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Mission Yearbook
For nearly 50 years, the Presbyterian Hunger Program (PHP) has worked with Presbyterians and global partners toward the common goal of ending hunger and poverty. Now PHP is recognizing congregations involved in hunger work through a covenant called Hunger Action Congregations.
When Deb Trevino recently stood in the pulpit at Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church, she wasn’t alone. Her guide dog Suzy was with her — settling in to listen as Trevino spoke on what she has learned from her guide dogs about trusting God.
The Most Rev. Paul S. Sarker, moderator of the Church of Bangladesh and bishop of the Diocese of Dhaka, recently visited the Presbyterian Center to celebrate the first 25 years of formal partnership between the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Church of Bangladesh (CoB). The visit also provided an opportunity to discern God’s direction for the future of the partnership.
When I retired from teaching in an inner-city high school in Fresno, California, I thought I was done with the local school district.
Twenty-one years as a teacher was enough for me. My retirement plan was to move to San Francisco and get a job with a
nonprofit. But I could not get a job. I returned to Fresno and was at loose ends. What did I want to do with the rest of my life? More importantly, what did God want me to do with the rest of my life?
Although she never planned it as her life’s vocation, Alla Soroka has been actively working with at-risk children since 2005. She found her passion, and her trust in God, working with teenage prisoners, children and orphans living in the streets of her native Odessa, Ukraine. She will be sharing some of her experiences this fall (Sept. 22–Oct. 16) at Presbyterian churches, universities and theological institutions in the United States as a 2017 International Peacemaker.
Peals of laughter and lively chatter mingled with the whirring and humming of busy sewing machines in the small, makeshift classroom that STITCH volunteers and students now call their temporary home.
STITCH — an acronym for Sewing Together in the Caring Highlands — is a mission of Highland Presbyterian Church in partnership with the Louisville-based Kentucky Refugee Ministries. The 6-year-old ministry provides sewing lessons for refugee women while offering them opportunities to learn English and practice it at the same time.
Congregations wishing to make their facilities more accessible and inclusive of people living with disabilities have a new option for funding enhancements to their campuses: the Accessibility Loan from the Presbyterian Investment & Loan Program (PILP).
One day, while taking a break from studying in the Duke Divinity School library, I got into a conversation that would change the course of my family’s life. As I talked with a stranger, I learned he was the only person in the world with a PhD in New Testament (my field also) who could speak the language of the country where he was training Christians for ministry. This really struck me.
The recovery from 2012’s Hurricane Sandy has been slow for some in New Jersey, especially the underprivileged. Misión Nueva Vida has worked since 2015 to help those in the Metropolitan Mobile Home Park (Metropark) in Moonachie, where floodwaters continue to damage the homes of mostly Hispanic-Latino immigrant families, and a lack of money is rampant. Three trailers have been repaired and raised, and a fourth will soon be completed.
When the Rev. Abby King-Kaiser was hired at Xavier University as associate director of the Dorothy Day Center for Faith and Justice, she was only the second Protestant on staff in the office.
When she walked into her office on her first day, 10 Protestant students were waiting for her. “They wanted to figure out what ministry and community would look like for them on a Jesuit campus,” said King-Kaiser, who began walking through a discernment process with the students. While clubs and smaller churches offered Bible studies for them, the students felt as if there wasn’t a spiritual place for them to feel renewed, energized and challenged to grow in their faith.
