“We are learning what we’re capable of,” said Selenia Ordóñez. She and I share an anniversary: Ordóñez and her Presbyterian Women’s team began running a retreat center ministry the same week I was installed as a mission co-worker with the Presbyterian Church of Honduras. For the past year, we have both been learning what we’re capable of.
When she was co-pastor with her husband of a mission church in rural Alaska, the Rev. Heidi Worthen Gamble hosted many short-term mission trips from Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations elsewhere. “As time went on we struggled to continue to find work projects for these groups,” Gamble told the Moderator’s Colloquium on Ecclesiology Wednesday (April 24) at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary (APTS). “We began to ask whether it wouldn’t be more beneficial to create jobs in the village rather than mission projects for church groups.”