamento sólido but the t-shirt says working together to obtain solid foundation y esa sido la experiencia de vida en Honduras and that has been my experience that I've lived in Honduras a través de las iglesias del compañerismo con iglesias north of the churches and the partnership with the churches desde el mismo comienzo con el consejo de iglesia evangélica metodista de very beginning with the evangelical method is churches con la iglesia metodista del caribe y las américas with the method is church of the Caribbean and the americas con iglesias autono más de america latina with autonomous churches in latin america así que el fundamento ha sido construido en una forma sólida so the foundation indeed has been built in a very solid way quiero compartir algunos versículos de primera decorintios capítulo tres and I want to share some verses from first Corinthians chapter 3 versus 7 to 11 así que ni el que planta es algo ni el que riega sino Dios que da el crecimiento y el que planta y el que riega son una misma cosa aunque cada uno recibirá su recompensa conforme a su labor pero nosotros somos colaboradores de Dios y vosotros la granza de Dios edificio de Dios conforme a la gracia de Dios me ha sido dada yo como penito arquitecto puse el fundamento y otro edifica encima pero cada uno mire como sobre edifica porque nadie puede poner otro fundamento que el que está puesto en cual es que su cristo precisamente porque el fundamento ha sido de su cristo so because the foundation has been jesus christ ha sido posible la unidad it has been possible to get these unity unidad que se puse y se sigue cultivando en el día de hoy unity that continues to flourish up to today con esta experiencia que hemos tenido en la tarde de hoy especially with this experience that we've had this afternoon cuando estamos fundamentados en cristo se produce la unidad so when we're founded on jesus christ that's when it produces unity en las escrituras tenemos varias imágenes de la iglesia and so in the bible we have different images of the churches en estos versículos de primera decoridio tenemos la idea de una planta pero también de un edificio en these passage in corinthians we have the image of a plant and the image of a building y nos vuelve a mostrar lo esencial de la unidad y de la contribución de cada cual y like that it also mentions in first correct in 12 about the unity en honduras and that's what we has been happening in honduras cada cual contribuyendo everyone gives a little bit to the the foundation la misión pudiéramos decir que ya está bien fundamentada and we can say that the mission has been well founded pero para continuar creciendo necesidad necesitamos continuar cultivando esa unidad but in order to continue to grow we need to continue to water the foundation en la imagen que nos presenta también de un cuerpo en primera de corintios 12 also in first correct in 12 it represents a body nos resalta que todos importantes and it says that we are all important somos necesarios we're all needed or necessary y debemos funcionar en forma independiente and that we need to function also in a very independent way pudiéramos decir que en honduras y en la misión we can say that in honduras and in the mission there are a lot of needs that are real but there's also a lot of richness that we can share yo no soy hondureño pero como ya se digo anteriormente hace más de 20 años que estoy en relación con la misión i'm not honduran but as we said earlier it's been 20 years in relationship with the mission and it has been a real blessing for me to see the involvement of the blessing of the mission que continuemos en ese mismo espíritu de unidad so let's continue to remain in that spirit of unity working together para seguir edificando el reino de dios a través de la misión de honduras so that we can continue to work for the god's kingdom through the mission in honduras michael macky so we started with the prayer from the bishop michael macky and i will like that we can close this session with the prayer from reverend abitia en los últimos años pues ha sido también pieza clavo en el desarrollo de la misión who has been in the past years fundamental and important key for the mission so in spanish or english it doesn't matter because all the spanish-speaking people might be able to understand gracias a todos y que la bendición de dios sea todo de cada una de nosotros thank you everyone and may the lord bless you el gran portador let's pray we thank you for your blessings from our most inner self and we elevate we bring a prayer in the spirit of gratitude for you being with us throughout the years as in in this work in honduras lord thank you for allowing us to collaborate with you in the advancement of your kingdom i thank you for each and every one of my sisters and my brothers here present we we go way back with with some of them some of them been walking with the mission for from the very beginning a systematic way i'm witnessing to faithfulness and commitment to the kingdom we thank you for for your blessings and it's been a tough year to say the least but you've been faithful we we praise you for that i thank you for the the efforts of all my colleagues my sisters and my brothers in honduras and they struggle with the endemic in in a very complex context as it is and i thank you for their faithfulness to serve i'm bringing bringing hope and in concrete ways and i thank you god for all the learnings that that they have also been open uh to to acquire walking together zooming together just sharing goods and faith and love and i thank you for all this all this year in tough year and we we seek your blessing the blessing of each and every one of us our ministries our churches and uh seek you the blessing of our relationship thank you god for this opportunity to gather together thank you lord thanks everyone i will follow up by email with resources uh from today's summit appreciate each of you for your as adgers said your ministry and your partnership and look forward to staying in touch and communication so god bless you have a great afternoon


