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MCC is responding to Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita by supporting the work of churches in the affected regions.
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Alberto Parchmont, pastor of Iglesia Menonita Casa del Alfarero, is serving as an MCC hurricane response worker in Houston. Pastor ministers to evacuees through MCC positionDecember 30, 2005 As an MCC hurricane response worker in the Houston area, Alberto Parchmont helps connect evacuees with social services such as food stamps or other aid. He drives them to appointments at local clinics and hospitals. As he does each of these, the 44-year-old pastor of Iglesia Menonita Casa del Alfarero is also listening to stories of what they lost in the hurricane. "I tell them, 'God is with you right now,'" Parchmont says. Parchmont, who founded Casa del Alfarero in Pasadena, Texas, two years ago, came to the Houston area from Iglesia Menonita del Cordero in Brownsville, Texas. He recalls how he began gathering together a congregation in the garage of his home, chilly in winter and warm in the blazing heat of a Texas summer. Bedrooms and the living room inside his home served as Sunday school rooms. The congregation eventually grew enough to rent its own building. Today, he said, his outreach to hurricane evacuees has been a witness to his own congregation about how the Mennonite church works together to help people — an emphasis that his church members, many new to the Mennonite world, have embraced. |
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