The Justice & Compassion Team welcomed missionaries Nan McCurdy & Miguel Mairena at a pot-luck dinner in Heavener Hall on Wednesday, April 18, 2018. St. Paul’s has been supporting Nan & Miguel in their work for many years. They discussed their past, present, and future projects with us.
Starting in Fall 2018, Miguel & Nan joined the team at Give Ye Them to Eat (GYTTE), a group founded in 1977 by Mexican Methodists and missionaries. The goal of GYTTE is to work with marginalized communities on sustainable development that will improve food security, housing, and overall health.
GYTTE has offices in Puebla, Mexico but the majority of Miguel & Nan’s work will be in a remote town called Tlancualpican, which was at the center of a recent earthquake and saw the destruction of many homes. Besides learning appropriate agricultural and technological practices, the people of Tlancualpican are learning to make earthquake-resistant “straw-bale” homes, one of many alternative construction methods that uses sustainable, locally-sourced construction materials.
GYTTE also has a dedicated training center and test farm in the near-desert climate outside Puebla. There GYTTE facilitates Community Health Worker certifications, training on how to raise and care for livestock, workshops on how to build everything from solar cookers to water-free composting toilets, and much more. GYTTE serves as host for VIM-type groups working in Mexico. Part of the GYTTE mission also includes providing for “the spiritual growth of the Methodist congregations through training events and retreats for laity, clergy, youth, and adults, as well as the production and distribution of Christian Education Materials.” To read more, visit: www.gytte.org
Previously, Miguel & Nan spent 15 years in Nicaragua. In 2017, they came back to the United States on a year-long assignment as Mission Advocates for the Western Jurisdiction in the United States where they helped train and prepare new missionaries whose field assignments will be anywhere from 2 months to 2 years. One of the missionary teams Miguel & Nan worked especially closely with are the first Cuban Methodists sent as missionaries, Leo Garcia and Cleivy Benitez. Miguel & Nan enjoyed sharing their wisdom with Leo & Cleivy, who were medical doctors before feeling called to missionary work and who now serve as pastors and teachers in the Quéssua Mission, one of the oldest Methodist Missions on the continent of Africa, and are “Papi and Mami” to about 60 boys at the orphanage there.
Miguel & Nan themselves participated in training sessions with the Disaster Response Task Force. In a newsletter to supporters, Nan wrote: “Miguel finished his Emergency Response Teams (ERT) certification last August and was part of the first ERT after Hurricane Harvey to reach the Rio-Texas Conference. Together with twelve others from California-Pacific and Desert Southwest, he worked with homeowners on five homes over nine days in the area of Victoria, Texas.” Despite a quick response, the full recovery process can be slow for families already struggling to make ends meet or those without insurance. Nan explained, “In a year, or two, or three, UMC construction teams will help families rebuild their homes.”
Miguel & Nan also spent time in the winter of 2018 at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota to meet with and support the Lakota Sioux in their ongoing struggle to protect their source of clean water and their sacred land.
Miguel Mairena and Nan McCurdy are directly supported by offerings made to the United Methodist Church’s Global Ministries missions programs through The Advance, the UMC’s official channel for collecting and distributing donations. If you would like to make a donation towards their work, checks may be made payable to St. Paul’s UMC with the memo line marked “Miguel & Nan.” Their designated Advance ID’s are: #12877Z (Miguel) or #10801Z (Nan).
