Cuba Partnership Update
Pineda hosted Pastor Edelberto Valdés, from El Centro Presbytery (Cuba) April 17-20. Edelberto pastors 2 churches and 2 mission in El Centro, and is also the General Secretary (Executive) of both El Centro Presbytery and the Synod of Cuba. On this15-day trip, he also visited Clinton, SC, Gainesville and Fernandina Beach churches in St. Augustine Presbytery, and North Lake and GraceWay churches in Central Florida.
Edelberto spoke at a potluck at Pineda on Tuesday evening, attended the Book Study on Wednesday morning, met with Pastor Jim and Pastor David, attended the BIRP meeting on Thursday, and dropped in on the Banner group on Thursday. He also enjoyed a visit to the Brevard Zoo. Thank you for all your hospitality!!
The Pineda “banner group” is making two “Fishers of Men” banners to send to our partner churches in Iguará and Meneses. They are also preparing banner kits with material, pre-cut letters and shapes, and decorating items (glitter glue, sequins, etc.) so the youth of Iguarà and Meneses can make banners for each sanctuary.
A Pineda mission trip to Cuba is being planned for October. Pat Zinn will hold an information session in May (watch the bulletin for the date). We can take up to 5 people. Central Florida Presbytery is planning a trip in late January or early February 2018; details will be available later this summer.
Cuba Pen Pals
Building relationships between churches starts by developing friendships. On each of my visits to the churches of Iguará and Meneses, the people emphasized how much they want to get to know the peo-ple of Pineda by exchanging letters or emails with us. This means more to them than all the medi-cines, fabric, and money we can send.
We’re looking for a few people who are willing to reach out to our brothers and sisters in El Centro. The pastors of the Cuban churches will match you up with a member. You can write in English (they will find a way to translate it), or use an app like translate.google.com for a pretty good translation. Keep the letters short - just a paragraph or two - because the Cuban email bandwidth is limited. Write about your family (especially grandchildren!), activities at Pineda, and your hobbies. Not everyone in Cuba has email, so we’re starting by funneling emails through 1 contact at each church.
At Meneses: Flora Delgado, president of the Meneses PW - ydelgado@ya.ss.rimed.cu
At Iguará: Lester Manso Blanco, student pastor of Iguará - lesteryoel@nauta.cu
(Note: You can send a longer letter to/through Lester by putting it in a Word (.doc, not .docx) or PDF (.pdf) format and attaching it to the email.) Please contact Pat Zinn if you have any questions. Thank you for furthering our relationship with these Cuban churches!
