Although the women of Malawi are accustomed to doing anything and everything from farming to running small-scale businesses to support their families, Tropical Cyclone Freddy sorely tested Tinenenji [tee-nan-an-gee] Kalamba’s resilience.
Yet Kalamba was undeterred.
The above words came from a Syrian woman displaced from her homeland and forced to flee to Italy, but they’re words that could be voiced by thousands who face a similar migration journey to often-unwelcoming countries; a journey that frequently leads refugees to be terrified, broken, and fragile at their destination.
Wednesday’s installment in the “Connecting the Dots” webinar series gave voice to three women who live on Vieques Island in the southeastern region of the Puerto Rico archipelago, an island that has faced many challenges including decades of hosting a U.S. Navy base for live-fire bombing practices.
Bernadette thought that she had seen the worst of it.
For well over a decade, she and her family had unflinchingly withstood Syria’s ever-worsening humanitarian and economic crisis, the country’s ongoing localized hostilities and its collapsing infrastructure.
One of the perks of being a PDA volunteer is getting to wear the infamous blue T-shirt. All you must do to earn a shirt is participate in PDA disaster recovery efforts. Whether you’ve been on a PDA work trip or any mission trip at all, you know how God’s Spirit stirs something within you when you when you volunteer. There’s something humbling and sacred about approaching a service opportunity with open hands and a willing heart. For some, a blue T-shirt may not mean much. But, for many, donning a blue PDA T-shirt is a symbol of pride and reminder of community resilience.
The Rev. Edwin González-Castillo, director of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, spent most of his time on a recent Special Offerings podcast, “Between 2 Pulpits,” talking about pigs and partnerships in the Dominican Republic.
“Trouble the Water,” a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) docuseries that encourages constructive conversations about race and racism, has been selected for wider distribution and is being knitted together into a full-length feature film that will be available for home viewing early this year.
Several Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission co-workers and other employees are moderating workshops and leading discussion groups at the People on the Move partner conference which convened Sunday in Rome, Italy.
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance is helping the church to understand healthy volunteerism through training that it also calls “decolonizing volunteerism.”