{"id":9103,"date":"2019-06-14T18:50:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-14T18:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=9103"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:35:04","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:35:04","slug":"a-friendly-separation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=9103","title":{"rendered":"A FRIENDLY SEPARATION"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recently one of my Facebook posts about a trip to Port-au-Prince that was part of Cowman School’s \u201cseparation from OMS\u201d\nraised a lot of questions and I suddenly realized that we have not explained\nsome exciting and challenging changes in the works for us and the school.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"
Some of our group heading toward our ride to Port-au-Prince for fingerprinting. The police station there is apparently the only place in Haiti where this can be done!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

Yes, Cowman is gaining its autonomy from One Mission\nSociety. I want to emphasize that this is an amicable separation. Indeed, it is\nthe initiative of OMS and has been in the works for several years. In the very near future, the School Board will \u201cown\u201d\nthe school.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"
As part of our documentation, we each had to provide a passport-sized photo. Mr. James and I had photos that got rejected by the authorities because we weren't wearing suit coats! Fortunately, just a short trudge through the mud outside the police station, some entrepreneurs had set up a photo business with spare sports coats and digital cameras.\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

There are three main realities driving this separation:<\/p>\n\n\n

1)\u00a0 As a global organization, OMS has a long standing\nhistory of starting and growing various ministries and then \u201csetting them free\u201d\nwhen they are established enough to operate independently. I have always\nadmired this modus operandi: in time it gives more ownership to nationals and\nfrees OMS to move on to new horizons. Cowman was started as a\none-room-schoolhouse for missionary kids in the 1960s. The student body this\npast school year was 180 with a staff of 60. It is as stable as any ministry in\nHaiti can be and ready to stand on its own.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

2)\u00a0 OMS has no expertise in education or in running\nschools. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span>In a sense, Cowman was a \u201chappy\naccident\u201d \u2013 a simple homeschool operation that grew classrooms, staff and a substantial student body as it spread to serve a need within the local Haitian population. There\nare no resources from OMS headquarters to address the current challenges of\ncross-cultural education or our unique curriculum and teacher training needs and there’s little sense in OMS directing the director of the school.\u00a0<\/span>Happily, about 18 months ago, one of our School Board members put us in contact with\nTeachBeyond, a sending agency (not unlike OMS) that specializes in mobilizing\nand placing missionary teachers in established Christian schools around the\nworld (very unlike OMS). The School Board signed onto a partnership with TeachBeyond\nwhich has already resulted in three new teachers \u2013 each one mobilized in two or\nthree months rather than two or three years.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

3)\u00a0 Most importantly, though, for the present timing\nof the separation is a legal consideration. Without going into detail regarding\na very complicated situation, OMS Haiti is currently motivated to protect its\nvarious ministries from being pulled unnecessarily into any legal battles the organization\nitself might face in the future. To be clear, there are currently no substantive\nthreats, but suffice it to say this is protection against conceivable future perils.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"
Melissa had lost her photos, so she got the Glamour Shot treatment too. She refused to put her arms through a jacket that had already had untold occupants. \ud83d\ude09<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

It has been a long, complicated, and costly experience, but it\nis nearly complete. The Board has worked on creating a 501C3 on the state side\nand Melissa has met for months with a lawyer in Haiti to work out all the details\non the Haiti side. Our trip to Port-au-Prince on the Monday after the school\nyear ended, with four Americans and five Haitians, was in order to get our\nHaiti-side \u201cboard\u201d members fingerprinted. (This is a separate board from the\ngoverning board.) Hopefully, this is the last step. It will take a few weeks\nfor the prints to be processed and a background check on each individual to be\ncompleted.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"
Here's the guy printing our photos. His printer is attached to a car battery at his feet!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

Once the separation is complete, OMS will continue to have a presence and a voice on the School Board\ninto the future. I am sure that the school will remain open to help from the\nmission teams that come to OMS to serve in various ministries. Many things won\u2019t\nreally change much. But in some basic sense, this separation will free the school up\nto move and to grow in new ways.<\/p>\n\n\n

We shall see where the Lord takes us and the school on this\nnew leg of the journey. As always, we appreciate your prayers and support along the way!<\/p>\n\n\n

(Any questions? Email me at steve_gross@juno.com or call me over the next few weeks while we are in the States at (812) 900 – 2467.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently one of my Facebook posts about a trip to Port-au-Prince that was part of Cowman School’s \u201cseparation from OMS\u201d raised a lot of questions and I suddenly realized that we have not explained some exciting and challenging changes in the works for us and the school. Yes, Cowman is gaining its autonomy from One […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9103"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9108,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9103\/revisions\/9108"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}