Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Missionary Travel and Family Names

On the previous post, Dan introduced us to how ECI has raised awareness about global warming amongst Evangelicals in the US and how we could respond to these 21st century challenges. Picking up on this traveling subject, let me share our most recent traveling experience.


As of today, the Bonilla-Giovanetti family can travel outside of Chile again. Why so? Need some history and background. Today we got new passports and ID cards for our youngest, DJ, with the correct family names. Even more confused?

You see, when I was born in Puerto Rico I was named Miss Mayra Rebeca Giovanetti Garcia (1st name, middle name, father’s name, mother’s name). Twenty-four years later when Carlos and I got married, I became Mrs. Mayra Rebeca Giovanetti Garcia. Yep, all four names the same, only a change of title. It worked just fine while in Puerto Rico, until we begun our joined missionary traveling adventures…

Our first overseas stop was Israel. After three years of marriage, we had to prove to the Israeli local authorities how was it that we were married and carrying different family names. Hence when God moved us out of Israel and into the United States, I had my mind set to switching my family names to Carlos’ to ease processes for us and our future children. It was the right thing to do for those living in the States and Israel.

By our fifth wedding anniversary I had become Mrs. Mayra R. Bonilla. It felt odd, and Carlos was not comfortable with my decision. My mom warned me I would regret it like she had, but her reasons were those related to her divorce. I was not worried about an upcoming divorce and truly felt this was the right thing to do, so I slowly got used to being called Mrs. Bonilla instead.

Funny, my oldest brother was often called Mr. Ithier after his wife, when visiting her working site; and, my mom once again was called Mrs. Giovanetti while caring for that oldest brother while in the hospital in the States.

Years went by and children came along. Fortunately, the way the system works in the States, our son (born in PA) and daughter (born in FL) were registered as Bonilla-Giovanetti, hence carrying both our family names, father and mother as it is our Hispanic tradition. It was a done deal. Having changed my family name did not affect our offspring. That is until we moved to Chile. Little did we know what was ahead of us when we accepted to be missionaries to Chile and when the Lord blessed us with another child…

Five years after our daughter, and with two miscarriages in between, we were blessed with another daughter, a Chilean (by birth) daughter. Since all my US paperwork has Bonilla, all my Chilean paperwork also has Bonilla. My husband is Bonilla there and here. We went to register our newborn baby girl and our ID cards are requested. You are getting the picture, right? Dad’s ID number and last name—Bonilla. Mom’s ID number and last name—Bonilla. The baby was then registered as Bonilla Bonilla. It did not matter how we explained the situation, to how many officials, what arguments were used; the girl had to be Bonilla Bonilla because the computer assigned the family names based on the information on those ID cards. That was 2004.

We spent our US/PR assignment year with the sadness that our DJ had incorrect family names. You see, for Hispanics, having the same family name twice is equal to being an illegitimate child. She had a different family name than her older siblings. That was unacceptable. But we needed to return to Chile to fix it. Fortunately, we were assigned back to Chile and in May 2006 we begun the process to correct her registration information. For that we had to hire a lawyer. We chose the one with the weirdest family names so he would know what it is like to have foreign influence in your family tree.

Document after document, paperwork after paperwork, weeks and months after weeks and months, we had to provide new documentation. We had to request legalized documentation from Puerto Rico and even registered our Puerto Rican celebrated marriage here in Chile which documents my birth family names. We had to continue to wait until at last the judge declared our daughter, already two-and-a-half years old, is to be named Bonilla Giovanetti. Then came our requests of new and corrected registration certificate, birth certificate, and new pictures for a new passport and ID…

Today we have in our hands all these new and corrected documents that say she is Bonilla Giovanetti. End of the story? No… Now we have to correct her US passport and Social Security to match it for we had to use one Bonilla alone, as recommended by the Embassy. As for me, this has taught me a lesson: no matter where I am or my legal status, I am the same person that was born Mayra Rebeca Giovanetti Garcia. Steps to correct my paperwork need to wait until after our deputation trip to the States this fall because tickets already show Bonilla on them. I am still legally Bonilla but for practical purposes have resumed using my birth family names.

But we can now travel again. Since May 2006 until today we did not have a passport or an ID for DJ to travel with. Now we do. The details ahead seem nothing compared to what we have already been through. It will take time for all to get used to the correct names, but now our three children are Bonilla-Giovanetti, born of the same parents. DJ will not have to give explanations about any differences anymore.

