The plantation people of Sri Lanka harvest some of the world’s finest tea, yet they don’t get to enjoy it themselves. Instead, they are only allowed to take the bitter dust of the leaves. It’s a metaphor for their lives.
Cleanup continues in South Dakota after an oil leak in the Keystone Pipeline earlier this month spilled more than 210,000 gallons of oil approximately three miles southeast of Amherst. The state’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources says it is the largest Keystone oil spill to date in the state.
The humanitarian conditions in the conflict-ridden Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are rapidly deteriorating. There is a now a deepening hunger crisis and an estimated 3.2 million people are without reliable access to enough nutritious food.
More than 100,000 people are expected to take to the streets of Washington, D.C. on April 29 for the People’s Climate March. Thousands of activists, organizations, schools and churches will call on U.S. and other world leaders to do more to protect the environment. Activists have voiced concerns that many of the White House’s new policies will adversely impact progress that has been made.
The Rev. Jan Edmiston, Co-Moderator of the 222nd General Assembly (2016) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), returned early last week from a trip to Syria with a delegation from the church’s Compassion Peace and Justice ministries. Following the chemical weapons attack in Idlib and the retaliatory airstrikes by the United States military, she issued a prayer for the people of Syria and the world.
Heavy rains, mudslides and flooding continue to wreak havoc on parts of Peru, leaving nearly a hundred people dead and hundreds of thousands without homes. The South American country was caught off guard by the rains that began in mid-January but grew worse in the past few weeks causing severe flooding and subsequent mudslides in the region.
While violence and fear continue to pervade war-torn Syria, Presbyterians across the United States are helping those displaced by the conflict rebuild their lives. Since the war began in 2011, at least 13.5 million people have been forced to leave their homes and seek safety in Lebanon, Jordan, Europe and the United States. The United Nations estimates 400,000 others have been killed in the conflict.
As of January 1, 2016, the 120-year old Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study is available exclusively online. A Presbyterian Mission Agency press release issued in August said, “This… Read more »
