Dreaming with Shalom

Elena Huegel – Chile

I was curled up in my sleeping bag midmorning before the final worship service on the last day of camp. Yes, I was hiding, and no, I wasn’ t sleeping. The theme for all of the summer camps this year at the Shalom Center, chosen by the motivators and facilitators, was “Dreaming with Shalom” and during the final service of the leadership training program, we wanted to meditate on the processes that God uses in challenging us to grow as we reach for our dreams. We chose the metamorphosis of the butterfly as the guiding image, and early in the morning I set my sleeping bag “out to air” so that later, after I had crawled inside, no one would suspect that it was actually a chrysalis from which I would later emerge.

Elena Huegel – Chile

I was curled up in my sleeping bag midmorning before the final worship service on the last day of camp. Yes, I was hiding, and no, I wasn’ t sleeping. The theme for all of the summer camps this year at the Shalom Center, chosen by the motivators and facilitators, was “Dreaming with Shalom” and during the final service of the leadership training program, we wanted to meditate on the processes that God uses in challenging us to grow as we reach for our dreams. We chose the metamorphosis of the butterfly as the guiding image, and early in the morning I set my sleeping bag “out to air” so that later, after I had crawled inside, no one would suspect that it was actually a chrysalis from which I would later emerge.

Trust the Lord and live right! The land will be yours, and you will be safe. Do what the Lord wants, and he will give you your heart’s desire. Psalm 37:3-4

As I waited in the softness, with the stuffy air making it hard to breathe, I thought back to the birthing and transformation processes we have lived at the Shalom Center this year. After four years of dreaming, the shell of the Welcome House, the first cabin at the Shalom Center, has been finished. On January 12th, 2006, we gathered with the Bishop and the President of the Pentecostal Church of Chile, several representatives of the Directorate, a few pastors and their families, the members of the Shalom Center Committee, a family from a UCC church in Wisconsin, a Global Missions Intern from the Ohio Region of the Disciples, a young woman from Costa Rica, several Paraguayans, and a group of young Chileans from four different regions around the communion table in the inaugural service at the Welcome House. It was truly a Shalom moment! The rest of the house should be ready in April when we have our second international “Conpaz” (With peace) camp with teens from Chile and the Massachusetts Conference of the UCC.

After two years of visiting government offices and many hours of work with different professionals, the second week in January we submitted the Environmental Impact Statement to the Regional Comission on the Environment office here in Talca. Within three months we hope to receive the final approval. Please join us in praying that the statement might be a testimony of our commitment to the care of God’s creation as it is evaluated in each of the different offices.

Though the sounds were a little muffled through the weight of the sleeping bag, I could hear the participants and facilitators walk to the porch of the Welcome House as the worship service began. “God invites us to submit to the process of transformation. It may be painful and confusing at times, but we can trust that our lives will unfold with the beauty of butterfly wings.” With a guitar playing softly in the background, I began to move slowly at first. Then as the music increased, so did my struggle to get out of my chrysalis sleeping bag. Finally, with a dramatic push, I slipped out of the sleeping bag and stood raising my arms as if they were wings drying in the sun. At the very same instant I raised my arms, a real butterfly, a rare one far away from the rocky outcrops where it is usually found, came fluttering into the circle of our worship service. It landed delicately first on one participant and then another. I didn’t have to say a word at the end of my dance; God sent a butterfly to say it all! After the worship service was over, several young people asked me if I had released the butterfly from within the sleeping bag or if I had organized the timing just right for the butterfly to appear!

Keyla, a twenty year old college student who participated in the leadership camp wrote in her evaluation: “When I arrived at the Shalom Center I needed to feel God’s forgiveness and restoration. Yesterday, when we visited to waterfall, my heart desired an answer from God; I wanted to feel his forgiveness. While looking at the waterfall, I began to weep and to realize how small I am before God’s greatness. Then the butterfly came. I could see it flying around but it did not come near me. In my heart, I prayed to God and I asked him to give me a sign. If that butterfly came to me, it would be because he had forgiven me. God heard the desire of my heart, and that little butterfly came right up to me. All of the answers that I needed in my life right now, God gave to me in this leadership camp at the Shalom Center. I praise God because he shows himself to be real in my life.”

The “chagual” butterfly has an intimate relationship with the “chagual”, a long, thorny leaf, pineapple like plant with strange, shiny blue green flowers that grows among the hot rocks high the Andes Mountains. The black, blue, and red butterfly, as well as the plant, is rather rare. It grows inside the chagual feeding from the tender heart, and after its metamorphosis, it pollinates the plant’s flowers. The chagual butterfly can’t live without the chagual plant, and the chagual plant reproduces thanks to the chagual butterfly.

Elena Huegel
Shalom Center
Elena Huegel is a missionary with the Pentecostal Church of Chile (IPC). She serves as an environmental and Christian education specialist.