Global Ministry in a New World
Addressing changing needs abroad and staying connected in the time of COVID-19
RAIMAS IS A THREE-YEAR-OLD IN IRAQ with soft, coffee-colored curls and big, dark eyes that sparkle. But a huge, life-threatening tumor distorts the left side of her cute little-girl face, extending from just below her eye to her chin. She would have already come to the United States for surgery to have it removed were it not for COVID-19.
She’s one of a long list of Childspring International-sponsored children around the world in need of medical treatment who are caught in limbo awaiting the end of the pandemic. Childspring, a nonprofit officed at First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta, expected to bring them to America in 2020 but couldn’t because of travel restrictions and infection concerns.
“We’ve not been able to bring any children into the United States,” Alison Fussell, Childspring’s executive director, said in late 2020. Surgeries done since March have been performed outside the United States, she said. “We are still able to do surgeries because we have already built up so many partnerships in countries like Haiti and Colombia and Sierra Leone, but we’ve had only 250 this year—a far cry from the 694 we did last year.”
Childspring, along with Villa International and AMIS, is a local partner of First Presbyterian Church, which has a global reach. In addition, the church has ongoing relationships with churches and other organizations in six countries: Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, Kenya, and Lebanon.
Each ministry in Atlanta and abroad has its own challenges because of the pandemic, said Rev. Leigh Bonner, the church’s director of global mission. With international travel virtually at a standstill, ministries have had to be creative in operating and staying connected. Some have shifted emphasis to respond to changing needs.
At Villa International, a guesthouse for international scientists and medical professionals near the campus of Emory University and the Centers for Disease Control, the number of residents is down from forty-eight to eighteen, five of whom were actively working on COVID-19-related research in the fall.
When Philipp Ralfs, a graduate student at the University of Luebeck, in Germany, came to Emory University, he planned to stay for a year and work with the hepatitis E virus. He has extended his stay and now investigates the immune response to the virus that causes COVID-19.
Tais Wilson, a doctoral student from Brazil, arrived in Atlanta as a guest researcher at the Centers for Disease Control just two weeks before the pandemic closed down travel.
“For me it has been a great opportunity to improve my professional skills with the pathology of infectious disease and gain knowledge into issues such as disease detection and response to a large outbreak like the COVID-19 pandemic,” she said.
AMIS (Atlanta Ministry with International Students), the French word for “friends,” was founded by Rev. Fahed Abu-Akel at First Presbyterian Church in 1978 to connect international students enrolled in Atlanta-area universities to local individuals and families. In normal times, students would be invited into homes for food and fellowship, but during the pandemic, contact is virtual.
“Regardless of the challenges going on in our world, AMIS remains steadfast in our mission to promote global understanding through friendship and hospitality,” executive director Rev. Irene Wong wrote in a recent newsletter. In some ways, the pandemic and social distancing make relationships even more important, she said.
VIRTUAL COMMUNICATION has been the key for maintaining relationships with friends and forming new relationships with partners in other countries.
Alli Hurley is one member of the 20s and 30s group at First Presbyterian who participated in virtual gatherings with partners in Brazil. At one point, Alli and a Brazilian church member each got out guitars and shared an online jam session.
“It actually brought me to tears thinking about the incredible ways we can connect through the Lord,” she said. “As much as we get Zoom fatigue, the pandemic, just like periods of hardship and struggle before it, has forced technological innovation. Now we can say, ‘Let’s worship together this month.’ In person is better, yes, but I actually think this has brought us closer together.”
“It actually brought me to tears thinking about the incredible ways we can connect through the Lord.”
ALLI HURLEY
During the pandemic, Rev. Bonner has kept in touch with the churches and organizations that are in relationship with First Presbyterian.
“The common thing I have seen is that the pandemic seems to amplify things that were already happening,” she said. Shortages and difficulties become more dire, but the relationships become dearer. Some communities are harder hit than others, largely because of events and circumstances not directly related to the pandemic.
OVER THE LAST TWO YEARS, First Presbyterian has begun exploring a partnership through the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon, the Presbyterian entity in Lebanon. Government corruption has long been an issue there, and a protest movement that began in October 2019 is demanding reform that has yet to come. Two governments have resigned since the protests began, “but the country’s barons, many of them strongmen from the 1975-1990 civil war, remain firmly in power despite international and domestic pressure for change,” according to a recent Al-Jazeera report.
The economy of Lebanon was already troubled, and hospitals were short of equipment and pharmaceuticals before the pandemic.