Hopefully there is a lesson or two our children can catch from their old folks; and particularly our daughters will pay more attention to our voice and their husbands than I did to my mom and my husband when they warned me about this. So far, one dear couple has avoided these same difficulties for having an open hear to our advice. Hopefully by sharing our experience now, others will have more criteria to decide what is best in their own particular situation. This may be irrelevant to those in countries and cultures where the tradition is simply to switch family names, but for a family with Hispanic roots like ours, regardless of the country we live in, it is important to keep our tradition of two names and two last names in our legal documents, with both father and mother included and that is how we want to enjoy it.

It is interesting that our son’s literature materials include a book entitled “Children’s Missionary Library” that among others shares the story of Ann Hasseltine, one of the first female American foreign missionaries, a.k.a. Ann Judson—friend of Burma. It is always refreshing to read stories of our forefathers and foremothers in mission and to see how the storyteller emphasizes more on her birth family name than her being a Judson by marriage.

As for me, thankfully, my Shepherd knows me by name and I recognize His voice when He calls me. I rejoice in the assurance that my name is written in Heaven in the book of life… That is also our prayer for our children as they embark in their many own missionary traveling adventures.

Now, how will your family names change your travel plans, or how will your travel plans change your family names? You will only know when you experience it yourself!


Blessed journeys...

Mayra Giovanetti

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Monday, March 05, 2007

Missionary Travel and Global Warming

The recent efforts of the Evangelical Climate Initiative have done much to raise awareness about global warming amongst Evangelicals in the United States, challenging us to take action on this important issue. This initiative, of course, is fully consistent with the objectives of International Ministries' Go Global Strategic Plan.

One of the core mission principles emphasized in the Go Global Strategic Plan is Christ-like ministry, which is described as follows:

We believe that Jesus met human need with a holistic salvation, one that touched all aspects of life. Therefore, our witness to Jesus Christ also integrates verbal proclamation of the gospel with response to human need and care for the creation (p.8, italics mine).

Based on this principle, IM has developed the following vision for Christ-like mission:

Jesus preached the good news of salvation and demonstrated it with actions, and God's work of salvation will ultimately embrace not only persons but creation itself (Romans 8:19-21; Revelation 21:1). International Ministries serves as one of God's agents to make real the redeeming love of Christ in a world of personal sin, social injustice and ecological destruction. International Ministries focuses especially on ministry to and with the poor, seeking together with them the coming fullness of God's Reign (Luke 4:18-19) (p.12, italics mine).
Not surprisingly, one of several strategies that IM has derived from this vision is to:

Promote effective stewardship, economic self-sufficiency and the sustainable use of the earth's resources (p.12, italics mine).
So with these things in mind, I have been giving a lot of thought over the past several months as to what global warming means for me as a missionary. In particular, I have been challenged by two different op-eds (see here and here) that have raised serious concerns about the contributions of airline travel to global warming. The first reports that:

Carbon emissions from aircraft into the higher atmosphere are thrice as potent as those rising from ground level, (Ian) Jack writes. To slow the coming debacle, "because all we can do now is to modify the severity of the inevitable," he makes a radical proposal that we go virtually nowhere: "We would need to ration the carbon dioxide produced by traveling to an allowance of no more than half a ton a year for every human being alive today." That translates to 2,200 kilometers (1,320 miles) by car a year, with no air travel, or 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) by car a year with a round-trip international flight once every 15 years.
The second op-ed notes that:

Now two factors are conspiring to make airline travel a hot topic in the global-warming debate: If current trends continue, the number of airline tickets sold per year will double to more than 9 billion by 2025, according to a new study by the Airports Council International. At the same time, experts see no viable jet-fuel alternative to kerosene. While some modest fuel-conservation measures still can be taken, more and more people are concluding that fewer flights may be the only way to cut airline emissions significantly.
Assuming that this data is accurate, the implications for missionaries should be fairly obvious as we are highly dependent on air travel to do our jobs. At minimum, missionary families must fly round-trip internationally about once every five years or so as we rotate back and forth between home assignment and overseas assignment. But for a variety of reasons, these round trips often occur with greater frequency. During deputation, most of us are typically required to fly on a regular basis--sometimes several times per month. And back in our countries of service, many of us routinely host short-term mission teams that, for the most part, rely on air travel to reach us.

