When you give to One Great Hour of Sharing you are assisting in the empowerment of others as they move past emotional, physical, and spiritual misfortune. Your help gives hope.   Join together on Palm Sunday, March 29, and make a generous offering to One Great Hour of Sharing using the special offering envelopes in your bulletin that day.

Your gifts support vital ministries like Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, Presbyterian Hunger Program, and Self-Development of People.  These ministries respond in times of natural disaster helping neighborhoods and families re-build their lives, they help communities gain access to clean, pure drinking water, they improve sanitation facilities that reduce disease, they educate children and provide job skills to men and women enabling improved economic self-sufficiency.

Give to One Great Hour of Sharing to support these Presbyterian Mission Agency ministries as they strive to help all of God’s people find resilience, hope, and faith in the face of challenging circumstances.

Our Dominican Republic team left Nashville on November 1^st to  serve with our mission partner, Solid Rock International, through November 7^th at la Clinica Cristiana de la Salud Integral in San Juan de la Maguana near the western border shared with Haiti.  Our 8-member team consists of 2 internists, 3 nurses, 1 pre-med student, and 2 others with incredible servants’ hearts.  This team will spend their time travelling to remote barrios away from the clinic to provide services to both children and adults.  These daily clinics involve basic health exams and assistance with medical conditions such as high blood pressure and vitamin/iron deficiencies as well as parasite infections.

First Presbyterian Church (FPC) offers mission service opportunities throughout the year.  You can learn about serving locally by contacting our Missions Office (615.298.9593) or by checking out any of the ministries funded in our mission budget that appear here.  Each of these organizations offers volunteer opportunities for groups or individuals and range from one-time to ongoing opportunities.

If short-term travel abroad appeals to you, we are presently accepting registrations for trips to the Dominican Republic (Nov 2014), Jamaica (February 2015), Haiti (February 2015) and East Africa (July 2015).  Read more about any of these trips from the links found here.

If you’re ready to register for a trip with FPC , click here.  For trips available through our partner, The Outreach Foundation, check out their offerings online as well.

The Cuba mission team will visit our in-country partner, the Dora E. Valentin Reformed Presbyterian Church (DEVIPR), in Matanzas province from May 16 – 23, 2014.  They will visit various outreach and home mission churches of the DEVIPR, the ecumenical seminary in Matanzas, and other church partners in Havana as well as the Cuban Council of Churches.

Greetings from the Dominican Republic.  We started the day seeing many potential surgical patients and completed several surgeries this afternoon.  Several other members of our group were able to go out to a “barrio” and provided general dental work and primary care to the Dominican people.  During our devotion tonight, we were able to talk about the many blessings that we have experienced in our time spent in the DR this far, here are a few:

-holding a newborn baby

-translators

-the many talents that are present on this trip

-the support and education from our colleagues

-Nicole, the medical coordinator, who has transformed the clinic in the 2 short years that she has been here

-being more aware and thankful for what we have at home

-all of the connections between team members and how we have all come together for this mission 

-the many benefits of modern medicine

-overcoming obstacles and being able to work with what is available to us

-successful procedures with great outcomes 

We’ll keep ya posted!

Keep us in your prayers!

The East Africa Mission Team dedicated its second sanctuary in as many Sundays on July 28, the Kiboko Church, part of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa.  The new sanctuary replaces the wooden structure below that will now be used for school classrooms.  At the dedication, the pastor and members of the congregation were challenged to enroll 50 children so that The Outreach Foundation might return to build more classroom space for them.  

Members of the mission team enjoyed a wonderful dedication and worship service and enthusiastically supported the special auction offering that took place at the end.  Members and visitors were given a chance to purchase bananas, beans, sugar cane, chickens, goats and sheep.  A nanny kid (female goat) was bought by one FPC member and donated to their guide so he could add to his own herd.

Members of the team head off on a 2-day safari on Tuesday with most of them returning to Nashville on Friday, August 2.

Sunday, July 21 was a joyous day of celebration for the Presbyterian Church in Rwanda and the community of Busanza as together, with members of the FPC Nashville East Africa mission team, a new sanctuary was dedicated.  The Busanza congregation is a mission church outreach of the Kanombe Parish in Kigali.  The FPC team helped complete the final painting of the sanctuary and some of the landscaping to ready the facility for Sunday worship.

Thirteen members of the East Africa Mission Team left Nashville today and will meet up with another in Chicago for their trip to Rwanda and Kenya through August 1st.  While there they will work on church builds with both the Presbyterian Church in Rwanda and the Presbyterian Church of East Africa.  They will also visit partner organizations serving widows, orphans and the poor supported in our church’s mission budget.  Please keep this mission team in your prayers.