Online Archives

Human trafficking explored

WOODMOOR – Human trafficking happens everywhere, said William G. Hillar. “No one is safe. No neighborhood is beyond its deadly touch,” he told about 100 attendees at a forum June 18, hosted by the United Methodist Women of Epworth UM Chapel.

The retired U.S. Army Special Forces colonel learned this many years ago when his 16-year-old daughter was kidnapped from a shopping mall parking lot and murdered when she attempted to escape criminals involved in sex slavery.

Hillar leads workshops and teaches courses in transnational drug smuggling, human trafficking, tactical counter-terrorism and transnational criminal gangs.

The forum was presented as part of a program by Epworth’s UMW aimed at helping middle and high school pupils learn how to protect themselves and to avoid situations that are potentially dangerous.

Local UM becomes webmaster

BALTIMORE – Old Otterbein UMC has recently sent off one of its young adult members to the Board of Global Ministries in New York City.

Ibrahim Dabo, born in Sierra Leone, began work as the Web Team Leader for the General Board of Global Ministries Aug. 1, managing the activities of the GBGM website.

Dabo escaped the brutal rebel war in Sierra Leone in 1997, moving to The Gambia, where he spent seven years as a refugee, along with a brother. In 2004, he joined family members to the U.S. on a student visa and immediately entered Baltimore City Community College. He graduated as an honor student from University of Baltimore in 2009 in Management Information Systems.

Dabo and started work at the age of 16 as Africa Editor for Goal.com, “the largest soccer website in the world.”

Follow Dabo’s life in New York on his blog www.ibdabo.com/blog.

Church helps Guatemalan potato farmers

CROFTON – On the latest of several trips to the Mayan village of Las Granadilla, Guatemala, a team of 27 from Community UMC spent two weeks in June, where they helped to repair an irrigation system, damaged severely when Tropical Storm Agatha struck.

There was an urgency to the trip, said Peggy Elliott, since without the irrigation system in place for the fall potato planting in mid-October, “most families will have to leave the land they now own and move elsewhere to make a living.”

It took the villagers nearly two decades to run approximately six kilometers of irrigation pipes all over the mountainsides, covering an area of 3,000 cuerdas (a cuerda is about 21x21 meters).

Community UMC, prior to the trip this year, has helped to complete a clinic, made medical visits, added a kitchen to a church and provides ongoing support for the village primary school. Since the move to the potato cooperative the standard of living has been raised considerably “allowing children to attend school for the first time,” Elliott said.

A moment in time inspires

DAMASCUS – When the Damascus UMC summer youth choir tour went to Nashville, Tenn., they shared a lot of experiences, both performing and in their “play” time.

But one moment stood out, said the Rev. Walt Edmonds who led the tour.

Glancing in the pew racks, he saw the latest Upper Room devotional. And on its back cover, he said, was the photo of Sue and Ted Constantinides, members of his church.

“Sue had written a devotion years ago on her experience with her son Timothy in the hospital at a most critical moment in time. It was the reading for May 9, 2010,” he said.

As the Upper Room presentation ended, the choir stood in their places and sang. “Sue read her entry and then we sang Ken Dotto’s ‘Come, Come unto Me,’ an invitational hymn to the healing and reconciling power of Christ,” Edmonds said.

Church brings a blessing

WASHINGTON – Asbury UMC moved “beyond the walls” this summer for a special event in the community surrounding the downtown-DC church.

The Rev. Lou Shockley pitched a tent in nearby Triangle Park and called the neighbors to have their animals blessed. Residents and workers in the area were invited to bring all animals – snout, finned or feathered to be blessed.

Shockley blessed a rabbit, a guinea pig, several dogs and the picture of a cat. But more important, five people asked for and received personal blessings.