Mr. McBree wish please great. Thank you very much for coming The presentation today really focuses on What we think is a very key use case for? telco NFV and by extension It is important to have a robust open stack implementation as The virtual infrastructure manager to enable this Application I mean we think about where NFV is today and Really over the last two three years. We've seen a lot of Testing of virtualization in a lab. We've seen a lot of proof of concepts, but we haven't seen a lot of operationalization We haven't seen a lot of commercial Implementations so what we're going to discuss today is how to get from the lab environment To a commercially ready NFV solution and in particular around virtualized customer premises equipment so If you look at what the research is telling us It is saying that virtualized CPE is a top-use case in NFV for the service provider community and I think this makes actually a lot of sense, right? If you think about the top-tier operators today their main challenge of course is driving revenue growth and As a result of that they take a look at all of the different markets they serve and They wonder how they can reduce their cost of sales how they can reduce the risk associated with bringing new services to market to generate higher revenue growth and Virtualized CPE kind of lies at the heart of the answer All right, because if you think about for example the small and medium-sized business market Small and medium-sized businesses have largely been neglected by the largest operators in the world Right because the cost of sales to generate revenue from the small and medium-sized business is so high Right, so a lot of our top-tier operator customers really focus in on generating revenue from The enterprise market the very largest businesses Right and as a result the small and medium-sized business market I think and the middle market the medium-sized business market has largely been neglected with advanced features such as IT based services and applications managed services You know various kinds of enhanced connectivity models They have not had as many of those kinds of services delivered to them right and what virtualized CPE does is Help address that need by reducing the cost of sales for the service provider And it opens up a much broader market you know for them to a very large segment of Their customer base Okay, so that's just a little bit of color commentary around what we think is driving the need for Virtualized CPE and it's not just in the business market We're going to talk today about how VCPE is Driving growth in the residential market as well So virtualized CPE enables many new business models So I would argue that you know VCPE is not just about reducing capital costs I think service providers know how to apply pressure To vendors to reduce the overall cost of equipment And I would argue that NFE is not so much about reducing the cost of infrastructure as it is streamlining operations and Creating an environment to drive revenue growth through new and compelling applications that are delivered from the cloud Okay So one of those use cases is cloud VPN. We actually just had a press release with Telefonica on cloud VPN It is a very promising use case And what it enables an enterprise to do what enables a business customer to do is log in through a self-service portal and Change service parameters in real time Connectivity you can bring up connectivity on a particular site a remote site or a branch office or a headquarters site You can change the attributes of that connectivity. You can change the SLAs you can apply different Policies and filters to the traffic itself. You can enhance the connectivity But even more important is the ability to use that self-service portal to enable new applications So if we have for example network functions like session border control firewall intrusion detection all different kinds of security functions Application acceleration when optimization be able to turn those on in real time You know creates a revenue stream for our customers I think this is also behind what's driving the demand for particular use cases in VCPE like cloud VPN on The residential side we see parental control and policy management being very important We see per device and per user-based policies That are enabled through VCPE Okay, you know by taking the configuration away from the device at the premises and moving it into the cloud simplifying the connectivity to the end user and enabling much more robust policy-based Personalization in the cloud, you know, we have the ability for example to have very granular and personalized Services to the end user. So for example, you might have a parental control service where a Child's device is trying to access a certain kind of website or a certain kind of content the virtualized border broadband network gateway instantiates that connectivity Brings that traffic directly to a parental control server You know where a policy is applied and for a particular period of time that child cannot get access to a kind of content or website And if it's a shared device if it's not just one child's device if it's a shared device You know, then the broadband network gateway can direct that traffic directly to a web authentication portal Right where the user has to authenticate him or herself Right, so we have this ability to use self-service portals so much more robust self-service capability to give end users the ability to Personalize services in real time smart home and smart office is another really key application We've done a number of proof-of-concepts in this area, and we're working with partners for example like Intel to Bring an Internet of Things gateway into the VCPE environment You know, so we have the ability You know to aggregate traffic simplify management and optimize the resources of an Internet of Things Gateway in a VCPE environment so now, you know a service provider for example could start to offer a smart home service where sensors and Different devices within the home are connected and managed all through you know a single pane of glass a single portal So another very promising revenue opportunity And then for enhanced troubleshooting You know if you have all of this data coming in through the cloud I mean one of the things that I think is fundamental about NFV for the service provider market is that you know If it's delivered right if it's optimized correctly or engineered