To honor Africa Day celebrated on Thursday and Pentecost on Sunday, World Mission’s Africa team led the Chapel service on Wednesday. Nearly 50 of the PC(USA)’s national staff joined the team for an informative and thoughtful online worship service.
For the first time in 500 years, an ecumenical peace pilgrimage was undertaken earlier this month to South Sudan by Catholic, Anglican and Protestant church leaders.
In a recent letter, the Rev. Nancy Smith-Mather, a mission co-worker, said one of the most difficult things about living in another country is the distance from family.
Validating loss and understanding our feelings is a concept not difficult to grasp during a global pandemic. But for mission co-workers the Revs. Nancy and Shelvis Smith-Mather, their seven-year-old son Jordan reminded them that sometimes you have to find the courage to lean into the pain to get through it.
For the Rev. Shelvis Smith-Mather, the road to the majestic halls of Oxford University took a journey of nine years and three continents. But it is, he says, a “crazy, wonderful, beautiful story.”
“And… a long story, but the details of the many stops and starts along the way speaks to how it has come together now in God’s time,” he said.
“They said their teacher has not come,” said Peter, the education facilitator for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) partner Across, translated from Anyuak to English.
“Your story is our story.”That’s what a group of visitors from global partners Nile Theological College (NTC) and RECONCILE (Resource Centre for Civil Leadership) in South Sudan, told members of the staff at Protestant Institute of Arts and Social Sciences (PIASS) when they visited Rwanda recently. Rwanda has just marked the 25th anniversary of the 1994 genocide that killed more than 800,000 Tutsi at the hands of the majority Hutu population.
