Reconnecting with CEDEPCA

After much planning, packing, and flying, Westminster Presbyterian Church members, Carrie and Cathy, arrived safely in Guatemala City Wednesday afternoon. Upon their arrival, they immediately connected with Emerson Morales of CEDEPCA. As CEDEPCA’s Program Coordinator in its Intercultural Encounters program, Emerson is a vital figure throughout all trips to Guatemala. Beyond his amazing translation skills, he acts as the perfect liaison between the visiting group or church and the local community with whom the group or church is partnering. In this case, Emerson helps Westminster and its efforts to assist the Association, so that partnership projects are helpful to the Association and local communities and not hurtful.

Emerson, Carrie, and Cathy discussed two upcoming trips in 2019. Though the dates are not finalized, we plan to take two groups to Guatemala in 2019.

One group trip will include adult members from Westminster and the New Castle Presbytery, and the other group trip will be for Westminster youth. As details become more concrete, dates for both trips will shared accordingly.

Carrie and Cathy presented CEDEPCA with the generous monetary support from both Westminster and the New Castle Presbytery.

In addition to monetary support, Westminster always makes it a point to bring down yarn to CEDEPCA to support its prayer shawl ministry.

This exercise demonstrates the common thread that we, as brothers and sisters in Christ, share together. Here’s an excerpt from the April 2018 edition of The Westminster Chimes explaining this initiative.

Prayer is powerful.  It serves as the primary pillar of our mission partnerships in Guatemala. Through prayer and our reliance on God, we share a common thread.

Literally… there is a common thread that connects Westminster Presbyterian Church to our sisters and brothers in Guatemala: yarn.

For the past five years, Westminster has been collecting as much yarn as possible to carry down to Guatemala. Good-quality yarn is difficult to find in Guatemala and often very expensive. So each time we travel there, we take several suitcases filled with skeins and skeins of colorful yarn and deliver them to our partners at CEDEPCA.

CEDEPCA has a prayer shawl program where women come together to knit shawls for those affected by illness, natural disaster, or personal tragedy. One such tragedy occurred last March, when forty teenage girls were killed by a fire at Hogar Seguro a state-run children’s home in Guatemala. This deadly fire made international news, as it exposed the inhumane conditions, torturous abuse, and child human rights violations occurring at the home. CEDEPCA delivered prayer shawls to the families of the girls who perished in the fire. Please lift up these families in your prayers.

We are grateful to the many members and friends who have given yarn over the years. If you would like to donate yarn for this meaningful ministry, please contact Cathy Higgins at cathy-higgins@comcast.net.