¡Qué emoción! How exciting—our first foreign library ministry opportunity. Well, yes, the other library trips have certainly been in foreign countries, cultures, and languages, but this year’s library project branches our ministry into our first Spanish-speaking seminary library.
To date, retired Cedarville University professor Dr. Beverly Monroe has taken over twenty trips to English-speaking, Bible-teaching seminaries and schools around the world to assist in cleaning, organizing, and cataloging online campus libraries. I have had the privilege to work on three of those projects with her and her colleagues—first in Costa Rica, where we worked at Sojourn Academy (elementary and high school), and then two trips to Santiago Christian Academy in Chile.
This new chance to minister to evangelical seminary professors and students is the first time our team has ventured into a second-language library. As the team-leader this time, my responsibilities include putting together a team and budget, investigating the library’s inventory and needs ahead of time, arranging room and board, transport, budget, and project supply preparation.
I am excited to see how the Lord is leading this project. Already since starting communications with the library, I have seen the following blessings:
- The seminary business manager is someone with whom I worked closely during our ministry years in the country
- The team has come together almost automatically from the very beginning: two long-time, fellow-Spanish-speaking friends have been wanting to help with the library ministry
- I was able to chaperone a high school missions trip to this same area and had the opportunity to see the library and its needs first-hand
- …which meant that two of us were able to meet with the administration and already have set processes in motion so that the project this summer will be further along and ready for us to get more deeply into the project.
- The seminary has offered to provide food and housing for us so that we can concentrate on transportation (flight, etc.) and material costs.
With the goal of updating and providing better student and professor access to materials, the teams bring along and render days and weeks of work to help these schools and seminaries better operate for God’s glory and in His kingdom.
We also have opportunities to visit churches, encourage missionaries and students who attend the school. All of the team, too, looks forward to using abilities in both library services and in the Spanish language.