correctly you have an embedded analytics function With the VCPE platform So and that analytics, you know can provide customers with certain trending and certain historical data analysis of particular trends of you know, maybe what's happening in the network that's gone wrong or what's You know causing customers to shift from one service to another or maybe to end their terms and You know a lot of that kinds of data a lot of that troubleshooting data can be used you know to reduce churn You know and to anticipate Certain trends Among the customer base and then finally I would say another key application in VCPE is The transition from IPv4 to IPv6, you know a lot of the CPE that's installed today is not IPv6 ready But it need not be ready if we have the ability for example to introduce IPv6 in the cloud Right, so you know we have the ability to have a carrier grade DHCP function in the cloud as part of the VCPE Schematic and you know we have the ability to deliver an IPv6 service or transition from IPv4 to IPv6 You know so all of these these are just you know five use cases There are many more but these five use cases I think are indicative of you know The promise of VCPE and I should actually just back up and let you know that if we look at our pipeline today We've done more than 40 POCs in the service provider market You know an overwhelming majority of the interest that we have right now is in the VCPE application We do have of course a number of different trials in Virtualized Evolve Packet Core in our colleague from Dokomo Just talked about our participation in their trials that are happening right now but You know overall it's really the VCPE that's driving a lot of the interest among service providers today So if there's so much interest and there's so much promise why is commercialization held up I mean if you actually look at where the Where the trials have been and where the deployments have been there's a big gap right there's been a tremendous number of POCs but there have not been a large number of Real commercial deployments and those commercial deployments that have happened have been subscale I would argue you know in particular domains or in particular areas of the network So why is that? So I would put to you there are a few different reasons first of all the overall business case has not really been proven Right. I think we've spent a lot of time With CIOs and CTOs proving technological concepts and we haven't spent nearly as much time with The CMO the chief marketing officer We haven't spent nearly enough time with the chief financial officer to prove out the business case right and You know that business case is about much more as I said earlier than just reducing capex You know if you actually look at a service provider's cost structure You know you compare capex to op-ex You know it's if you're moving the needle in capex you're not exactly proving the overall business case You have to reduce the cost of operations and you have to increase the top line And I think that's where a lot of the business case that have been Presented to the CFO have essentially fallen down so far There's also a lot of confusion about orchestration So if you think about this term Orchestration you know a lot of people think about OpenStack as an orchestration product, right? But in the way of NFP in terms of NFP OpenStack doesn't do all of the orchestration that's needed. Of course it does orchestration of resources in the cloud in the data center but We have according to the Etsy framework, you know We have the NFP orchestration and even on top of NFP orchestration, which is really just resource orchestration from You know an element or network management type capacity into the infrastructure layer. What we really need is a horizontal Service orchestration layer that cuts across physical and virtual network boundaries We'll talk a little bit more about what that means, but there's a lot of confusion about orchestration and you know just how much Service providers need to invest in it and to what extent it should be open source and you know What's practical with respect to? You know open source approaches or not I would also say that another challenge is OSS and BSS readiness so If we're going to actually commercialize something we need to bill for those services We need to assure those services and a lot of the existing Rating and charging and assurance and policy management is not yet real-time in nature It's not yet ready to function in an automated way for an NFP based service So you know there's a lot of evolution that needs to happen in the billing environment and the operational environment apart from just that service orchestration layer that Is absolutely essential to be making NFP a commercial reality and therefore You know driving some of the use of open stack right for NFP and then finally Another great challenge is the integration to brownfield environments a lot of what we've seen so far in terms of commercial deployments have really been in You know greenfield environments You know in patches of networks that are not necessarily encumbered by By legacy infrastructure by existing physical infrastructure, so What we know though about service providers is that they're going to operate Virtual networks alongside Physical networks for at least the next 15 20 years you think about circuit to packet and that migration I mean that took place over 15 20 even 25 years We still have circuit networks out there today Of course all of the traffic is packet most of the infrastructure is now packet optimized. However, we still have some circuit based Switching so that was one architectural shift now. We're moving to another architectural shift with respect to physical to virtual and I think what we know is that we're going to operate in a hybrid environment And what that means is that services are going to need to be provision and assured across multiple types of domains and that's difficult Right, it's far more difficult far more challenging Than turning up a virtual service in a greenfield environment So this is why commercialization and our estimation remains elusive. So What do we need to do? I mean broadly speaking we think the answer is you know in this term called cloudification or Bringing these