Then, on August 4, the country was thrown into further turmoil by a massive explosion in Beirut. As reported by the BBC, some two hundred people were killed and as many as three hundred thousand were left homeless as a result. Many people blamed the government for the disaster, accusing authorities of not properly storing gases and chemicals.
Bonner said she sent Rev. Joseph Kassab, the general secretary of the synod, a prayer for endurance, and he responded by expressing his faith that God will get them through.
The church in Lebanon had already put in place the Compassion Protestant Society to manage crises, she said. Originally the organization was intended to aid refugees from neighboring Syria but shifted to taking care of Lebanese people who had become hungry and homeless and now is working on rebuilding structures to provide shelter.
ALTHOUGH FIRST PRESBYTERIAN’S friends in Cuba have not been hit hard by COVID-19, food shortages—partly a result of international politics—plague the country. Rev. Zorky Crespo, pastor of First Presbyterian’s partner church in the village of Perico, wrote in the fall: “Our biggest problems are getting food.
. . . The government created some stores where you buy by card and it must be backed by an account in dollars or Euros. At these stores there is a lot of food, hardware, appliances and everything you need. The rest of the stores are nearly empty, and when you need something, the queues are endless and there’s not enough for everyone. Most families survive on what they are given for a monthly fee, which is very little.”
Restrictions on sending funds to Cuba make it impossible for First Presbyterian to respond as generously as the Global Mission Council and Cuba Committee would like. Even if money were available, goods are difficult to get.
Crespo and her husband, Rollie, have helped some older members of their congregation weather the situation because they were already raising chickens to furnish eggs for senior citizens’ meals. They have also begun raising rabbits. And on World Communion Sunday, October 11, the church handed out bags of groceries to people in the community.
With international travel at a virtual standstill, ministries have had to be creative in operating and staying connected.
First Presbyterian’s partners in Kenya and Haiti have also been working to relieve the needs of their neighbors. The social responsibility committee of St. Andrew’s Church in Nairobi supplies household goods and food to people in need. And on La Gonâve Island, in Haiti, Father Jean-Madoche Vil has been furnishing buckets and chlorine for people to purify water for drinking and hand-washing, and the vocational program at the St. Francis school has been sewing masks.
Through the Independent Presbyterian Church of Brazil, First Presbyterian has partnerships in the Fortaleza communities of Pirambu and Messejana. Brazil’s government began loosening its mandatory ban on gatherings in the fall, and, just as in Atlanta, churches there were deciding how much in-person gathering to allow. During the pandemic, people began having communion in their homes, decorating their tables and using their best dishes to make the occasion feel special. Rev. Hermany Vieira, pastor of the Pirambu church, sent Bonner photographs of some of the families at worship. The Messejana church has a lot of young adults who have been meeting online with the First Presbyterian group. “It’s made our 20s and 30s more excited about cementing relationships,” Bonner said.
Rose Redderburn, deputy regional secretary of the United Church of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands’ South Region, reported that Jamaica began shutting down large-scale gatherings and quarantining people with symptoms quickly. The government also cut off the tourist trade—a major economic engine there—for a while and, upon easing restrictions, required COVID-19 testing of international guests and limited them to the resorts.
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN YOUTH had expected to be able to host their Jamaican counterparts in Atlanta during the summer and go on a combined mission trip to South Georgia, said Maggie Council, a sophomore at DeKalb County’s Chamblee High School. “We’re looking at postponing it until next summer.”
Maggie and Andre Myette, a senior at Atlanta’s Grady High School, were part of a First Presbyterian youth group that met online with youth from Hillside Presbyterian Church in Decatur and youth in Jamaica. Both have been on several mission trips, including a 2018 trip to Jamaica.
“By far my favorite mission trip was Jamaica,” Maggie said. As for the virtual gathering, they “spent about two hours talking. It was really kind of cool to see how similar they had been living to what we’ve been doing” during the pandemic, she said. “One girl has been doing a lot of cooking. One kid got into soccer. I learned how to play the ukulele during the quarantine.”
“We talked about the importance of radical kindness and had an open dialogue,” Andre said. “Our hope is to set up more sessions like these, both with other countries and with our other partner in Jamaica, the Mt. Olivet Boys’ Home.”
DESPITE ALL THE DIFFICULTIES at home and abroad, Bonner said she feels “a lot of positive coming out of this.” Members of First Presbyterian have been more intentional in keeping in touch with friends in other countries, and people in partner churches and agencies have proved to be strong in their determination and in their faith.
“We severely underestimate the ability and resilience of our partners,” Bonner said. “People have continued to minister to each other and take care of each other, and that inspires me.”