So as missionaries who are committed to the Go Global mandate for creation care and, more specifically, the recommendations of the Evangelical Climate Initiative, what can we do? I would suggest that we follow two basic strategies: First, we should ask members of our support networks to help offset the ecological impact of any travel we are required to do as missionaries. Indeed, we might even suggest that IM require that we do this as part of the clearance process before approving our work-related travel plans. Likewise, we should encourage short-term mission teams visiting our host countries to do the same. Evangelical author and speaker Shane Claiborne of the Simple Way offers some suggestions as to how this might be done:

Being mindful of the impact that our hyper-mobile pace and fuel use have on Creation, and of the fragility of the current patterns of consumption that have led to wars over natural resources and the degradation of God’s earth, Shane has a commitment to offset the ecological impact of his travel. There are two ways a group hosting Shane to speak can participate: either have a group of folks fast (go without) oil for a day the week Shane visits (a good guideline would be, at least one person go without fuel one day for every 100 miles Shane travels) -- this may mean something as simple as carpooling or biking to work or as imaginative as converting your car to run off used veggie oil (awip.us) –OR- (less exciting) you can add an additional $100 to the honorarium and Shane will donate that to a group dedicated to erasing the footprint his travel has on the environment. For more information on this, check out demotorize.org.
Secondly, we need to work to reduce the level of travel we do as missionaries, period. Amongst other things, that means trying to reduce unnecessary travel between our host countries and the U.S. and Puerto Rico in between home assignments. Likewise, we might suggest that IM consider increasing the average length of an overseas term of service from four years to five, or even six, as a means of reducing the overall amount of international travel that we as missionaries must do. When we are serving on home assignment, we should work hard to schedule the bulk of our deputation assignments in geographically contiguous areas, thus minimizing the necessity for air travel. And when deputation assignments must be done in more geographically distant locales, perhaps we as missionaries should request additional travel time in between speaking engagements so that we can utilize alternative forms of transportation such as buses or trains.

These suggestions, of course, are just a start and I am certain that most missionaries will be creative in thinking of others. At the same time, I expect that there will probably be many objections as well. Indeed, even as I write these words my own inner self is voicing a multitude of excuses as to why I should just forget about all of this and avoid making my life more complicated than it all ready is. But then, I am reminded of the reality of our situation:

Just a few decades from now, people may look back at the early 21st century with both fondness and horror as the Era of the Cheap Airline Flight. They may wax nostalgic for the days when visiting distant relatives and taking vacations in exotic locales were easily affordable for the masses. But they also may be alarmed at how long it took the world to realize the havoc that unfettered air travel was wreaking on the world's climate.
Air travel was unheard of back when the modern missions movement began in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Pioneer missionaries such as William and Dorothy Carey and Ann and Adoniram Judson traveled for months by boat in order to reach their countries of service and, in many instances, spent years or decades abroad before returning home if they ever returned home at all. By the time air travel began to change the face of the modern missions movement in the mid-twentieth century, the earlier generations of missionaries had already succeeded in raising up strong national churches on every inhabited continent of the world. The challenges of global warming and the need to significantly reduce our air travel will undoubtedly change the face of the modern missions movement once again. The question is this: Are we going to fight that change? Or are we going to pioneer new ways to do mission in spite of those changes?

If our history as a mission society is any guide to the future, then my guess is that IM will figure out how to retool our methods so that we can stay on the cutting edge of mission even in the midst of the changes brought about by global warming. But more importantly, I hope that IM would not be alone in its efforts. Following the lead of the Evangelical Climate Initiative, I hope that other missions agencies would give their own use of air travel a long hard look in light of the realities of global warming and that, ultimately, they too would adopt specific policies and strategies on creation care. By the grace of God, may we all find new ways to continue advancing the kingdom for his glory!

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Thursday, March 01, 2007

Welcome to Global Perspectives

As missionaries, we live at the intersection of multiple worlds—our home culture(s) in which we were raised and our host culture(s) in which we live and work. From this vantage point, we are cultural brokers, seeking to facilitate communication and understanding between people of all cultures. In this blog, we have come together as a group of American Baptist missionaries to offer our Global Perspectives on culture, mission, and world events. We hope that the posts on this blog will not only educate and inform, but will also challenge you to broaden your understanding of the world in which we live and help you to see the world from the unique cross-cultural perspective that we offer. Additionally, we hope that you will join us in dialogue by posting any questions or comments you might have about our blog entries.

Grace and peace,

Daniel Schweissing and Mayra Giovanetti
Co-Moderators for Global Perspectives


[DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed herein are solely those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policies or viewpoints of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society (aka International Ministries) or its national partners, the ABC/USA, or the moderators of Global Perspectives.]

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