functions and services You know from a focus on virtualization to a focus on the cloud So as I said in the very beginning we know how to virtualize functions. We know how to take an appliance and virtualize it on an x dot 86 or virtualize it on a general-purpose piece of hardware Right, that's kind of the easy part if I would we spent the last three years Kind of proving out virtualization in a lab. What we need to do now is orchestrate those functions tie an orchestrated function together with the existing OSS so that we can provision services across physical and virtual boundaries We need a much more robust self-service capability that incorporates third-party virtual network functions that incorporates a far wider range of service granularity and we need of course Much more Capable partner management function if you think about what the promise of open networking brings It is that we can bring together a large ecosystem of third-party vendors in an open environment to create compelling new services and If we do that then we need to have a way of figuring out how the money flows right we need a way of taking what's happening in the legal department and Enforcing that in the network environment Right. We need partner management. We need multi-party settlement that takes care of These contractual arrangements and takes care of service level agreements among partners. So for example a VNF partner to an orchestration vendor We need that to happen in real time and we needed to scale Right. We needed to scale in a fundamentally new way. I mean in the virtualized world We're going to have a far larger ecosystem of third-party vendors at play so it begs The requirement of having a much more robust partner management functionality So that's really what it Cloudifying means that's really what to us making NFV cloud ready is all about it's bringing those kinds of functions orchestration Evolved OSS and BSS and partner management and self-service together To bring new services to market To automate the operations behind it so The cloud ready VCP e-solution has the attributes that I just mentioned and quite a few more first of all, I think we do need to embrace this concept of DevOps right we need an easy service design and modification capability with an intuitive Modeling environment right we don't have that today Right we have a highly manual and workflow based waterfall based types of development behind service creation And that fundamentally needs to change if we're going to move faster We need multi-channel self-service today, you know most self-service is available through a PC We need to change that whole dynamic from You know static connections to mobile connections and more dynamic connectivity and different types of devices We need end-to-end VNF onboarding Think about onboarding. This is a critical functionality We need service descriptors Different kinds of catalogs unified together so that we can onboard functions with the kinds of rating and charging and the kinds of Service life cycle management that is going to result in more compelling offers for our customers And that embedded analytics functionality that I talked about earlier You know one of the things that we need in order to Cloudify VCPE in order to automate the functions that we're delivering to customers is a closed loop among service fulfillment and Assurance and service fulfillment and assurance has to be policy based and analytics driven what I mean is so that we can should be able to take our Real-time monitoring run analytics on that data that we see in real-time Have that feed into a policy engine that Guides the orchestration process Right so that we can make changes to our customer services in real-time. We can optimize the customer experience We can't do that if we don't have a real-time visibility into the network We can't do that if we don't have real-time visibility into customer preferences and How those customer preferences ought to change given different? Changes in the network and what they're paying for and what they require under certain conditions So you know closing that loop between service fulfillment and assurance really does take an embedded analytics capability and policy management Incorporated into orchestration end-to-end and then SDN based service chaining What we need there of course is you know dynamic creation of internal communications between servers VMs and VNF elements right, so service chaining is fundamental to creating new and compelling offers for example for the For the SMB market that I was talking about before And we need to be able to direct the customer's traffic to whatever applications they're paying for be it security when optimization application acceleration intrusion to whatever it might be and that only happens with SDN control working in coordination with an overall orchestration capability Right, so VCP E of course is about virtualizing the customer premises equipment But in order to operationalize it in order to make it commercial, you know, these are the things that we also need behind the scenes so Operationalization to us requires expertise across many domains I think a lot of the Attention in the industry a lot of the conversation has really been at the CTO level Around this green area Right here. I don't know if I'm working this correctly, but that green box the smaller green box That's the NFVO. That's the NFV orchestration function right, but Orchestration in and of itself is really just an automated way or a real-time way to configure and control Infrastructure resources What we really need to operationalize is in that purple column, you know the embedded analytics and policy management and in the orange section, you know all of the OSS and BSS functions that aren't normally thought of in orchestration, but are absolutely essential to Operationalizing VC PE these are things like real-time rating and charging and the partner management functionality that I just discussed and there's more There's more but just focusing on those for the interest of time But the point really is is that operationalization is much more than for example That resource orchestration layer You know at NEC and netcracker We've put together an end-to-end virtualized CPE solution that incorporates