missions

WORLD MISSIONS

Photo Link for Recent Mission Trips

Meetings of the World Missions Division are open to all members of the church. Our financial support comes from both the regular operating budget of the church and from supplemental donations designated for World Missions or for specific projects. You are invited to participate personally, financially or in whatever manner the spirit moves. "For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call."

What follows is a quick trip around the world with the First (Scots) World Missions Division. Hit the internet links provided to explore mission fields with an ease that the first Apostles could never have dreamed of!

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Missionary Families

First (Scots) sponsors four missionary families, including three couples serving as PCUSA representatives on the foreign field. Harry & Debbie Horne teach at Universidad Biblica Latinoamericana in Peru.

Les & Cindy Morgan are medical advisors for the Church of Bangladesh health ministries.

John & Gwenda Fletcher are medical workers at Good Shepherd Hospital in The Congo. Each of these couples posts regular letters on the PCUSA website.

In addition, First (Scots) has recently undertaken sponsorship of Matt and Kadie Laughlin, who will be returning to East Asia (with their children) to serve under the auspices of Campus Crusade for Christ.

The Great Commission was first to teach and then to preach, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” So in recent years, our congregation has organized its world mission outreach into three subcategories of call: Teaching, Preaching and Healing.

Teaching

One of our primary Teaching partners is the Presbyterian Church of East Africa in Kenya, which operates a seminary that has recently blossomed into a comprehensive university. First (Scots) supports several scholarship students at the Presbyterian University of East Africa Pastoral Institute.

We also support the construction of new classrooms in rural parishes of the Rwandan Presbyterian Church, a K-6 school run by the Lamb Institute in Honduras and Sunday school programs in Nuevo Valentin, Peru.

Preaching

Our primary partner in Preaching mission is the Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship, which supports missionary activity in over 20 countries, "bringing good news of the kingdom into cultures where the church has yet to take root."

First (Scots) has also recently developed sister relationships with two small but rapidly growing nondenominational congregations in Latin America - one at Neuvo Pacto, Honduras and a second at Nuevo Valentin, Peru. We support Christian outreach efforts in the Peruvian Amazon through the Amazon Mission Fellowship

Healing

The Healing mission has historically been a point of great emphasis at First (Scots). "They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." Our congregation has directly supported the Christian Medical Institute of the Kasai (IMCK) and its Good Shepherd Hospital for many years. This is a partnership with the Presbyterian Community of Congo and the Medical Benevolence Foundation

We have also developed many longstanding personal and congregational relationships in Haiti, including those with the St Vincent's Hospital in Port-au-Prince and with the Hopital Lumiere in Bonne Fin

We support the Bill Rice Clinic on the island of La Gonave through the Haitian-American Partnership (HAPPI), a team of about twenty U.S. congregations working with the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti.

Following

While financial support continues to be a vital component of the First (Scots) outreach to the world, direct congregational mission activity has become increasingly important. In recent years we have sent multiple mission teams to Honduras, working with The Lamb Institute in Tegucigalpa, , as well as with Water Missions International in Tocoa, . We have also sent several teams to Peru in partnership with the Amazon Mission Fellowship.

The World Missions Division supports youth mission trips to both foreign and domestic fields. Recent destinations have been as distant as Jamaica and Honduras, or as close as Knoxville and Charlotte, partnering with the interdenominational youth ministry, Son Servants , What better way to "train up a child in the way he should go?"

First (Scots) mission teams have come from all walks of life, male and female, younger generations and old. Working with "the least of these our brethren," while sharing Christian fellowship in foreign lands made somehow familiar is truly a blessing. Might some of us, clicking internet links from the comfort of our own homes, hear a call to contribute, to furnish supplies, to support, or perhaps to follow?