Pray for advocates for human rights around the world.

 

Check out Swords into Plowshares, the blog for our denomination’s Peacemaking Program and Ministry at the UN, especially its human rights posts. 

 

 

Pray for a peaceful and just resolution to the conflict between Palestine and Israel.

More than 1,500 children have been killed since September 29, 2000, when violent hostilities resumed.

The names and details about every one of these 1,476 Palestinian and 129 Israeli children are memorialized in Remember These Children.

Say a prayer this Mothers’ Day for their families and that the conflict that took their children’s lives end with a just peace. 

And consider being a part of that peacemaking. 

Save the afternoon of May 20 for Lunch on the Lawn, a celebration in honor of ICM Food Pantry and Co-op supporters (i.e. us!): 

 

The sponsoring congregations of Intown Collaborative Ministries (ICM) are pleased to announce the first annual Lunch on the Lawn, an event celebrating the ICM Food Pantry, ICM’s food coops, and the many volunteers and guests who have made these two programs a success.

Pray for people living in dire poverty in Paraguay who have been hit by a major flood which has destroyed their livelihoods due to loss of animals and crops.

Read more about this disaster and what you can do from Chruch World Service, one of our denomination's partners. 

 

The Education Team would like to start replacing our older modeled cribs with newer ones.  If you would like to donate a new or gently used crib and mattress set, please contact me by This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or at 404-550-2115. Fitted crib sheets are also needed. Thank you!

Our Easter 2012 offering to One Great Hour of Sharing was $3,156, more than a thousand dollars more than last year. Thank you! See what a difference these funds can make:

 

Pray for Christians and all people in Sudan and South Sudan.  On April 22 in Sudan, three churches and a Bible School were destroyed by a fundamentalist Islamic group. Fighting continues between Sudan and South Sudan.

Read a call to prayer and a statement from the Sudanese Presbyterian Church. 

 

This week we're praying for the 12 million people living in the West African region of the Sahel where food is always scarce and famine is imminent.

The Sahel nutrition crisis spans the countries of Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and the northern regions of Cameroon, Nigeria and Senegal. UNICEF anticipates that one million children suffering from severe malnutrition in this region could die within months without immediate humanitarian assistance. Many more are at risk of stunting and irreversible, permanent brain damage and disability as a result of malnutrition. 

Find resources to help you pray, act, and give in response to this crisis.

In this economy, we're seeing higher demand -- about seventy to eighty attendees -- for our Community Fellowship program at McIver on Sunday afternoons. Those same economic factors also cause our volunteers to drop out of buying, preparing, and serving the meal.

Currently, we have vacancies for the second Sunday of odd-numbered months and for all fifth Sundays -- including April 29th. So, to make things easier, we thought we'd divide the responsibilities.

 

We'd like volunteers to bring one of something from the list below. It would be great to get eight volunteers for the #1 item up front, if you can help that way. Bring supplies with you to the DHPC Parlor around 10:30 on 4/29 morning, and we'll get it to McIver for the 3:30 preparation.

 

We need:

1. 8 people to bring a lasagna casserole or spaghetti to feed twelve;

2. 6 people to bring salad fixings;

3. 6 people to bring twenty-four cookies or brownies each;

4. 4 people to bring iced tea, lemonade, or something low cal and fun (2 gallons for each);

5. 4-5 people to do quick prep and serve the meal -- arrive at 3:30; serve at 4:30; and leave at about 5:30.

 

Thank you so much for your help. If you're able to provide anything, leave a message in the comments or contact Scott Hulsey at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

 

 

This week, our Prayers for the World focus close to home:

Pray for tomato pickers in Florida who are seeking fair pay from Publix and other groceries. The PC(USA) has supported their efforts for years with some success at Yum Brands and others.

 

DID YOU KNOW?

The US Department of Justice and FBI have investigated and prosecuted seven cases of slavery in recent years, freeing more than 1,200 slaves in Florida farms, whose produce goes to our groceries and restaurants.

Learn more here.

This week we're focusing our prayers for the world on Christians in the Middle East, as they face uncertainties and sometimes persecution amid regional violence and unrest.

 

 

Take this little quiz to pique your interest and awareness of these minority communities

(answers below)

1. What 7 countries have significant Christian populations in the Middle East?
2. Which 5 have Presbyterian congregations?
3. When did Christianity arrive in the region?
4. How many Christians have fled Iraq (many to Syria where they now face even more uncertainty)?
5. What kinds of Christians are there?
6. Everyone else there is Muslim, right? 

Remember that our Easter offering to One Great Hour of Sharing helps people in the Middle East and around the world—people of all faiths—who face violence, disaster, and grinding poverty. 

Answers: 

1. While definitions of "significant" and "Middle East" may vary, the following seven countries are the best fit to answer the question: Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, and Iran. 
2. Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran all have active, indigenous Presbyterian churches (as opposed to churches for Presbyteiran foreigners/tourists/ex-pats, examples of which can be found dotted around the region).
   
3. Well, we know Jesus lived and ministered in what is now Israel/Palestine. But when did people in the rest of the region hear about and start to follow Christ? Let's just say since Pentecost.
   
