It’s one thing to watch the heartbreaking plight of new immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers unfold on the evening news.
It’s quite another to meet Lissy H. in person.
When it came time to minister to the families of recent asylees from Central America, it turns out a global pandemic was no match for the 60 or so members and friends of Beechmont Presbyterian Church in Louisville, Kentucky.
For more than a half-century, the Louisville Presbyterian Furlough Home has been a place of respite for more than 350 mission co-workers working overseas in World Mission for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Whether the country where they walked alongside their partners was undergoing civil strife or they just needed a few weeks to recharge after years of work in the mission field, Furlough Home, on the campus of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, provided them a safe, quiet and welcoming haven.
The year was 2009, the place was Yei in what is now South Sudan, the newest country in the world. I was a mission co-worker serving as the first principal of RECONCILE Peace Institute, and our first class of students had arrived. The student body included about 45 church and community leaders from a dozen or more ethnic groups on opposing sides of a two- decades-long civil war. They had come to Yei to take courses in community-based trauma healing, peace studies and conflict transformation.
The Rev. Peter Kariuki Kaniah, secretary-general of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA), died Sunday of complications from COVID-19 in a Nairobi hospital where he was being treated. He was 54.
The Rev. John Yor, General Secretary of the Presbyterian Church of South Sudan (PCOSS), is asking U.S. Presbyterians for prayers as violence escalates in the Jonglei State in the northeastern part of the country between the Nuer and Murle ethnic groups.
Thirty-six presbyteries in the United States have formal ties with partner churches in Africa. There are practical reasons for that, the Rev. Debbie Braaksma recently told worshipers in the Presbyterian Center. Among them: The safety of the gospel depends on seeing how it’s lived out in other cultures.
Thirty-six presbyteries in the United States have formal ties with partner churches in Africa. There are good and practical reasons for that, the Rev. Debbie Braaksma told worshipers in the Presbyterian Center Wednesday.
In one of the most dangerous places in the world, the Rev. Peter Tibi stands between the government of South Sudan and rebel factions with only his clerical collar and his faith for protection.
