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This week we are sharing Cobbie and Dessa Palm's Christmas letter. The Palms are our mission co-workers in the Philippines, working to provide clean water, equip ministers, and reach children and youth through the arts. You can read about what they are up to and learn how to write to them here. Their letter is below:
Dear friends,
Humble beginnings that birthed hope, peace and love. The Christmas story of Christ’s birth has given us a beautiful narrative of how God works in times of adversity and reveals a divine plan in the simplest of settings. This year had been akin to this story for us.
For Dessa’s youth theater ministry, finding a home for the Youth Advocates Through Theater Arts (YATTA) has been a big challenge through the many years of its creative and life-transforming journey. YATTA has conducted a host of services for children, youth and the community, from theater workshops to life skills training, and youth camps that integrate spiritual reflection with advocacy for social issues and arts-based approaches. Using borrowed spaces, it could not provide a regular space for trainings, rehearsals and performances. But this year is a hallmark year, as various churches, local government units, and individuals threw their support to build the YATTA Creative Sanctuary, nestled among the acacia trees in a hilly lot beside the Banica River. It was also made possible with the partnership with the Kawayan (Bamboo) Collective and Foundation University Estudio Damgo, a group of senior architecture students who adopted the sanctuary as their thesis project. The sanctuary will finally give YATTA a home and a space where many more
children and young people can be empowered through the arts through the years to come.
This year we have been blessed by the visit of Church partners who have represented their PC(USA) congregations in Blacksburg, Virginia, and Mt. Kisco, New York. These visits have been an inspiration to our work and have infused new energy into our ministries. Both have taken a special interest in both the YATTA Creative Space and the Silliman Water Ministry where Cobbie focuses his time and energy. These visits as well as support from individuals in PC(USA) churches in Louisville, Kentucky, and Fifth Avenue, New York, have enabled Silliman Water to complete clean water systems on the isolated island of Olympia, Bais, and at the St. Joseph Seminary, Sibulan. Both locations had been bound and burdened to the purchasing of commercial bottled water but now they can filter and clean their own water source so that their communities can safely drink from their own wells. Work is ongoing to complete clean water systems in the community of Balili and Bajunpandan, both suffering from unhealthy water outside of Dumaguete.
Cobbie has also spent much of the year serving as a resource person to the Mandatory Continuing Theological Education Program of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP). This is a program of the UCCP that seeks to retool and refresh ministers of the UCCP in their understanding of potentially divisive theological issues while also strengthening their skills in preaching and church leadership. Cobbie travels to various UCCP gatherings and provides intensive courses with other leaders of the UCCP.
A highlight of this year for Cobbie was an opportunity to visit the PC(USA) offices in Louisville and the Presbyterian Foundation with a delegation from the UCCP. The purpose of the visit was to learn and understand from the PC(USA) the role of the different Board entities in creating sustainability for the PC(USA). As the UCCP enters a new era of self-reliance, it is eager to learn the lessons of more than 200 years of sustainability from the experience of the PC(USA). The UCCP has been blessed with PC(USA) support since the early Presbyterian mission arrived in the Philippines. This visit was clearly an expression and statement of the UCCP ready to stand on its own, resourcing its own ministries and programs, and wanting to do it with the wisdom of the PC(USA) experience.
This year has shown us the power and wonder of partnerships working together to realize dreams of a creative space for youth, clean water for communities in need, and new and refreshed energy for ministers. With these wonders also comes the joy of the evolving fuller self-reliance of a historically dependent church to stand on its own. These are dreams and wonders made possible by the power of the Holy Spirit working with the gifts you have made in prayer and in giving. We are deeply grateful for your passion for mission, and we remain steadfast in our commitment to serve faithfully.
Holiday Greetings,
Cobbie and Dessa Palm