wfn.org | Sidebar: The Women of Westside

[BethAH <BethAH@mbm.org>]

June 27, 2001
Beth Hawn
Mennonite Board of Missions
(219) 294-7523
<NEWS@MBM.org>

June 27, 2001

Sidebar:  The Women of Westside

BUFFALO, N.Y. (MBM)  For both John Powell, director of Mennonite
Board of Missions department of Evangelism and Church
Development, and Neftali Torres, pastor of Westside Mennonite
Church and urban ministry director appointed by MBM and New York
Mennonite Conference, their wives are integral partners in their
ministries.

Shirley Powell brings to Westside Mennonite Church years of
experience in administration, advocacy and legislative action.

For more than a decade, she worked at the politics of defining
hunger from a base in Detroit, Mich., with Hunger Action
Coalition sponsored by Food Research and Action program in
Washington, D.C.

Powell participated in the boycott of Nestlis infant formula in
the 1970s and 1980s.  In 1983, she traveled to Geneva as a
delegate from the Infant Formula Action Coalition to the World
Health Organization meeting, which set regulations for worldwide
infant formula distribution.

Altagracia (Gracie) Amelia Gonzalez Ramos de Torres past
includes bareback horse-riding, street preaching, ministry among
tribal people in the Amazon, and community organizing in New York
City, not to mention her more mainstream jobs as secretary,
veterinary assistant, and missionary in Puerto Rico.

Along with her many skills, Torres conveys a spiritual vitality
that illumines the situations in which she finds herself.
Currently, she is studying on two fronts in order to broaden her
ministry:  She is deepening a ministry of intercession that she
has been practicing for 10 years and refining her computer
skills.  Torres hopes to teach computer courses in Spanish with
United Neighborhoods, where she is presently employed.
* * *
Lynda Hollinger-Janzen                          PHOTOS AVAILABLE