Mission and Outreach
Who is God calling you to be? What is God calling you to do?
Since 1997, The Rev. Dr. Roy F. Miller, Ph.D., and Mrs. Florence Lantz Miller Summer Youth Institute at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary has helped young people consider these two questions. Coming from Washington DC to San Francisco, from Canby, Minnesota, to Trujillo Alto, Puerto Rico, and everywhere in between, these students come from small parishes and big steeples, big cities and small towns, U.S. territories and Indian Nations, representing all walks of life and theological perspectives.
PTS welcomes you to explore their initiatives for youth and youth leaders. (pts.edu)
Summer Youth Institute for College Credit, June 24–30, 2018: During this week-long program, teenagers who are rising high school seniors are invited to earn college credit while exploring what God is calling them to do and who God is calling them to be. This program currently meets at Waynesburg University (Waynesburg, PA), and we’re working to expand it to other local Christian colleges.
Carolyn Cummings, Missionary in Kenya
Carolyn has been serving with Africa Inland Mission in Kenya for almost 28 years. She started out as a Bible school teacher, then became the Children’s Ministry Facilitator for the Mission. She is now an administrator in the office that covers Kenya and Tanzania, providing office administration, contingency planning, project administration, and unit leadership for the missionaries working in Eastern Kenya. On weekends, she has a Bible club for teenage boys from a large slum area in Nairobi.
(Pictured: Carolyn and the boys from Kibera on a camping trip at Lake Naivasha.)
News from Carolyn (received April 2, 2018):
Dear Friends,
One of the best things about living in a former British colony is celebrating the extra holidays the Brits invented, like Boxing Day after Christmas. They also found a way to prolong the holiday weekend of Easter by inventing “Easter Monday.” While not a very creative name, it was a great idea! I really needed a 4-day weekend to recuperate from a visit to the coast, where AIM has a team working amongst a group of Muslims. Unfortunately, they are having struggles as a team, so I arranged for a seminar on “team health” with a couple counselors. They had a very emotional, very good day of grappling with some of their issues. I had a day of holding a 6-month-old baby who hates being put down. I kept the baby away from her doting mother and happy enough to not put me over the edge, but I discovered that bouncing a baby up and down for hours really does a job on one’s hips! I spent the next two days walking gingerly. Thanks for praying for the team; they gained a lot of insights and have begun to implement some adjustments.
Me with sleeping Anastasia in a rare moment of getting to sit down during a workshop break.
Easter was a lovely day. My church actually had their big celebration the week before, since many people travel over the long weekend. Indeed, there were fewer people in church, although I taught Junior Church and had more kids than usual because there were visitors. But we had a fun time. Then the soccer team boys came over for lunch and carrot cake. We watched the Jesus film from the Garden of Gethsemane to the Ascension and had a good prayer session.
Instead of cleaning up after the boys, I took off for a friend’s house, who kindly decided to make Easter lunch for my office mates and timed it at 3:30 so I could come. We had wonderful roast beef. Returning home to a mountain of dishes, I made the time more enjoyable by streaming the 11 o’clock service from Park Street Church. I enjoyed Phil Thorne, but the best part was the music! The choir’s offertory from “Elijah” was amazing. Singing that three times in one morning is very impressive.
Speaking of the soccer team, we are getting ready to build a library annex on our little plot in the Kibera slum. In order to facilitate the effort, I decided to join the 21st century and open an online giving account through Africa Inland Mission. If you are interested in contributing to the next phase for the library (soccer team office, single residence, toilets) and aren’t afraid of online giving, here is the link to my project: https://usgiving.aimint.org/project/1023840-015.
Besides the plans for the library, I would appreciate prayers for my church’s VBS program, which will be April 16–20. I am doing the Bible story and have organized the crafts. I’ll do the Bible story (from the Book of Daniel) during the opening hour of the VBS and then dash off to work, leaving my fellow teachers to do the crafts, games, and missionary stories. I enjoy the preparation, but have limited time to work on it all.
I don’t have a photo of any of my Easter activities, but I just took one of the “magic” candle that we lit during the prayer time with the boys, meant to help them focus on Jesus as the Light of the World. I have NO idea how this candle works, but it changes colors and is pretty impressive! The boys were quite distracted.
Happy Easter to you all!
Blessings,
Carolyn