For three days, I joined other Young Adult Volunteers and a diverse group of Christians as we walked from Ghost Ranch to the Sanctuario de Chimayo, a historic church in northern New Mexico. The tiring, trying and transformative 50-mile journey through the beautiful countryside continues to color my spiritual growth. Reflecting now, more than a year later, I smile, remembering a poignant moment of the trek: when we held others in intercessional prayer.
Last summer, I received a call to join Olympia Presbytery in planting a new worshiping community, Hagar’s Community Church, at the Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW) — the largest women’s prison in Washington state.
“We are learning what we’re capable of,” said Selenia Ordóñez. She and I share an anniversary: Ordóñez and her Presbyterian Women’s team began running a retreat center ministry the same week I was installed as a mission co-worker with the Presbyterian Church of Honduras. For the past year, we have both been learning what we’re capable of.
Mabuchi N. Dokowe has 6,204 children.
Four of them are her own she is raising with her husband in Lusaka, the capital and largest city in Zambia. The other 6,200 are students in 32 community schools in the southern African nation that she oversees at the director of community schools for vulnerable and marginalized children for the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP), Synod of Zambia.
Calvary Presbyterian Church has had a heart for mission ever since a group of friends gathered in 1944 seeking to have a church closer to their home — in what was then a growing suburb of southwest Wilmington, Delaware. Today, the long legacy of helping neighbors continues with partnerships with organizations like Meeting Ground, a local group addressing homelessness, and Friendship House, which offers transitional housing, a clothing bank and “empowerment centers,” providing those in need with a place to regroup, work on resumes, have a cup of coffee and connect with others. But Wilmington is a big city with lots of opportunities to help others. So, Calvary Presbyterian created what is called “Second Sunday Sharing,” in which the congregation helps one local nonprofit.
My son recently finished the requirements for the Boy Scouts’ highest honor, Eagle Scout. As part of his final project, he designed and built a Little Free Pantry and a Little Free Library, providing food and books to those in need in our community.
The Reformed Calvinist Church of El Salvador (IRCES) is a unique church partner. Though small in number, it is big in vision and commitment to the gospel. Grounded in their Reformed identity, they are always making time to analyze and discern their call, based on the context in which they serve. From way south of the border, our partners are watching and anticipating the direct impact of U.S. immigration policy as
they turn to longtime U.S. mission partners and confidants to ask, “What are you going to do about this? How can we face this together?”
God-given greatness isn’t something one achieves; it is something inherent to being human. This is the core message that the leaders at Elmwood United Presbyterian Church in East Orange, New Jersey, are instilling in their youth. These mentors hold fast to the belief that if a person is to be successful in the Christ-abundant life, he or she must take complete responsibility for that greatness and protect it.
The Presbyterian Church of Portugal (IEPP), the oldest Protestant church in the country, traces its history to 1838, when a physician and missionary from Scotland opened a small hospital and a school and began to preach the gospel on the Portuguese island of Madeira. Soon persecution began in the predominantly Catholic country, and most members of the IEPP had to flee.
I could not understand what he was saying as he responded to the questions in Quechua, the local language of the high jungle. But judging by the reactions of the onlookers and of his wife, this older man, who was on his knees washing his wife’s feet although he was most likely the “man of the household,” was learning not only about hygiene, but about humility and love as well.