News from World Mission Challenge
October 22, 2009
Mission partnerships take many forms, PC(USA)’s Cuba Network learns
The Rev. Tricia Lloyd-Sidle. Photo credit: Jerry Van Marter. CINCINNATI — The Rev. Glenn Dixon’s road to mission partnership in Cuba began in March 1997 with a trip to Florida’s death row in the state penitentiary in Starkville.
“I was asked to minister to Pedro Medina in the five hours before he was executed,” Dixon, former pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Gainesville, told the Cuba Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) here Oct. 21. “After Pedro was killed — it was the most gruesome thing I’d ever seen in my life — I went to visit his sister in New York and she asked me if I’d go visit other family in Havana, so I did.” Keep reading.
October 21, 2009
Alice Winters teaches and learns from her students in Colombia
by Pat Cole
Associate, Mission Communications
The Rev. Alice Winters LOUISVILLE — When Alice Winters enters her classroom in Colombia, she engages her students as both professor and learner.
This veteran Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission worker teaches her students about biblical languages and history. At the same time they teach her about a biblical faith that sustains them amid poverty and the violence perpetrated by a decades-long civil war.
“I have learned so much from the Colombian people about what it means to be a Christian, what it means to live out our faith in the real world,” says Winters, a faculty member at Colombia Reformed University in Barranquilla. Keep reading.
October 20, 2009
Reconciliation at the center of couple’s ministry to Muslims and Christians
by Marue White
Special to Presbyterian News Service
Farsijana (left) and Bernie Adeney-Risakotta. IOWA CITY, Iowa — “How many of you are afraid of Muslims?” asked Bernie Adeney-Risakotta, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission co-worker who serves in Indonesia
In the adult education class at St. Andrew Presbyterian Church, one brave man out of 30 people raised his hand.
Adeney-Risakotta suggested that the fear we might feel at seeing a Muslim in Arab dress is “the very fear that may prevent us from establishing relationships with Muslims and finding common ground between Islam and Christianity.”
Adeney-Risakotta and his wife, Farsijana, also a mission worker in Indonesia, visited the Presbytery of East Iowa during a World Mission Challenge stopover. Keep reading.
October 19, 2009
Mission co-worker learns value of humility, partnership in Philippines
by Carol Waters
Special to Presbyterian News Service
GUTHRIE, Okla. — As part of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s World Mission Challenge, the Rev. Paul Matheny traveled to Oklahoma’s Cimarron and Eastern Oklahoma presbyteries Oct. 9-18 to share the good news of God’s work in the world.
Matheny and his wife, the Rev. Mary Nebelsick, are mission co-workers, serving in the Philippines at Union Theological Seminary in Dasmarinas. There, Matheny teaches theology, philosophy of religion and ministerial studies. Nebelsick teaches biblical studies, focusing on the Old Testament. The couple has served as missionaries there since 2001. Keep reading.
October 16, 2009
Bill Soldwisch’s 25-year mission career inspired while a teenager
The Rev. Bill Soldwisch MAYFIELD, Ky. — The seed of the Rev. Bill Soldwisch’s 25-year career as a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission co-worker in Mexico was planted by his pastor in Pasadena, Calif., when he was a teenager.
“Through his own mission service and his leadership of youth mission trips to Mexico, he taught that we learn a lot more about God and ourselves when we interact with Christians from very different places,” Soldwisch told a group gathered at First Presbyterian Church here Oct. 12. “It helps us focus more on who God is and what’s really essential and what’s peripheral." Keep reading.
October 15, 2009
‘Life in Haiti abounds’
Mission co-worker focuses on simple, sustainable farming
by Bethany Furkin
Presbyterian News Service
Mark Hare INDIANAPOLIS — For Mark Hare, being a mission co-worker means living daily with struggle and hope.
Since 2004, Hare has served in Haiti, where he works with a grassroots farmers’ association. The Mouvman Peyizan Papay (MPP) — Haitian Creole for Farmer’s Movement of Papaye — comprises about 20 farming cooperatives. Hare works with a crew to develop a small area of land called the Road to Life Yard. The yard makes use of sustainable agricultural techniques like the diversification and integration of small animals and vegetable crops. Keep reading.
October 13, 2009
Reaching others for Christ
Mission co-workers in Thailand work with theology students, prostitutes
by Ray Kersting
Special to Presbyterian News Service
Carol Fujii SANTA FE, N.M. — The Mission Challenge came to the four presbyteries in the Synod of the Southwest in the person of Carol Fujii, who with her husband, Leith, serves at the Bangkok Institute of Theology in Thailand.
Fujii visited 13 churches in Grand Canyon, de Cristo, Santa Fe and Sierra Blanca presbyteries during her itineration. The Mission Challenge is intended to connect mission co-workers with Presbyterians across the country. From Sept. 25 to Oct. 18, 45 co-workers will visit 152 presbyteries, sharing their stories and educating listeners on how to get involved. Keep reading.
October 12, 2009
A new meaning of ‘partnering’
Mission co-worker shares stories of mutual relationship between Russian, U.S. churches
by the Rev. Dave Templin
Special to Presbyterian News Service
Gary Payton OAK HARBOR, Wash. — One program hosted by a Russian Baptist church reaches hundreds of children and is just part of that congregation’s outreach to 16 orphanages across the region.
“It’s like Vacation Bible School in the woods,” said Gary Payton, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A)’s regional liaison for Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Poland.
This same Russian congregation, Smolensk Baptist Church, also engages in evangelistic outreach through sports programs. Members even built a boat on which to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to many small unchurched villages along a nearby river. Keep reading.
October 9, 2009
Partnering presbyteries
Colombian pastor speaks in Wisconsin on peacemaking amid civil war
by Lisa Strandberg
Special to Presbyterian News Service
The Rev. Diego Higuita-Arango. Photo credit: Presbyterian Peacemaking Program NEENAH, Wis. — Beside a table dressed with a colorful Colombian tapestry and set with baskets of bread, the Rev. Diego Higuita-Arango preached in Spanish on his vision of peace during two worship services at First Presbyterian Church Oct. 4.
Higuita, general secretary of both the Presbyterian Church of Colombia and the country’s Uraba Presbytery, visited the church on World Communion Sunday as one of 45 mission co-workers and 11 peacemakers sharing their stories with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in this year’s Mission Challenge. Keep reading.
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