Wrapping up quite a year

Warm Christmas greetings!

We have been pretty quiet on our blog recently. Here's why...

FH Peru has been going through a major change process over the past several months which has been pretty heavy on Ryan and in turn, on the whole family. By now we are passed the major summit of this change process and have deepened our faith and feel wiser and stronger as a result. Thank you for praying and your continued support of us in this time. Here is a brief summary of what we at FH Peru have been up to.

• In May we did a dreaming/planning exercise to try and discern God's call for FH Peru in alignment with FH's overall vision, mission and values.
  
• With our leaders we then developed objectives to implement the plan beginning immediately.
  
• We first wanted to make sure we have the right people to move the plan forward to fulfill our call and to have the right organizational practices and procedures. To do this we hired an outside HR consultant to do an organizational diagnostic. Her diagnostic revealed a lot of things we probably would rather have not known about - most serious being misuse and abuse of authority amongst several supervisory staff. To be objective we did extensive evaluations for supervisors and self evaluations for all staff. Evaluations confirmed the consultant's findings.
  
• We formed a group to begin to diagram main organizational processes to identify bottlenecks and areas where we don't articulate well.
  
• Simultaneously we initiated a dreaming and discernment process (Community Diagnostic) amongst all 31 of the squatter communities where we work with leaders, parents and teens to identify main challenges affecting them. The results clearly showed that the multifaceted and complex issues associated with family violence are what God is calling us as FHP to address.
  
• We spent time planning a new approach with all our activities pointing towards preventing violence in our communities where we work with children and teens, parents, community and church leaders and even municipalities to influence each of them to adopt a biblical perspective of life where there is no violence.
  
• Ryan took all these inputs and lots of coaching from the consultant, his boss, other staff, FH's intl president and global HR director to create a new structure and initiate a change process. The weight of this drew me to God in a way I have never depended upon him before. Angela and I prayed like no other until I felt God's confirmation on each step of this change process.
  
• In late September he presented most of the results to all staff and painted the picture where God wants to take us. Immediately after, he met with each staff member individually to give feedback on evaluations, thank them for the areas they excel and encourage them to work together to address difficulties. Ryan invited most staff to participate in the new phase, but did not invite 6 staff to continue, 4 of whom were supervisors. There were some very tense negotiations as part of the process during which God spoke clearly about making every effort to live at peace, about blessing those that persecute you and about overcoming evil with good. While these departures were clearly the right thing to do for the organization and confirmed in many ways, they exacted a high emotional and spiritual cost.
  
• Currently, a few months after beginning the change process, staff morale is picking up and the air is lighter. We are advancing with implementing a new structure by hiring a few new people and clarifying roles and responsibilities. Previous programs are closing and we are preparing to begin in January a whole new strategy towards preventing violence.
  

This process has been quite a roller coaster but the thrill of depending on God in the midst of such trials has been truly rewarding. We covet your prayers for FHP and our ministry amongst 31 squatter villages to prevent violence and overcome poverty in all its forms.