Transition
Rod and Sherry Boyd

After months of delay, we finally traveled to Panama last month. We were able to meet with some of our national church leaders and had a wonderful dinner with our missionary family. Because of Covid restrictions, schools are still closed and gatherings are restricted, so we were not able to visit pastors and school leaders.

Our Latin America Resource and Training Center team has done a wonderful job of wrapping up major construction projects during our absence. The Center looks
wonderful! It was so gratifying to see all the work that has been accomplished and see things actually look finished. We are so grateful to the dozens of individuals, ministries and churches that have made this dream possible! We are including a number of the photos that we took.

The Lord gave us the vision for the Center more than 15 years ago. As we shared in our Spring Panorama article Faithful, He also gave us a leadership transition plan that coincides with our overall plan to finish our missionary career. We shared, “We are keenly aware of our responsibility to pass on leadership and responsibility. Our desire has been to invest in the next generation of leaders, to finish well with new leaders in place. Almost 15 years ago the Lord gave us the 5-5-5 plan: 5 years to find a Timothy, 5 years to train him and 5 years to support him. The Lord has been faithful to answer our prayer and has honored our plan and timetable.”

We are now nearing the end of the process with all transitions nearly complete. We are very happy with those God has now called to replace us in various ministry areas and leadership positions. Some of these are direct appointments that we made or guided; others were made by other ministry leaders.

Fellow Panama missionaries Tara and Gerritt Kenyon became the new Panama ChildHope Coordinators in May this year. God will use their vision for helping at risk children and youth to strengthen our schools and expand their ministry to their communities.

El Salvador missionary Bob Bueno assumed leadership of CIECAD (Central America Christian School Commission) in January 2020. We believe he will provide excellent leadership to the team of national directors and ChildHope missionary coordinators as they encourage hundreds of schools and thousands of teachers through the CIECAD Congresses and other initiatives.

Fellow Panama missionaries Miguel and Maria Morales assumed leadership of the Panama Resource & Advisory Center for Bible Schools in March 2018. Miguel was elected as Coordinator for Christian Education Services in July 2020 after serving as Assistant Coordinator since 2018. Miguel also assumed operational responsibility for the Latin America Resource & Training Center in 2020 and just last month assumes responsibility for LARTC construction and development. We believe that Miguel and Maria will take these ministries to new levels of effective ministry.

We currently serve as Coordinators for Educational Resources for Christian Education Services. Much of our focus the last few years has been in this area: advising our Faith & Action Bible school curriculum series, providing support to Library Services, developing a digital library for Bible schools and strengthening our alliance with Logos Bible Software, the premiere digital resource provider. We will also continue to strengthen LARTC’s library to become one of the best biblical, theological, and ministerial libraries in Spanish-speaking Latin America.

We also continue to serve on the LARTC board. Our team met recently to review construction progress as well as future development options. We received miraculous offerings during the last twelve months that enabled us to complete:

• First floor of the training addition

• Divide the large existing classroom into two classrooms (the new large classroom is in the training addition)

• Complete the perimeter security wall and electric gate

• Sidewalks on the front and sides of the building

• Parking lot and road gravel base and surfacing

• Parking lot lighting

• Roof-line facade and soffits

• Backside air conditioner compressor balcony railing

• Final outside building painting

• Landscaping

The Center is now 98% complete! The only major construction that remains is to complete the second floor of the training addition. With Covid conditions improving in Panama, we anticipate the the Center will resume hosting activies the beginning of 2022. The board has decided to wait until then to reevaluate the design for this space and construction timetable. In the meantime, we have received about $3,500 of the needed $40,000 and will continue to save for this project.

Thank you for standing with us all these years! We anticipate that our transition plans will be finished by the middle of next year. We’ll keep you updated on our retirement plans. In the meantime, we have decided to not return to Panama to live. Our visit to Panama last month, along with the opportunity to visit with the Kenyons and Morales, helped to confirm our decision. Instead, we will travel to Panama and other countries to visit and support our team and ministries. We have a wonderful apartment always waiting for us at the LARTC!