Central American migrants start as early as 4 a.m. on their trek northward. Many begin with prayer, asking God to keep them safe and provide them peace and comfort in this frightening journey. Mothers and fathers carry sleeping children on their backs or in strollers, hoping to cover as much distance as they can in a day. If they are lucky, they may catch a ride in a passing truck or receive something to eat from good Samaritans in a local village.
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.
Después de plantar cuatro iglesias mientras que él era un refugiado que vivía en Uganda, Prince Mundeke Mushunju naturalmente le interesaba establecimiento de un servicio en inglés y suajili cuando llegó a Greensboro, Carolina del Norte, hace tres años.
After planting four churches while he was a refugee living in Uganda, Prince Mundeke Mushunju naturally had an eye toward establishing a Swahili- and English-language service when he arrived in Greensboro, N.C., three years ago.
She arrived in Italy on Feb. 4, 2016. Of the flight that brought her and her husband and their two small children from Beirut to Rome, she remembers only the emotions she felt on the plane, and the flowers and hugs they got when they landed.
As he and his small church help some of the thousands of Syrian refugees living in Tyre, Lebanon, to learn a trade to feed their families, the Rev. Amir Ishak has adopted the gazelle as the symbol for his innovative ministry.
The soup at Heritage Presbyterian Church in Glendale, Arizona, is a recipe for encouraging mission support. A Sunday school class composed of elementary and middle-school students generated mission interest earlier this year through a soup-making venture aimed at helping Presbyterian Mission. They assembled the ingredients, put them in jars they had labeled, and sold the mixture to the congregation. The children used the proceeds to give a pair of goats, a family of chickens, a piglet and six refugee food baskets through the Presbyterian Giving Catalog.
Seven years ago, as pastor of a Presbyterian church in Costa Mesa, California, I found myself praying for peace to overshadow our broken world. About that time, I became friends with a Presbyterian family who had moved into our community from Homs, Syria. As my friendship with the Jarjours grew, I learned about the crisis in their homeland and how it was impacting their church in Homs. I asked if they would put me in touch with their pastor, at which point he and I began exchanging emails, sharing mutual concerns about our congregations and praying for one another.
To Breathe Free, a short movie produced by Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA), will be screened twice in upcoming days at the DC Shorts Film Festival in Washington, D.C. Produced and shot in D.C., the film follows the five-year saga of a Syrian family fleeing the war in Homs, Syria to refugee camps in Jordan to beginning their new life in the nation’s capital.
The Presbyterian Ministry at the United Nations (PMUN) recently played host to a group of doctoral students from Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. The 10 students and faculty had taken a weeklong seminar course entitled “The Church in a World of Displaced Persons.”
