Every morning when I wake up here in San Jose, Costa Rica, I wonder what the day will hold. A trip to the hospital? A phone call from a family in need of food? Over and over in recent months, I have been reminded that being a mission co-worker of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) means standing alongside those in need.
I began reforming my understanding of mission work when I participated in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Young Adult Volunteer program after I graduated from college in 2002. I served in England, where the PC(USA)’s church partner was running an after-school program for at-risk youth. I received the most profound impression that year from the YAV orientation and all that I learned from global partners in the community in which I was immersed — namely, that I had so much more to learn about the world around me.
Listen. That was the first and best advice I received about being with the people of Haiti. Now, as a mission co-worker hosting groups visiting Haiti, some for the first time, I try to explain the importance of listening. And when I do, I often remember the lessons I learned when I listened on my very first trip.
In 2011, Ruling Elder Anita Sue Wright Torres became the first woman to be elected moderator of the United Presbyterian Church of Brazil (IPU). In 2017, she became the first moderator in the IPU’s history to be elected twice.
When mission co-workers speak at churches around the country, they seek to educate. But sometimes they motivate, and that’s what happened to Nina Geist, a fourth-grader at Rogers Park Elementary, who attends First Presbyterian Church in Anchorage, Alaska.
According to a United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime 2016 Global Report, nearly 71 percent of human trafficking victims are women and girls, and one-third are children.
On Thursday, President Trump travels to the southern border of the U.S. to make his case for a $5 billion border wall to protect the country from an invasion of migrants. Mission co-worker Mark Adams has lived on the border since 1998. He believes that Christians are called to see the migrant issue very differently.
Global challenges can only be faced together, grounded in faith and prayer. That’s just one of the conclusions from the second World Mission global partner consultation in Berlin.
“The creation of God is not an historic fact but a continuous and permanent action,” the Rev. Jose Luis Casal, Director of Presbyterian World Mission (PWM), told representatives of the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s global partners in Africa at a two-day conference in Nairobi at the end of November. “God never tires of creating something new!”
