Overlooked by most media around the world, the twin hurricanes of Eta and Iota last November devastated Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras, countries already struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic. The impacts of the overflowing rivers and resulting landslides brought about tremendous loss of housing and jobs and caused widespread food and clean water shortages.
Ever since discovering their church was built a century ago partly through funds donated “for the white race only,” the 1,200 or so members and the leadership of Knox Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, have worked hard not to duck the church’s history, but to learn from it and to, in tangible ways, reach out and make connections that make it clear where the church is headed during the next 100 years: ending the sin of systemic racism.
The mission to build a more just world is a clear one for longtime Presbyterian Mission Agency (PMA) global partner CEDEPCA (the Protestant Center for Pastoral Studies in Central America). The building blocks CEDEPCA uses include biblical and theological formation, women’s ministry, disaster assistance and intercultural encounters.
One major hurricane is a lot for any community to take in a year or even a decade.
This week, the Rev. Edwin González-Castillo, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance’s (PDA) Associate for Disaster Response in Latin America and the Caribbean, is working to respond to nations struck by two major hurricanes in as many weeks.
A virtual ‘trip’ to Guatemala with World Mission’s long-time partner, the Protestant Center for Pastoral Studies in Central America (CEDEPCA), may help you break free from pandemic isolation — at least in your mind and heart.
The ministry of presence is important in God’s mission. Yet even when a global pandemic causes cancellation of short-term mission trips, congregations and presbyteries in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) are showing care and compassion in creative and urgently needed ways from afar.
It’s a universal theme among mission co-workers that they often learn more from the people in the cultures they serve than they could ever hope to give. That’s exactly the lesson mission co-workers Richard and Debbie Welch, serving in Guatemala, learned from their longtime partner in ministry, Julian.
When it comes to keeping mission co-workers safe in the face of a global pandemic, there is no one-size-fits-all decision. Each situation is different, and each decision is individual.
