The Year in Review

Reconnecting with Mentors, Missionaries, United Methodists, and Mission Partners

A year ago I had the privilege of meeting up with retired Latin American missionaries at the Brooks-Howell Home in Asheville, North Carolina. Joyce Hill, who served as my first liaison with Global Ministries when I served as a missionary in Argentina between 1978-1987, helped organize the day. In the afternoon that day I led anyone from Brooks-Howell who wanted to attend a Christmas sing-a-long. I am grateful to Joyce for her help and for the gift of her leadership at Global Ministries while I was a missionary. She has been a model mentor for me.

Then early in 2023 I was able to reconnect with Stan and Beryl Moore who had served as missionaries in Chile. In the late 1990’s I served as Area Secretary for Chile and was able to visit them at their place of assignment in northern Chile. The Moore’s helped me put together an e-letter that featured The Methodist Church of Chile.

After not being able to staff display tables at annual conferences due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I was able to visit the Western Pennsylvania Annual Conference, where we showed our video to delegates and made available information about Encounter with Christ in Latin America & the Caribbean. Our contact in Western Pennsylvania, Jodale Barnhart, arranged for me to preach at the First United Methodist Church in Clarion, Pennsylvania. The Rev. Clarke Campbell-Evans, a member of our Advisory Board, staffed a display table at the Western North Carolina Annual Conference. 

In May I participated in the first of many Zoom meetings of The Methodist Church of Uruguay as they planned for a spiritual retreat that took place in November of 2023. The planning paid off as participants experienced a deeply meaningful time together at the Centro Emmanuel Retreat Center in Colonia Valdense, Uruguay. I also met with pastors and lay leaders from the Evangelical Methodist Church of Argentina for a Zoom meeting on how to conduct one-to-one relational meetings to broaden a congregation’s reach in the community. 

In August I had the opportunity to staff a display table for the annual meeting of MARCHA (the national Hispanic/Latino caucus within The United Methodist Church and the Methodist Church of Puerto Rico). The meeting was held in San Antonio, Texas, at La Trinidad United Methodist Church. It was a blessing to reconnect with friends from across the connection and to share information about Encounter. 

I had the privilege of meeting up with newly elected Bishops Laura Merrill (Arkansas) and Hector Burgos (Upper New York). Bishop Merrill is fluent in Spanish having served as a Mission Intern in Chile early in her career. Bishop Burgos expressed interest in Encounter at the MARCHA meeting and later, along with Encounter’s Advisory Board Chair, the Rev. Dr. Cynthia Weems, we met via Zoom.

Our electronic newsletters this year featured our Methodist partners in Chile, Honduras, Paraguay, and Mexico. To read previous newsletters, visit our website.