4. Iraqi Christians have left their homeland in massive numbers, from perhaps 1.7 million before 2003 to perhaps 600,000 now. Read more about them with a focus on Presbyterians.
5. Just about every kind you can imagine: Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Maronite, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Baptist, Pentecostal, Anglican, and more. Read more from one of our denomination's frequent partners, the Middle East Council of Churches. 
6. You're correct-- the answer is no. But you might be surprised by the diversity. Not just a variety of Muslims, Christians, and Jews, but other faiths you might not have heard of. 

 

When one person invests in community, we're all enriched. 

Consider if you are called to invest a pocket of time in our DHPC community in these ways:

 

Assisting or lead teaching our Elementary Sunday School (grades 1-5), and Middle School next fall.  Talk to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to be part of this opportunity. 

 

Greet weekday visitors and help in our office. Contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . 

 

Help Coordinate, plant and cultivate sustainable and beautiful gardening in our front beds.  Talk to David Carter Florence.

On Easter Sunday, as one response in gratitude for Jesus' sacrifice for us on the cross, we will receive the special offering for One Great Hour of Sharing. This offering is used to help poor and hungry people, people hit by natural disasters and refugees around the world. We remember that Jesus gave us two commandments to live by: to love God with all our heart, soul and mind and to love our neighbors as ourselves. He made it clear, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, that our neighbors are not just the people we know but anyone around the world who is in need. How in the world can we fulfill this commandment?  

 

One way is through the One Great Hour of Sharing offering. What a gift this offering is to each one of us. Why is it a gift, you ask; I thought you were asking us to give? It is a gift that gives us a way to obey Jesus’ command to love our neighbors as ourselves. We can reach people in need around the world through the network of Christian churches and ecumenical bodies that literally circle the globe.

Just in the last year, through Church World Service, working with local partners:  

We helped Cambodians hit by the worst flood in a decade with half of the rice crop destroyed. We provided food and water purification tablets to the most affected, provided livelihood  assistance to poor families and served as a watchdog to enhance accountability with local governments.

 

We helped nurture development at the grassroots in Indonesia with seeds, tools and strategies. In West Timor’s Biloto Village, farmers are helped to start permaculture – an earth-friendly methodology that helps boost crop production without expensive fertilizers and pesticides.  The farmers have also been trying System of Rice Intensification, which yields more rice from less seed and water – ideal for this drought-prone area.

 

We helped children in Kenya, which is facing the highest malnutrition in a decade, with nutritional supplements to prevent irreversible health consequences.

 

We are helping people in Syria, caught in the fighting, by working with the Orthodox Church to provide rent assistance, fuel, clothing, bedding and food. And these are only examples of the neighbors we helped.

 

Now you have an opportunity to help millions of other neighbors through the One Great Hour of Sharing on Easter Sunday. In response to the great need, I challenge you to try to increase your gift by 10% over what you gave last year. I promise to do that. In response to Jesus’ sacrificial love for each of us and his command to love our neighbors, who are those in need around the world, I ask you to bring a sacrificial offering for the One Great Hour of Sharing. 

One of the local ministries we support with our offerings and donations and time is Intown Collaborative Ministries. Last year, 180 volunteers – our own Anne Townsley and Jane Boyd Lee among them – served over 2,000 hours at Intown projects like the Food Pantry and the two Briarcliff Summit Food Co-operatives; $89,000 of donations went to support those programs; and donated food was estimated at $49,000.

 

Those funds and volunteers from the participating fourteen local congregations assisted Intown with its programs to alleviate the homeless and hungry in and around the Ponce corridor. Among those programs were the Heading Home initiative that helped twenty-one former homeless men and women relocate from the streets and shelters into stable income and housing. 130 were helped traveling on public transportation for job and health trips. The Food Pantry served nearly 10,000 meals for a total of over 35,000 pounds of food. The two Briarcliff Summit Food Co-ops have 54 members and for a small fee receive over $125 worth of food per month.

 

Every Sunday, we drop off food for Food Pantry in baskets at the front of the Sanctuary. Throughout the year, our specific offerings go to support Intown through the Souper-bowl offering, the lily and bread offerings in Lent. This support is in addition to a one-time pledge from the Mission Team budget that’s made up of our offering and donations. These are the great things that we work to accomplish together; thank you, for your support.

 

 

Twenty-two years ago (1990), the 202nd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) witnessed to the agonizing scream coming from what this land’s Declaration of Independence celebrates as “Nature and Nature’s God.”  The 1990 PCUSA Report, Restoring Creation for Ecology and Justice, calls upon the church to “recognize and accept restoring Creation as a central concern of the church, to be incorporated into its life.” 

 

We have thus far failed our call; when understood and practiced, after all, the way will inaugurate Human Awakening.  This call forms nothing less than humanity’s unifying Judeo-Christian-Islamic historic mission, as presented in Genesis 2:15.  Western Christianity’s Bibles, however, present problematic translations of humanity’s historic mission from God.  It therefore remains unrecognized and attacked. 

