Global Outreach
In recent years, our Global Mission support and involvement has grown even larger than the combined various hunger ministries. Member support equals 15% or more of our offering receipts each year.
ITUNGI, TANZANIA
CONTACT: Ann Ericson, ericson@comoparklutheran.org
Our partner congregation ministry in Tanzania is long-standing and vibrant. Our members continue to travel to Tanzania where we have established and meaningful relationships with our partner parish, its leaders and members. Over the past two decades, Como Park Lutheran has joined with them in supporting church and community development work that includes well drilling projects, building programs, educational materials for schools, support for local hospitals and clinics, and most significantly, support for more than 30 secondary scholarships, in addition to vocational school scholarships, nursing and divinity scholarships also. We've also been able to join with them and the local Lutheran University to support and develop improvements in agricultural practices, grain storage, micro-finance loans for small-share farming, and a recent co-op development initiative. In all of this we are blessed to be able to join in the ministry of a small village church where without electricity or running water, they are able to envision life and world-changing ministries to bring life and prosperity to their children, village and country.
PHOTOS: Tanzania Trip in 2024
GUATEMALA
CONTACT: Ruth Pechauer, ruthpechauer@gmail.com
Following a visit to Guatemala in 2008, Como Park Lutheran Church voted in February of 2009 to approve a partner-parish relationship with the Christo Lux Del Mundi (Christ, the Light of the World) Congregation in Santa Amelia, Peten, Guatemala. This village church consists of mostly Mayan Guatemalans in the northern reaches of Guatemala. The location of the village and the lack of electricity and running water there present a number of ministry needs all their own, but chief in the minds of the parish are some basic improvements to the church building and grounds to improve their viability and self sufficiency.
As we continue to grow into this relationship, we commit ourselves to pray for the church there, its leaders and members, and the ministries they undertake. We commit ourselves to $1,000 per year in parish development support. And we hope to lead members from this congregation to theirs every other year, to help the relationship grow.
MADAGASCAR
Madagascar is Como Park Lutheran Church's oldest and largest outreach ministry. This church’s first called Pastor, Carl Rasmussen, was a missionary to Madagascar, who returned to the United States when he was injured with a broken back. His assignment to and ministry in the Como Park neighborhood created a vibrant missions community that continues here to this day. Pastor Leonard Jacobsen, “Jake,” and his wife Evie were supported in their missions work in Madagascar for 35 years by this congregation, and then Pastor Jake became our visitation Pastor here for another six years. Since then, this congregation has supported the East Africa Missions office of the ELCA, which is now based in Nairobi, Kenya. Over the past 90 years, as the Malagasy Church has become more self sufficient, our support has shifted from supporting Missionary Pastors, to Regional support for indigenous church ministries, to modest support for their health care ministries.