Yodogawa Christian Hospital in Osaka, Japan, has given the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) $208,577 to be used for mission in Asia.

The gift represents the same amount Presbyterian Women contributed in 1956 to the hospital, founded by Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) missionaries. The PW gift, which was raised through the organization’s Birthday Offering, helped build a 76-bed hospital that has grown into a multi-faceted medical complex.

The Presbyterian medical ministry in Osaka began in 1955, when missionaries opened the Yodogawa Christian Clinic. The first superintendent, Dr. Frank Brown, committed Yodogawa to providing “whole person healing” in an impoverished community still reeling …

In the province of Monte Plata in the Dominican Republic is the “batey” — bateys are squatter communities in rural Dominican Republic inhabited primarily by Haitians — of Bosque Centro. It’s a community of about 3,000 Haitian residents whose forebearers were brought to the Dominican Republic to work in the sugar cane fields.

Sugar cane production has long since gone, yet the residents of the bateys remain. Many are third and fourth generations born in the Dominican Republic. Most have never set foot in Haiti. They are a people without a country.

The government of the Dominican Republic will not …