 

The King James (1611) rendition explains Genesis 2:15 in this way—before Eve and Adam ate the forbidden fruit, God showed Adam the Garden of Eden, explaining “dress it and keep it.”  The New Revised Standard Version (1948 with regular renditions thereafter) simply substitutes “till” for “dress.”  Columbia Seminary’s distinguished Old Testament and Hebrew scholar Dr. William Brown, however, explains what that Hebrew phrase’s first verb, abad, actually communicates:  “Abad refers to cultivation but means ‘to serve,’ as in a slave working for a master.”  Thus, to record the verb abad as “dress it” or “till it” profoundly narrows its meaning.  That way wrongly dresses Scripture’s call in a fanciful decorating direction focused upon select specialized occasions rather than being “fruitful” (Genesis 1: 28).

Understanding, let alone overcoming humanity’s modern transgressions adds knotty trouble to fulfilling our God-given historic human mission. But Jesus, the Holy Spirit and God call to grasp God’s partnering historic human mission.  Though our human possibility to fulfill the way looks bleaker and bleaker, balanced hope from God-given reason has not yet died. The Spirit still beckons believers to help illuminate the way.  This church’s Creation Care Team seeks to come more fully alive--exploring, celebrating, and serving--this Sunday, 22 April, at Earth Day on Ponce. 

 

“To serve it [Creation] and keep it,” in short, sustains God’s “invisible” but “perceived” presence (Romans 1: 18-20) within our home planet Earth, the only known living planet among the hundreds of billions of star-centered solar systems. 

 

Blessings, 

Jon Houghton

 

This week our prayer for the world is for women around the world where most of the one billion people living in extreme poverty are women and children.

 

Did you know this? In 2011, our congregation helped people facing extreme circumstances in all these countries:

 

Argentina

 

Belize

 

Bolivia

 

Brazil

 

Cameroon

 

Congo

 

Dominican Republic

 

El Salvador

 

Egypt

 

Ghana

 

Guatemala

 

Haiti

 

India

 

Indonesia

 

Israel/Palestine

 

Japan

 

Kenya

 

Lesotho

 

Liberia

 

Libya

 

Malawi

 

Nicaragua

 

Niger

 

Pakistan

 

Paraguay

 

Peru

 

Philippines

 

Russia

 

Senegal

 

Sierra Leone

 

Somalia

 

South Africa

 

Sri Lanka

 

Sudan

USA

 

Zambia

People around the world are touched when we give (every Easter) to One Great Hour of Sharing, which supports the Presbyterian Hunger Program, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, and Self Development of People. Let's see where our gifts can go in 2012!

 

Our church raised enough for at least SIXTEEN BICYCLES that will enable sixteen Congolese families to get their produce to market and make a living. Thanks to the whole DHPC for participating in this great project!

 

Pray for Israel and Palestine that they may come to an agreement bringing justice and peace to their people.

 

Our denomination’s position has consistently been to affirm the right of Israel to exist as a sovereign state within secure, internationally recognized borders and the right of the Palestinians to self-determination, including the right to the establishment of a neighboring independent, sovereign state toward the end of establishing a just and durable peace.

 

We can stand in the GAP with fellow Presbyterians and people of all faiths seeking a just peace:

 

Give: Support peacemaking efforts. Through our Easter One Great Hour of Sharing Offering, we support projects that can prepare the way for peace.

Act: Engage faithfully with this region through advocacy, pilgrimage, partnerships, alternative gift markets, education & more. (Find resources from PC(USA)’s Israel/Palestine Mission Network.)

Pray: Consider dedicating time on the 12th of each month to pray for all Israelis and Palestinians, especially remembering our Christian brothers and sisters (as part of a US-based ecumenical vigil initiated by the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Israel and Palestine).

From PC(USA) denominational leaders: 

 

Our Christian friends are enduring great suffering, along with all the Syrian people, under the escalating violence of the Assad regime and the counter-violence of armed resistance groups. The international community seems unable to agree on ways to bring the violence to a halt or to find a path of engagement that can lead to a peaceable resolution of the conflict. As believers in Jesus Christ, who declare that our God is “able to find a way when there is no way,” we must go to God in prayer on behalf of all who are suffering and ask for wisdom as to how we might provide comfort and support.

 

Click here for 5 things we can all do. 

 

Pray for peace and justice in Madagascar and for the health and discernment of the church there.

 

Doug Tilton, PC(USA) mission worker in Africa, says Madagascar’s political and economic crises after a military coup in 2009 still persist. Human rights violations also continue. In response, the Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar, known by its Malagasy acronym FJKM, is pushing for a return to democracy. Presbyterians in the United States, including the Madagascar Mission Network, are supporting the FJKM. FJKM leaders hope that a “roadmap,” brokered by a delegation from the Southern Africa Development Community, will provide an effective pathway toward the restoration of democracy and human rights. Meanwhile, there continues to be great concern for the safety of FJKM pastors and other church leaders, some of who have been threatened and others arrested. “We hear constantly from the FJKM that the most important thing people can do is to pray, pray for peace and justice and for the health and discernment of the church in Madagascar,” Tilton says. “It’s also important that we engage in advocacy with U.S. officials.”

Learn more at pcusa.org.