When mission co-workers speak at churches around the country, they seek to educate. But sometimes they motivate, and that’s what happened to Nina Geist, a fourth-grader at Rogers Park Elementary, who attends First Presbyterian Church in Anchorage, Alaska.
On Thursday, President Trump travels to the southern border of the U.S. to make his case for a $5 billion border wall to protect the country from an invasion of migrants. Mission co-worker Mark Adams has lived on the border since 1998. He believes that Christians are called to see the migrant issue very differently.
“The creation of God is not an historic fact but a continuous and permanent action,” the Rev. Jose Luis Casal, Director of Presbyterian World Mission (PWM), told representatives of the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s global partners in Africa at a two-day conference in Nairobi at the end of November. “God never tires of creating something new!”
If Luis Ramos Salgado had tried to ride the storm out in his home, he wouldn’t be able to walk down his street on this sunny morning.
“I’d be dead,” he says through a translator, standing in the kitchen of the only home he’s ever known in San Juan’s Caño Martín Peña area.
It’s a pretty port of call.
Mere blocks from where cruise ships pull into San Juan terminal, visitors can find enticing Old San Juan, with its mix of history, shops and restaurants, all open for business, even on a warm but quiet Tuesday night. Veering right, visitors can find conveniences such as bike rentals and a CVS pharmacy, all up and running.
“People go to hotels, Old San Juan and they see the stores open, lights … and they say, ‘Oh, everything is back to normal,’” the Rev. Edwin A. González-Castillo says.
Except it’s not.
Outgoing moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Liberia, the Rev. Sando Townsend, has invited the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to walk alongside the Presbyterian Church of Liberia, and U.S. church leaders are taking him up on his offer.
For 25 years, Christians have gathered at both sides of the United States and Mexico border at San Diego and Tijuana to re-enact Joseph and Mary’s journey to Bethlehem before the birth of Jesus Christ in a service called La Posada Sin Fronteras.
Presbyterians view immigrants more favorably than they did in 2011 and are more involved in immigrant ministries than they were in the past. These are the key findings of the May 2017 Presbyterian Panel survey on Immigration, Refugees, and Immigrant Ministries. The results were released earlier this month.
Day 2 of the A Corporation’s meetings Friday included the kinds of tasks you’d expect of the corporate body of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) — approving committee charters and recommendations, electing corporate officers to one-year terms and scheduling dates and places for the board’s 2019 meetings.
It also included a plea from one of those officers, Mike Miller, the PC(USA)’s chief financial officer: err on the side of over-communicating, and work to allay anxiety over what the “new day” that the A Corporation will mean for the operation of the Presbyterian Mission Agency, and, to a lesser degree, the Office of the General Assembly.
