Living Waters for the World (LWW), a ministry of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Synod of Living Waters, has produced a Vacation Bible School curriculum that repackages many of the key concepts from the ministry into child-friendly learning units and activities. “Water All Around the World” is the latest LWW effort at spreading the message that clean water is an essential component of health and human development.

Presbyterian World Mission has named Tamron Keith as associate director for administration and Rachel Yates as associate director for programs. Keith and Yates are currently staff members of the Presbyterian Mission Agency.

I have read this part of Jesus’ birth story many times. However, as I hear more stories about how migrants are fleeing danger and extreme poverty in their homelands, I am challenged to read this story differently. How would I react if my child were in such danger? What would I do if I knew the only option to save my child was to flee? And what would that have been like for Mary and Joseph? What emotions and hardships would they have faced?

Our world is facing the largest migration crisis since World War II and the migration route across the Mediterranean Sea from Africa and the Middle East to Europe is the most deadly route, claiming the lives of over 3,000 people in 2015 and more than 30,000 lives in the past 30 years. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees over 720,000 people have successfully made the journey to Europe in 2015, but they have done so mainly through dangerous and exploitative means. Most have fled their countries due to war, violence, persecution, political instability, famine, deadly diseases and scarcity of resources. Though many know the trek may be fatal, the hope of life free from these atrocities motivates them to take risks that—to observers—seem incomprehensible.

I stared blankly out the driver’s side window. I was sitting in my parked car outside the church where I was the pastor, fighting the urge to drive away and leave it all. Unanswered questions crowded my thoughts: How could I get out of the car and drag my feet through another day of being a pastor? If I went home and told my wife I was leaving the ministry, how would she react? How could I make any money if I quit? How did I end up here?

Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) Rebecca Heilman remembers what it was like to be far away from home on Thanksgiving Day. As a Young Adult Volunteer in Zambia in 2014-15, 6,000 miles separated her from her family—and those she loved.

Whenever the Rev. Cyndi Wunder frequents the shops and the businesses of Jasper, Texas, she gives thanks for the simplest of interpersonal encounters, which belie—even as they help to heal—a world of pain in the small East Texas town.

If you give a person a fish they eat once; if you teach a person to fish they eat for a lifetime. But what do you do when all the fish in the river are dead? What do you do when the source of the fish is polluted? You go upstream and advocate.

The words of Jesus from Matthew 25: 35-36 have special meaning to Sue Smith. The New Jersey native is among the growing number of Presbyterians who have committed to become a Pillar of the Church, a campaign working to provide long-term support to the ministries of Compassion, Peace and Justice within the Presbyterian Mission Agency.

News roundup from the mid-councils—presbyteries and synods—of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)