wfn.org | [] #5374

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

GA99008          Young Adult VIM joins continuing             
                      Presbytery Partnership 
 
FORT WORTH- It all came together so well, it just had to be right. 
     So thought David Sigmon when he graduated last month from Centre 
College, Ky.  He plans  to be on his way for a year's mission service in 
Guatemala by August.  Sunday as one of more than 60 Young Adult Volunteers 
in Mission from across the country,  he will be commissioned in the morning 
worship service, along with several hundred other Presbyterian mission 
workers.                         
     David is from Hendersonville, N.C. and a  member,  since his 1979 
baptism at age three, of Trinity Presbyterian Church there.  After 
graduation from East High School, he chose the denomination's  Centre 
College, in Danville, Ky, because he wanted a new and different experience. 
He also realized that, with a liberal arts education, he could blend his 
wide variety of interests.  "Anywhere within a day's drive," his parents 
said. 
     He graduated with a double major in anthropology and sociology and a 
minor in English, but his courses brought him close to half a dozen other 
minors.  He followed a concern for how social systems work and how they 
contribute to social problems such as poverty and homelessness.  He took 
courses in urban development, economics, and religion, and explored the 
faith factor in social case studies. 
     A close friend had participated a year ago in the eight-year-old 
Presbyterian Young Adult Volunteers in Mission Program.  David was 
immediately interested.  For one, he'd always wanted to experience the 
Mayan culture in Central America, and Guatemala was on the list of sites. 
Once enrolled in the program, he went to Santa Fe last April to explore the 
next step, negotiating a specific assignment with the site coordinators who 
were there. 
     He met Robert Moore, and so began a sequel to Robert & Linda Moore's 
story, chronicled two years ago in the General Assembly News when they were 
first commissioned to serve in Guatemala by the Assembly.  The Moores and 
David are all from Western North Carolina Presbytery, now heavily involved 
in a five-year-old partnership with Suschitepequez and Sur Occidente 
presbyteries in Guatemala.  David's interests fit well in the two-year-old 
Health Promoter's program within that partnership.  It is funded by the 
presbytery's Two-Cents- A-Meal hunger program.  
     He'll  work within the two partner presbyteries, encouraging families 
to adopt and follow basic disease-preventive hygiene, training 
congregational leaders, coordinating the visits and activities of health 
teams from Western North Carolina, focusing on educating children and young 
people.  He'll  have opportunity to work with many people, even utilizing 
his soccer skills with the youth.  He won't even be alone as six other 
Y-A-VIMs  will be working in Guatemala and will get together every 45 days 
for a  spiritual retreat with the Moores.   
     David leaves in two weeks for a training period at the Presbyterian 
Center in Louisville and a Lutheran seminary in Chicago.  August third will 
find him in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, for five weeks of language school to 
hone his three years of high school Spanish, after which he begins his 
official year's tour of duty. 
     He looks forward to whatever that year will bring, anticipating that 
his experiences will ultimately guide his future.  As David well  knows, he 
has ahead of him many paths, many interests, many choices. 
by Midge Mack 

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