The Rev. Sharyl Dixon is now in her sixth year serving Kingston Presbyterian Church in Kingston, New Jersey. When she started serving the church — be it visiting the women’s Bible studies or shaking hands at the door after a service — Dixon realized that what she was witnessing, in different forms, was caregiving, whether it was for a spouse with dementia, ailing parents or children with special needs. Dixon realized there was a need to care for those offering care to others.
Fort Caroline Presbyterian Church, which I serve as interim pastor, is 60 years old and has long passed its “glory days.” It’s in the Arlington area in Jacksonville, Florida, a neighborhood in the midst of transition. When I arrived nearly four years ago as the part-time ecumenical pastor, we were worshiping alongside about 20 people. We have only two couples in their 50s; most worshipers are 70–98 years of age.
Recent controversies over migration at the United States’ southern border have been mirrored by similar fights in Europe, including England, where a surge of asylum seekers from the Syrian conflict brought the issue to a boil in 2015.
Nearly two years after the devastation of Hurricane Maria, the 36 members of the Iglesia Presbiteriana Rosa Gonzalez southwest of San Juan, Puerto Rico, have concluded that a good way to serve their Guaynabo community is through a church-provided health-care facility.
Many individuals and families are just one paycheck away from homelessness, explained Rachel Eliser, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) serving with Safe Parking LA, a nonprofit committed to providing a safe and secure place for vehicle dwellers to sleep. The Safe Parking LA program is modeled after programs in other cities in California, including Santa Barbara, San Diego and San Jose, as well as communities in Washington state and Oregon.
“I have faith that God will dry up the Rio Grande so that I may safely cross,” he said. He had been on the journey from Honduras to the U.S. for a month and a half when we met him in a migrant shelter in Arriaga, Mexico. His teenage son was traveling with him. He told us about the pressure on his son to join a gang and the lack of lawful means to support oneself in his nation. He talked of seeing people murdered in the street.
The church in Davydovo, Russia, was a thriving community of 1,000 members from five surrounding villages before the revolution. It was abruptly closed by the Communist authorities in 1936. The building was used for storage and then as a club but was neglected for 70 years. The roof collapsed around 1960, and there was nothing left but the shell of a building — only walls.
Why would families leave Guatemala to work in a meat-packing plant in Ohio?
Members of First Presbyterian Church in Salem, Ohio, began asking that question as they met Guatemalan neighbors participating in games and other activities that the church sponsored on Wednesday evenings. The Rev. Meta Cramer was pleased that Guatemalan families, who make up about 8 percent of Salem’s population of 12,000, were attending FPC-Salem’s “Denise’s Big Backyard” summer program. The program is named for Denise Herron Weingart, a church elder who helped organize the event, which includes meals and Christian education. She died in 2014.
Can million-dollar donations to anti-hunger groups be a bad thing? Should Christians who are called to serve and work toward eliminating hunger and poverty in our community’s question corporate generosity as a viable tool to achieve a goal? Food activist and author Andrew Fisher presented these questions and more at a University of Louisville event on Sept. 4 that was co-sponsored by the Presbyterian Hunger Program. Fisher spoke to an audience of approximately 50 graduate and undergraduate students and a smaller number of community members interested in hunger issues, detailing the “unholy alliance” that exists between corporate America and anti-hunger organizations.
A national report ranks Louisiana 49th in children’s well-being, but Presbyterian Children’s Homes and Services is working to change that. It is also healing children and preserving families in Texas, which ranks 47th in children’s well-being, and Missouri, which ranks 26th.
