INTERNATIONAL MISSIONS
Mexico
Building homes and relationships.
Shepherd families have been going on the Mexico service trips since 2002, and we hope to return in 2021. We travel to Reynosa, Mexico, and work with Faith Ministry to build homes for their members, assist in their medical clinic, serve in their preschool program, and work in their community gardens. The trips last from Sunday through Friday, and we caravan together down to McAllen where we are escorted across the border to Reynosa by Faith Ministry staff.
The reason we have continued this mission for almost 20 years is because of the amazing growth in faith and cultural understanding in the families who participate. Seeing teens build friendships with the Mexican families who work side by side with us helps the American youth really grow into the vision Christ had of unconditional brotherhood. The work is hot, hard, and infinitely rewarding. We hope you can join us next year.
For more information, please contact Bill Brock.
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Guatemala
Water, a home, education, and health.
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SHPC is committed to transformative, relational engagement with our mission partners, and our work in Guatemala is no exception. For much more than a decade we have been working in Guatemala in four important areas. We have sent teams work with groups in Guatemala to install water purification systems to serve their community, and we work with the Hogar Miguel Magone, a home for boys, and the Hogar María, a home for girls, by helping them around the property, spending time with the kids, and supporting them financially. We also work with the Escuela San Bartolomé, a school in a largely indigenous community, and some of our members medical backgrounds work with Dr. Estrada’s clinic, near Escuintla, helping a local organization that supports indigenous midwives by offering training, support, and critically needed materials.
SHPC is committed to transformative, relational engagement with our mission partners, and our work in Guatemala is no exception. For much more than a decade we have been working in Guatemala in four important areas. We have sent teams work with groups in Guatemala to install water purification systems to serve their community, and we work with the Hogar Miguel Magone, a home for boys, and the Hogar María, a home for girls, by helping them around the property, spending time with the kids, and supporting them financially. We also work with the Escuela San Bartolomé, a school in a largely indigenous community, and some of our members medical backgrounds work with Dr. Estrada’s clinic, near Escuintla, helping a local organization that supports indigenous midwives by offering training, support, and critically needed materials.
Our work in Guatemala is transformational, because it helps the people who are there, day in and day out, to do the amazing work they do, with our encouragement and support; and it is relational, because we have invested the time to get to know the leaders and the people they serve. Our job, really, is simple: we make sure we don’t get in their way, and that we are serving them effectively as they do what they need to do. A trip to Guatemala, to engage with amazing people doing such important work, is transformational in another sense as well: it can strike deep into your heart and change you forever, if you let it. For more information, please contact Jason Perkey.
For more photos and news check out the SHPC Guatemala Facebook Page!
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Africa
A relationship that spans an ocean.
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SHPC began financial support to Embangweni Hospital in Malawi in 2000. This hospital is a unit of Livingstonia CCAP Synod. Financial support led to visits and a formal covenant of partnership. SHPC has developed a relationship with the Manyamula Congregation, (a congregation of the Synod of Livingstonia, Church of Central Africa Presbyterian), and we have had many visits in both directions, as well as joint projects, including manse construction, sanctuary improvements, grain bank construction, solar power installations, school block construction, and prayer facility roofs.
In January 2020 Manyamula Congregation completed a joint project with SHPC that provided a School Block at Matapoto Primary School, which provided two classrooms and two teacher offices, all with solar power. SHPC sent financial support and face masks throughout the Covid-19 crisis. SHPC and the Manyamula Congregation regularly pray together and for each other. SHPC families have had the opportunity to receive some of our Manyamula partners into their homes, and others have brought Manyamula visitors and Malawi Seminary students along for recreation or to visit local churches and schools in Austin. Several church members have visited Manyamula and two SHPC members have gone to Malawi for extended teaching assignments at the University of Livingstonia. We look forward to continued partnership with the potential of another future trip to Manyamula. For more information contact Tom O’Meara at 512-924-2277, tom.omeara@sbcglobal.net
For more photos and news check out the SHPC Africa Facebook Group!
PCUSA MISSION CO-WORKERS
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Additional Opportunities
PRESBYTERIAN DISASTER ASSISTANCE
When there is an international disaster we want to be able to respond immediately. A portion of the mission budget is earmarked so we can send funds promptly to a responsible agency like the Red Cross, World Vision, or Presbyterian Disaster Assistance.
Each year the mission committee responds to worldwide and stateside disasters by voting on how much to send and where to send funds each year.
For more information, visit pda.pcusa.org.
THE CONGO
For the past 30 years we have supported the Good Shepherd Hospital through the Medical Benevolence Foundation. The mission committe votes annually on the amount to send to the hospital. Sarah Stranahan visits the hospital when she is in Congo for other mission activities. The last trip was June 2015.
Contact Sarah Stranahan at 512-217-0870 or email her at sstranahan4@gmail.com to learn more.
