ARI team time

Once a year the A Rocha International team steps out from behind our screens to enjoy some quality in-person time together. With three of us in the USA and a fourth with a Stateside conference to attend, this year we met in the beautiful Texas Hill Country – home to the Nine-banded Armadillo Dasypus novemcinctus,  Whitetailed Deer Odocoileus virginianus and Western Diamondback Rattlesnake Crotalus atrox as well as some slightly random zebras!  

We arrived at our scenic location in time to witness several established oaks being brutally ripped from the ground. For the entire week, morning to night, heavy machinery belched out noise and fumes as a new building took shape at impressive speed. It was an apt reminder of the complex context of A Rocha’s work, in a world where often nature is forced to make way for human endeavour but in which God’s design is for us to all to flourish, living equitably together.  

Later, we were much more encouraged by a visit to A Rocha USA’s habitat restoration site in the Bull Creek watershed. Texas Conservation Director Verónica Godoy led us on a pleasant hike along the creek and through meadows and forests where we observed invasive privet that had been painstakingly girdled by A Rocha USA partners, staff and volunteers as well as meadows being converted from a monoculture of invasive King Ranch Blue Stem to a myriad of native wildflowers and grasses.  

Spread across eight countries, the A Rocha International team has responsibility for supporting and representing A Rocha organizations worldwide, for ensuring everyone maintains high standards and for initiating new work. While we were together, we worked on strategy, thought about how to know whether our conservation efforts are effective, prayed and studied the Bible, and tried to get the hang of the two-step! Now back into the swing of being a virtual community, we are grateful for meaningful work caring for God’s world, and a strong, unified and multi-cultural team.