Beyond the Brokenness

SIL LEAD exists to serve some of the most vulnerable populations in the world—minority language communities of people who are typically poor and almost completely powerless. These people are outsiders, sometimes in communities so small that they barely register on the national consciousness of their respective countries. But these people do matter.

Every individual matters.

It’s a mindset encoded in the DNA of our organization, and it’s one of the reasons that many of our staff are just a little bit anomalous, themselves. They are people who don’t quite “fit” with what you’d expect.

When SIL LEAD Associate Director Christof Weber first started with SIL LEAD, he was not precisely the candidate you’d expect for an important position in a faith-based nonprofit.

Sure, he’s an intelligent guy with a great deal of relevant work experience.

But at the time, Christof was in a difficult place.

Personal struggles had brought him to reduced circumstances. He didn’t have a clear plan. He was, in a word, vulnerable.

That’s when he met Executive Director Paul Frank, who saw past Christof’s circumstances to Christof, the person. He knew that Christof had a story, and that this story was actually his strength.

Christof Weber began his life in Beverly, Massachusetts, right near Boston. He didn’t stay there long, though. Shortly after he was born, Christof went to Chiapas in Southern Mexico for a few months and then to Peru, where his parents were assigned to work in Bible translation with the Huallaga Quechua people.

Christof lived in Peru, off and on, until he graduated from high school.

“Off and on” is, in this case, something of an understatement. Between kindergarten and high school, Christof was to change schools some thirteen times. Although many times that meant returning to schools he’d previously attended, Christof could be forgiven for thinking of himself as a human pinball. First his family lived in Lima, then Huánuco, and then a village called Llacón—a place that at the time had no running water or electricity.

All that before he even turned six.

Then Christof’s family returned to the United States for his father’s doctoral studies.

Apparently, young Christof had acquired a unique English/Spanish/Quechua accent that was perceived as a speech impediment; so for the first few months of elementary school in New York, he was required to take a special phonics course.

Shortly thereafter, his parents loaded him, his younger sister, and all their possessions into a stripped-down school bus and drove across the country to Los Angeles.

Christof continued to bounce around schools, moving back to Peru for sixth grade, then out to the jungle, to a place called Yarinacocha. There he lived in a boarding-school type situation with a number of other children whose parents were living in remote places throughout Peru.

Thirteen school moves is a lot to cover.

So we’ll just say that by the start of 10th grade, Christof had been back to the United States several times, to Colombia, and then back to Peru. Then he clandestinely re-painted the high school pink one night, proved he was a bright kid who needed extra challenges to remain engaged, and ended up graduating from a boarding school in Ecuador in 1987, at the age of sixteen.

The best laid plans…

After graduating with a class of thirty-seven people, Christof’s first class at UCLA had more than five hundred people in it. He double majored in Latin American Studies and Political Science, planning on a career as a diplomat. But when he had an opportunity to go with some former ambassadors on a tour in Mexico, one of them told Christof that the best way to become an ambassador was to get super rich and donate money to the right people.

That was the end of that dream.

Christof found he only needed nine classes to get a Masters in Latin American Studies—so that’s what he did. Then he ended up shifting into finance, working his way up to the position of Senior Vice President at the Trust Company of the West (TCW), a then privately owned money management firm where he served as their Latin America Economist and Sovereign Risk Analyst.

Perhaps it was an odd position for a former aspiring ambassador. But even though Christof wasn’t in it to make enough money to buy himself a diplomatic appointment, there was still a certain logic to the pinball-child ending up in a position that took him all over Latin America.

While still at TCW, Christof began taking classes at Fuller Theological Seminary. He had absolutely no desire to ever become a pastor. But then, in 2003, he and his family moved to Central New York to care for his aging grandfather so that Christof’s parents could return to Peru. In order to complete his Masters, he took classes as he could at three different seminaries, fulfilled two pastoral internships, joined his church’s staff, decided to pursue pastoral ministry, and was ordained. And that is what ended up bringing him to Virginia where he pastored a small church for five years,

Then, things fell apart.

Christof is intelligent, hardworking, and well-educated. Both his parents have doctorates (we featured his mother, Diana, in this profile), and he knew from an early age that he had a lot of options available to him. But after five years in academia, ten years in international finance, ten years in pastoral ministry, and after his marriage ended in divorce, Christof didn’t know where to go or what to do next. He went briefly back into finance but that didn’t last long. He was unemployed and for a time lived in a tent. Drifting. Unsure of what to do next.

And that is when his mom told him about SIL LEAD.

Again, Dr. Frank looked at Christof and didn’t see his situation. He saw an intelligent person with a history of leadership and international experience. He saw a man who could make a difference. And he gave him a chance.

He also saw a man who’d grown up in Latin America around people who cared deeply about helping people in minority language groups learn to read and write in their own languages. He knew that Christof had seen this work translate into real, lasting change, as people who had spent centuries ashamed of their own language and culture came to feel pride, instead.

Christof’s father’s work led not only to the translation of the old and new testaments of the Bible into Huallaga Quechua, but also to a highly respected grammar, a dictionary, and countless academic articles that demonstrate to any doubters that Huallaga Quechua is just as important as any other language. In fact, some of his dad’s pioneering work in computational linguistics is still the basis for some of the tools SIL LEAD and others use around the world. And his mother’s work has, without exaggeration, contributed to hundreds of thousands of children and adults learning to read and write in their own language. This was the air he’d breathed, his entire childhood.

Christof was hired.

He’s enjoyed being a part of that work with SIL LEAD, even as COVID-19 has reframed the narrative and brought a razor-sharp focus to the need to bring people good information in the language they best understand.

In these uncertain times, SIL LEAD is grateful to know we can count on someone like Christof Weber, a person used to living slightly outside the “norm,” to serve people who’ve been pushed so far to the fringes that they no longer have a voice.

As Chris has re-discovered his own voice and place in the world, he helps others to find theirs. He still lives in Virginia (the longest he’s lived anywhere) where he works from home and is happily married to his high school sweetheart who, sadly, still lives west of Chicago.