On the day PC(USA) member Francis Ntowe’s sister was buried, there were six other funerals in her small community in Cameroon.
“One of them was a pastor, and all of them had died from HIV/AIDS,” he said.
Building a church and its membership from the ground up is no small feat. Doing it in a country that persecutes members of your faith makes it doubly difficult. But the Rev. Manh Nguyen, pastor of Evangelical Community Church in Hanoi, Vietnam, continues to grow his church despite a government that frowns upon religion.
For more than 17 years, the Presbyterian Hunger Program (PHP), through its Joining Hands initiative, has been tackling the root causes of hunger and poverty. PHP staff recently gathered with representatives from several countries to look at the progress and where to go from here.
In the first episode of a new podcast called “The Word on the Street,” hosted by the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s Charles Wiley and Alonzo Johnson, a Kentucky Hall of Fame broadcaster recalled being in a person’s home during a time of tragedy and being asked to pray for them.
Applications are now being accepted for the 2018–2019 Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) class. This is the 25th anniversary of a program that is helping to shape the next generation of globally aware, faithful and passionate leaders.
Folks living at Westminster Oaks Retirement Community in Tallahassee, Florida, have lived through some of the chapters of history that students study in class today. Chaplain Taylor Phillips reaches out to area high school and college classes, inviting teachers and students to come to the Westminster Oaks campus to hear the residents share their eyewitness accounts of historical moments.
Lucketts, Virginia, is not a place that has diners or coffee shops. The one restaurant in this small town in the food and wine country of rural Southwest Virginia is closed on Mondays.
Lydia Cordero Cabrera has a difficult job. As general director for a crisis center in Mexico, she works daily with women who are facing life-and-death situations in their homes. The center, Casa Amiga Centro de Crisis, is in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, across the border from El Paso, Texas.
Like thousands of Presbyterian congregations across the country, the church I serve in Albuquerque, La Mesa Presbyterian Church, knows the reality of food insecurity in the community surrounding the church and among our members. Recent studies indicate that 70,000 New Mexicans seek food every week and some 27 percent of children in the state suffer as a result of food insecurity. Our neighborhood is a lower-income area, so every child at the adjacent elementary school qualifies for a free breakfast and lunch daily, from the federally funded National School Lunch Program.
Presbyterians are celebrating another significant victory for migrant workers’ justice, as the ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s has agreed to sign on to the Milk with Dignity Program , a campaign to improve conditions for migrant workers in the dairy industry.
