of New Castle Presbytery
By Bruce Shumway, Trinity Presbyterian Church
Today had a usual morning start with breakfast and a twenty minute drive to the Association’s headquarters. We’re traveling in a super, brand new bus that comfortably holds our driver, our CEDEPCA guide, our interpreter and our five intrepid travelers. Well, if we aren’t intrepid yet, we will be by the end of the day. The bus holds ten in it’s initial configuration and we have eight aboard.
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Today, we headed to the Association office for an all-day meeting. Usually we only have half a day together in the office and always feel rushed. So this time, it was lovely to be more relaxed, get more accomplished, and have some really good laughs together.
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Today we had the privilege of spending the morning at the office of our partner CEDEPCA (the Protestant Center for Pastoral Studies in Central America). Just to review, the Guatemala Partnership of New Castle Presbytery has two formal partners in Guatemala: CEDEPCA and the Association of Mam Christian Women for Development (Association). With both of these non-profit organizations, we have signed multiple three-year covenant agreements which specifically outline how we intend to work together to improve the lives of all, as God intended. And not just the lives of the most vulnerable and marginalized in the communities we mutually serve, but the lives of each and every one of us involved in this partnership (this includes you!). Of course, we also have several informal partners such as AJPU (who make the stoves) and JESELCA (Jesus Es El Camino church) which initiated the Utz Pan bakery youth project and has an incredible after-school program.
Read moreBy Carrie Saathoff
And we are off! Our small group of five steering committee members arrived safely in Guatemala Monday – with 11 suitcases! For this trip, we are not traveling light by any means, thanks to a generous donation by Mustang Expediting, a warehousing and logistics company located in Aston, PA. Kara Francis, a member of Westminster Presbyterian (Wilmington, DE), connected us to an amazing opportunity to procure a mountain of brand new medical supplies and N-95 masks. (There is still a pile in my basement and more to come!) Kara and I have been meeting in the church parking lot the past several Sundays to transfer car loads of supplies. My daughter said it felt akin to a drug deal.
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