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Note #7638 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

Moderator to tour mission sites in Midwest
03152

Moderator to tour mission sites in Midwest

Abu-Akel will make pastoral visits to farms and rural churches

by Evan Silverstein

LOUISVILLE - The Rev. Fahed Abu-Akel, moderator of the General Assembly, will
soon be down on the farm.

Abu-Akel, who presided over last year's 214th Assembly of the Presbyterian
Church (USA), is scheduled to visit a number of family farms, ranches and
rural churches as part of his "Mission USA" tour. 

The March 24-26 trip will focus on Presbyterian-related programs and missions
in the Midwest, with stops in Missouri and South Dakota. The three-day,
jam-packed tour is being sponsored by the National Ministries Division (NMD)
and middle governing bodies in the areas he will visit. 

This is the third year of the "Mission USA" program, which takes the
moderator to different parts of the United States to examine a range of
projects focused on social and economic issues.
This year's tour will concern itself in part with issues related to the
ongoing farm crisis, including the shift from family-sized operations to
corporate mega-farms and the impact on families, churches and communities. 

The farm focus was inspired by a report adopted by last year's General
Assembly, We Are What We Eat, that was approved in response to a farm-crisis
overture enacted by the 1999 GA. It calls attention to problems facing small
farmers and ranchers and encourages the church to address issues of food
production and consumption.
"What I hope we're actually able to do is put a face on the kind of issues
that are covered in the report," said the Rev. Curtis A. Kearns Jr., the NMD
director. "The challenges facing small independent farmers, the issues of
migration away from the farm to the urban areas, and how the rural churches
and ministries are coping with that reality."

His said the war with Iraq is not expected to affect plans for the tour. 

This will be the first Mission USA tour since April 2001, when the Rev.
Syngman Rhee, moderator of the 212th General Assembly, visited
Presbyterian-related sites and projects in the Northeast. In 2000, the
inaugural tour took Freda Gardner, moderator of the 211th Assembly, to
Alaska, Washington, California and Idaho.

In 2001, Moderator Jack Rogers (of the 213th Assembly) decided not to
participate. NMD officials hope the tours will become a regular part of the
moderator's annual schedule.

Kearns and his executive assistant, Pam Green, will accompany Abu-Akel. Diana
A. Stephen, the PC(USA)'s associate for Network Support for Rural and Small
Church Ministries, will join the delegation in South Dakota.

The program will start in the St. Louis area, where Abu-Akel's group will
visit Cote Brilliante Presbyterian Church, which operates an adult
residential facility. The moderator will visit First Presbyterian Church of
Kirkwood (Missouri) to learn about the congregation's outreach projects,
including its Agape Garden, an organic gardening program that contributes
produce grown in a member's backyard to a retirement facility for low-income
adults. The program started as a joint project of the church's hunger and
economic-justice committees.
The moderator also will visit Southampton Presbyterian Church in St. Louis,
where he will learn about an after-school youth center and an advocacy
program for Bosnian immigrants and Bosnian Roma families. 

In South Dakota the delegation will visit Brookings, near Sioux Falls, with
members of Dakota Rural Action, an organization of farmers, ranchers,
small-business owners and working people who try to protect natural
resources, family farms and rural communities.

The group plans to tour the farm of the Rev. Dick Poppen, a Presbyterian
tent-making pastor from DeSmet, SD, and visit Endeavor Presbyterian Church in
nearby Fadora, where Poppen is pastor.

In between, Abu-Akel will visit Spirit Lake Presbyterian Church in DeSmet for
a "farm meal" and travel to Carthage Church, a United Church of Christ
congregation involved in a range of community programs.

"The moderator's visit to rural churches and communities is a strong
affirmation of the PC(USA)'s commitment to family farmers and ranchers,"
Stephen said. "South Dakota will provide a glimpse into the isolation of many
rural areas, the unpredictability of weather, and most of all, the dedication
and commitment of family farmers and ranchers and the congregations and
communities that they serve."

Other stops on the tour include Bison, SD, where Abu-Akel is scheduled to
meet with members of Hands Across South Dakota, a joint project of the
Presbytery of South Dakota, South Dakota Farmers Union and South Dakota
Extension Service. It provides assistance to farmers and ranchers in the
northwestern part of the state who have been hurt by drought and sinking
prices. 

Abu-Akel also will visit the ranch of Presbyterians Carolyn and Jerry Petik,
near Meadow, SD, who helped in the creation and promotion of the 1999
farm-crisis overture that eventually led to the We Are What We Eat report,
whose official sponsor was the Presbytery of South Dakota. 

The delegation also will visit 40-member Hope Presbyterian Church, in
Keldron, SD, to meet and worship with farmers and members. That church's
women's group was among the originators of We Are What We Eat.

Mission USA allows moderators to become aware of the PC(USA)'s wide-ranging
involvement in mission in this country, and affirms the church's support of
those engaged in mission, Kearns said.

"The value for me in these trips is, one, for the moderator to be able to see
the various types of ministry the church is involved with at all levels,"
Kearns said, "and two, it is an opportunity for the moderator, as the
official representative of the denomination, to say 'thanks' to the folks who
are out in the field."

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