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World Mission
With Presbyterians among its earliest and most passionate customers, the Café Justo coffee cooperative just across the border from Douglas, Arizona, grows, roasts, packages, markets, sells and ships nearly 60,000 pounds of coffee annually.
He looked no more than 14 as he came forward to welcome me with a hearty handshake. Assuming he was a primary school pupil, I asked about his teacher. He responded, “Hello, ma’am. I am the teacher.” Still skeptical, I began a full-scale inquisition: How old are you? How long have you been a teacher? Which class are you teaching? And finally, are you really the teacher?
Tucson’s Southside Presbyterian Church is known for being a sanctuary church and for its joyous Sunday worship.
Rocio Calderon kept a Presbyterian Mission Agency delegation spellbound Monday just by telling her story.
About 25 Taiwanese pastors and several Guatemalan pastors would be arriving the next day to live together in a big old house at the PC(USA) conference center Montreat in Western North Carolina. I had visited the house shortly after the male collegiate summer staff had vacated. It looked pretty grim, with mildew in the bathrooms and carpets that had seen better days.
So, when I went back to see how the house looked on Sunday afternoon, I was delighted that two folks were just beginning to clean the house.
Drawn to the ruggedness, remoteness and greenness of rural Guatemala, Richard and Debbie Welch have, for the past six years, worked with that country’s indigenous population to build literacy and educational attainment in a country increasingly in the news because of the Trump administration’s concerns over the number of immigrants entering the United States from Central America’s Northern Triangle, which also includes Honduras and El Salvador.
The most direct way to find out the church’s calling in World Mission is to ask Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) partners and constituents, the top World Mission strategist told a Presbyterian Mission Agency committee last week.
As the Israeli bombing of Gaza continues, the words of B’Tselem Director Hagai El Ad are ringing in the ears of the members of the PC(USA) delegation that visited Israel-Palestine two weeks ago — perpetual occupation and zero international consequences. He has taken that message to the United Nations General Assembly several times, most recently last fall, and delivered the same words to the delegation.
It was dark; our only illumination came from the stars and the faint light of electric candles. Frogs and crickets serenaded us, and it struck me as a beautiful and holy space. The labyrinth was in a small clearing, surrounded by trees, under the open sky, so I stopped and looked up at the stars every so often as I walked.
During the first of three U.S. partner consultations, more than 30 supporters of Presbyterian World Mission came together last week by invitation to discuss and discern God’s mission in a rapidly-changing world.
