08112
February 13, 2008

Presbyterian Pan American School — your mission school in South Texas

Helping students to ‘bloom where you are planted’ — now and in the future

By Dr. Jim Matthews
President, Presbyterian Pan American School

I arrived at Presbyterian Pan American School on a dismal fall day over 10 years ago.   If you grasp the logic of sending a college administrator to a secondary school, an Irish scholar to a primarily Hispanic institution, then you understand the Presbyterian way better than I did at the time.  God doesn’t call the well-suited, instead God re-tailors those called.

And it didn’t take me long to hear what I can only label a call to mission.  I heard it the very first day in the faces and voices of 70 kids huddled in a chapel for 200 and I’ve heard it nearly every day since then as the faces have changed and the voices have swelled.

Pan Am, as most of us fondly know it, has been around for a long time; in fact, we will be celebrating our centennial in three years – 100 years since the daughter of a Presbyterian missionary carved out a portion of the King Ranch for the church to build a school for Mexican boys and 50 years since another Presbyterian, ordained son of missionaries himself, merged that boys vocational institute with a similar school for girls nearby to form an International Co-Educational College Preparatory School to prepare young men and women from the Americas and beyond for lives of Christian leadership.

Vision for the future
Today, Pan Am is thriving. The chapel is nearly full now and the dorms are actually over capacity thanks to the addition of bunk beds.  We have students from Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Equatorial Guinea and Rwanda, along with kids from Mexico, Guatemala and Ecuador. They worship and learn together, and because every student works on campus they discover new capabilities together.

In order to continue this worthy mission for another century, we are in the midst of a campaign to rebuild the campus. Plans include new dorms and classroom buildings capable of holding up to 300 students, a new assembly hall, gymnasium, and campus center and a larger dining hall.

The future is upon us and we envision more young men and women taking their place in board rooms and hospitals, in corporate offices and pulpits, here in this country and back in their home countries.

‘The mission is the kids’
Our vision is the mission and the mission is the kids — like a young man from Mexico who as I write this is mourning the death of his mother, a brave woman, who sent her son to Pan Am and saw him attend college, serve on the staff of a U.S. Senator and then launch a successful career in finance.

The former student now lives in Dallas, where he is active in a Presbyterian church and serves on the Board of the Texas Presbyterian Foundation.  His story is like those of many others:

• the missionary’s son — now a U.S.  Ambassador
• the girl from Mexico — now an assistant to the Secretary General of the U.N.
• the boy from Romania — now finishing his doctorate in biomedical engineering
• the girl from Texas — now an attorney, who is an elder in a small Hispanic church and has served on national GAC committees
• the boy from Guatemala — now a physician leading a medical missionary organization in Central America
• the boy from New York — now a founder of a school in New York
• the  girl from Minnesota — now a missionary in Haiti

At graduation, I hand each student a white rose and say: “bloom where you are planted.”  They have bloomed and with God’s help they will continue to bloom in the century ahead as this racial/ethnic mission of the PC(USA) continues to be faithful to the high calling in Christ, making an impact one life at a time.  This vision is the mission, and the mission is the kids, and the kids are the hope for tomorrow’s church, tomorrow’s nation, tomorrow’s world.