not just the VNFs the virtualized broadband network gateway and the CGNAT and DHCP functions and AAA and all of those things that you need just to You know create connections and to deliver services, but you know all of the higher layer Operational capabilities that we've been discussing service and NFV orchestration and the evolved OSS and BSS So I'll just kind of wrap up with a couple of different use cases that we have Implemented at NEC and netcracker that kind of embody what I've been discussing today about what it takes to operationalize So in this particular use case This is with a large tier one operator in Europe. This is a residential VCP e application where what they wanted to do was Enable these value-added services on top of the VC P e infrastructure So in that in that cloud up into the left you see things like home security parental control Multimedia storage and IP TV using multicast DLNA I mean these are services that are all available through a customer self-service Portal now and we designed a self-service portal for our customer to enable their end users to self-select these functions in real time and To configure per device and per user policies Right and at the same time, you know, they have maybe four or five different CPEs that you know are certified in their network and at least one of them You know it is going to need to support an IPv6 migration right so as I was saying before, you know, we have the ability with DHCP and our carrier grade net product to move Traffic or migrate traffic from the IPv4 to the IPv6 IP backbone So this particular CPE POC is Complete it was highly successful I think you know the next step for this customer is pre-production trial Right and that's scheduled to take place really over the next, you know, three to six months We also did a cloud VPN solution with a large tier one operator in North America and The idea here was that we needed to very rapidly onboard third-party network functions, you know from you know, the large Router vendors like Cisco and Juniper that were providing virtual routers Virtual firewalls and a variety of different functions embedded in the provider edge Right and the idea was you know to take a lot of those embedded functions Move them into a cloud environment simplify and cost reduce the provider edge and just optimize it for IP routing as opposed to you know service specific or application specific line cards that frankly not only cost a lot of money but take up a lot of space in those chassis for You know for that are really best optimized for router ports And move those functions into a cloud create, you know, this cloud marketplace concept for them The idea is to create a cloud marketplace concept where virtual network functions coexist along with Software as a service and other other cloud-based applications that can be offered up and delivered with network functions To help our customers generate more revenue from a cloud VPN service Yeah, so This way of course the operator doesn't need to manually configure every CPE device You know with statically provisioned parameters, right Everything it can be done or much more can be done through customer self-service So that the customer themselves can not only control costs, but make sure that each location needs the functions and the Capabilities required for their VPN service So The customer You know really wanted to focus on you know ordered activation for private cloud offerings You know establishing and enhancing the IP VPN connectivity, you know giving the end user the ability to change connectivity parameters and QoS parameters you know quickly and easily and Incorporating SDN control, you know to enable service chaining Which of course is a requirement if you know some of those customers out there for some sites are going to enable multiple Functions that need to be chained together So that's the presentation. I'll just leave you with a few key takeaways I think you know we think about you know, this is a massive conference and OpenStack has so much diversity and It applies to so much in the in the cloud environment and you know Telco NFV is just one of those areas where OpenStack applies But you know, there is a big question of whether or not, you know NFV will become operationalized and commercialized anytime soon and you know in my estimation it might take a couple more years to really get to Where operators want to be? But you know, we have to look to the applications that can help bring us over The goal line so to speak and virtualize CPE is certainly a top-use case We've really spent the last, you know, three four years testing virtualize CPE in a lab it's really now time to focus on the operational aspects of it and You know to do that, you know operators need that end-to-end service layer orchestration right not just the resource orchestration but total control of the service lifecycle across physical and virtual domains and a modernized BSS in particular Automating the rating and charging engine making it real-time Scaling up the partner management functionality and and there's so much more there that also needs to be done You know we at NEC netcracker with netcrackers heritage and the BSS and OSS and NEC's heritage in the network and the IT Infrastructure, you know, we're bringing together what we believe are the right combination of assets to help our customers move into an operational framework and You know, we're working with a number of partners Red Hat is one We're working with a number of partners to make open-stack carrier grade In order for NFV to be able to scale in order for us to operationalize at scale, you know, we need Carrier grade attributes and carrier grade enhancements to open-stack and You know, we have a long history of working in that area You know, we're an early pioneer in developing for example DPDK alongside Intel and getting that into You know our integration with open-stack with Red Hat for example and we've made Significant strides in enhancing open-stack for the carrier environment and we'll continue to do that. We're continuing to We're continuing our commitment there So I'll leave you with that and you know, if any of you have any questions I'm happy to answer them. Okay Thank you so much for coming. I appreciate it