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DiggField Notes: Uruguay
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Our segment from Uruguay, to which you can link from this page, demonstrates how “people power” can change lives. My colleagues Michael McGuinnes and William Jarrett and I learned that first hand.
Uruguay is not big. In fact, except for Surinam, it’s the smallest nation on the South American continent. Uruguay’s entire population is only three million, with about a third of that in the capital city of Montevideo.
The dominant colonial powers on the continent for three hundred years were Spain and Portugal, not Great Britain. So the Anglican Church does not have the historic foothold found in Africa, North America, and Southeast Asia.
What the church does have are members with heart, energy, and spirit.
Uruguay has a sizable urban middle class, a literacy rate of more than ninety-seven percent, and an economy that exports a lot of agriculture products in a nation where farming is still a dominant activity. For many, it’s a comfortable life here.
But for those people living on the margins, the Anglican Church often fills the gap.
An estimated three thousand children and teenagers are homeless and living on the streets. Even with my twenty years of volunteer experience with shelters in the United States, there’s something about seeing kids so young, so alone, filing into a church-run shelter for a meal and a bed, that’s impossible to forget.
That’s just one example of the ministries which Anglicans in Uruguay are operating, with some government funding, but mostly because they are committed to bringing a message of hope to the often ignored.
So I’ll hope you’ll watch the video, notice the women and men at work in Uruguay, and perhaps be inspired by their selfless dedication. I know I was!