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World Mission
For more than a half-century, the Louisville Presbyterian Furlough Home has been a place of respite for more than 350 mission co-workers working overseas in World Mission for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Whether the country where they walked alongside their partners was undergoing civil strife or they just needed a few weeks to recharge after years of work in the mission field, Furlough Home, on the campus of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, provided them a safe, quiet and welcoming haven.
The second annual Presbyterian Week of Action will begin Monday, Aug. 23, with a deep dive into the Middle East and the United States’ role in its recent history and future in a day titled “Middle East Peace … Our Peace.”
David Guervil, who’s been consulting for Presbyterian Disaster Assistance in Haiti throughout political unrest, Hurricane Matthew in 2016, Saturday’s 7.2-magnitude earthquake and the tropical storm that followed, told an online gathering Thursday that most Haitians survive “on a daily basis. Every day they have to fight. Every day they struggle for the next day.”
Since the 7.2-magnitude earthquake hit Haiti Saturday, people have been sleeping outside waiting for possible aftershocks. When tropical storm Grace hit Monday, they had yet another horrible choice to make.
The Rev. Edwin González-Castillo said Monday he knows the Haitian people will overcome the most recent calamity to befall them, Saturday’s 7.2-magnitude earthquake that has killed at least 1,300 people to date, injured thousands and left many tens of thousands without adequate shelter, food, water and access to health care.
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance and Presbyterian World Mission have been in contact with their partners in Haiti following Saturday morning’s 7.2-magnitude earthquake and the aftershocks that have followed.
On August 4, the people of Lebanon observed a National Day of Mourning to mark the anniversary of the port explosion in Beirut that has been called the biggest non-nuclear explosion ever recorded, killing more than 200 people, injuring 7,000 and causing an estimated $4.6 billion in damage.
In 2013, mission co-workers Cindy Corell and Mark Hare were working with Viljean Louis, coordinator of the Peasant Movement of Bayonnais in Haiti. More than 100 people in the mountain community arrived to receive training for starting yard gardens. They were to learn the skills and then share them with neighbors.
When migrants began arriving in large numbers, the Methodist Church Milan started discussions about how to create a culture of welcome. But members didn’t just talk. They are living fully within their own creation that has become a model for like-minded congregations around the world.
Mission co-workers Dan and Elizabeth Turk, who have served in Madagascar for more than 20 years, continue to shelter-in-place in Florida, but are working daily with global partners through Skype, Zoom, and WhatsApp to address the growing twin pandemics of COVID-19 and severe food insecurity facing the world’s fifth-largest island nation and one of the world’s poorest countries.
