Immigrants seeking a home in a new land and Arizona residents needing home repairs are both learning the language of love through the work of a couple serving as Young Adult Volunteers at the Tucson Borderlands YAV site on the U.S.-Mexico border.
As the team tore down the last of the vines covering the garden gates, Young Adult Volunteer Regi Jones realized they had just helped to unwrap the gift of Okra Abbey for the Pigeon Town neighborhood in New Orleans.
One day ahead of Thursday’s National Day of Prayer, the Rev. Chris Iosso urged worshipers during the weekly Chapel service at the Presbyterian Center Wednesday to work toward a new ecumenism that bridges the widening gap between humanity and the planet they inhabit.“The climate crisis gives urgency to ecumenism, and makes divisions more problematic than ever,” said Iosso, coordinator of the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy. “It is not a struggle we can overcome on a national basis.”
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.
Several years ago, I was sitting in a room full of religious and community leaders from middle Tennessee. It resembled a typical clergy meeting, but what made that gathering distinct for me was that half of the leaders were Muslim.
A group of 16 Young Adult Volunteer alum, family and Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) national staff gathered in Puerto Rico earlier this month for a Relief and Reflection Service Trip commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program.
Miriam is a teacher at a public elementary school in her indigenous community in Guatemala. When the government funds for the school hadn’t come halfway through the school year (but had for all of the non-indigenous public schools in the area), she led a march of teachers from their small town in the mountains to the municipal building in Xela, six miles away. Outside the government building, indigenous teachers and parents held a rally and delivered a letter demanding the money allocated for their children’s education.
You won’t go to India to do something an Indian cannot do,” the Rev. Thomas John told me. He was the site coordinator for the Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program in India, and I was a college senior, interviewing to serve as a YAV on the other side of the globe. I don’t think I had any delusions of single-handedly transforming the world, but I was surely guided by a desire to help, to contribute, to be of service. That was in 2002. Today I serve as site coordinator for the YAV program in Colombia, and I encounter those same motivations again and again in current applicants.
저와 아내 이혜영이 한국에서 사역을 시작한 직후, 카유가 시라큐스Cayuga-Syracuse 노회 장로인 린다 러셀이 그녀의 노회가 10년 넘게 한국과의 파트너십 팀을 유지하고 있다고 말하였습니다. 린다는 이 팀이 미국장로교 청년 봉사단 (YAV) 프로그램의 현장 코디네이터로서 우리의 사업에 관심이 있을 것이라고 제안했습니다. 우리는 앞으로 이어질 상호교류에 대한 우리의 흥분을 느꼈습니다. 그것은 Cayuga-Syracuse 노회와 오래되고 유익한 협력 관계를 유지하기 시작했습니다.
