A first foray into film-making

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A note from LCMS World Mission missionaries James and Christel, January 2011

It’s been a dream of mine ever since I landed in Latin America to begin producing material aimed directly at a Latino audience for the purpose of sharing the Gospel instead of just the story of how the Gospel is shared. Until now neither my schedule, video tal-ent or my language ability lined up enough to make it worth giving a shot. This December however, Christel went to a conference in Nashville and visited family for two weeks and so I decided to spend every waking hour putting something together.

Together with the national Lutheran church here in Panama, and church president Milton Castillo and his sister Marilu, we wrote a script, found some volunteers to be our actors and planned out an insane three day shooting schedule with youth being trained to run sound equipment for the film. Our target was to produce an innovative and emotionally engaging Christmas short film (11 minutes plus a 4 minute mes-sage) to reach Panamanians with the meaning of Christ-mas and the unadulterated hope of the Gospel.

The themes focused around the idea of incar-

Milton and some youth under our lighting setup for the “manger scene”

Fina Caisamo (Mary) and our original pick for the role of baby Jesus (last minute change due to fever).

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nation, what it means that God would come to be born among and “with us”. This is a theme commonly lost among the glorification of the manger scene (where little Lord Jesus no crying he makes, and the cattle are lowing), we forget what a horrible embarrassment the Lord of the universe being laid in a feeding trough because nobody had space for him would be. With that in mind we sought to tell the story of his humble birth in a modern Panama-nian context. Portraying the virgin Mary as an Embera Indian from the jungle, and His birthplace as the back of a Chinese convenience store (a byword for undignified and dirty in Panamanian society, similar to what a stable may have been in Israel.)

The music was written and recording here in Panama together with Lenin Morales, one of the youth in Loma Cova, we recorded the guitar in my dining room and I played the piano parts on my computer keyboard. It was all shot on a little HD camera and edited on basic software on a World Mission Mac. At the end we produced a hard hitting sermon delivered by leaders, pastors, and laity in the Lutheran church, focusing on our inability to come to Christ, but how He came to us. We also addressed in the sermon the controversial “perfection” of the virgin Mary, explaining why it was necessary to be born of a sinful woman. The film was a challenge to produce (especially

given our zero budget and insanely short schedule) but in the end was met with much acclaim. We were featured on the mainline television station in Panama (TVN) during prime time on Christmas Eve, on the website of the Panamanian SNL (La Cascara) and received offers of future help and publication in Argentina, Mexico, and Costa Rica, and via our special website devoted to con-necting people to the church www.vinocortometraje.com we received many questions and comments (including some debate regarding the controversial view we pro-vided on Mary).

Many people commented that the film brought them to tears, and if nothing else, the Lutheran Church in Panama is a name associated now with the actualization of the Biblical story in today’s world. On the internet the film has received over 4,200 unique views at the time of this writing, most coming from Latin America. We give thanks to God that He has blessed this project beyond our imagination, in some ways similar to the feeding of the five thousand we had little to work with but He used it to bring His Word to many.

Please pray that this film will continue to be successful in reaching Panamanians for years to come, and that more projects like this one can be possible for reaching people in Latin America. Also if anyone has any connections or advice in the filmmaking/audio visual world, either for production or distribution, we’d love to make the contacts for future productions.

Saying Goodbyes

This month also brought the sad news that our good friend and mentor Rev. Dr. Jorge Groh would no lon-ger be the serving as the regional director for Latin Ameri-ca along with his wife Olga. The two of them will be living with their daughters in Ottawa, Canada. This of course is very difficult for all of us, since the Grohs have been a part of our learning and growing experiences in Latin America the entire time. We will miss them dearly and we wish them all the best in their new home.

Please keep our new director Rev. Ted Krey and his family along with all of us in your prayers as we wait anxiously to see what all of these changes in Latin Ameri-ca will bring and for Jorge and Olga as they seek to follow God’s calling in these times of change.

A last team photo before Jorge and Olga (not pictured) traveled from Panama for the last time. In the front are Eunice, Jerona, and Mack, as well as fellow missionary Bruce Wall.