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Cameron Graham, Missionary

Like many of you, I call the Chapel of the Cross home, although I have not lived here for the last 10 years. It is, however, the place where I was first nurtured, loved, confirmed, and disciplined, and where I learned that we really are called to use the gifts we have to serve the Lord.

I "graduated" from the Chapel of the Cross in 1991. After college at Sewanee, I began work as the youth minister at the Episcopal Church of the Advent in Spartanburg, South Carolina. This past December, after five years of full-time youth ministry, I resigned from the Advent to respond to God's call to continue to do youth ministry, internationally, with the Episcopal Church's South American Missionary Society (SAMS) in conjunction with the program Mundo Juvenil in Quito, Ecuador.

Over 97 percent of the world's trained youth ministers live in the United States; only 3 percent of the world's youth do. Over 65 percent of Latin America is under the age of eighteen. Mundo Juvenil seeks to meet this challenge through equipping indigenous people with skills and support in the field of youth ministry; it serves as a youth ministry training and resource center for those in Ecuador and throughout Latin America.

During my two-year commitment as an Episcopal missionary, I will pioneer relationships between this resource center and the Anglican dioceses throughout South and Central America, setting up training programs, networking, teaching and disciplining both youth and the adults who work with them. I will also facilitate North American mission trips as students come to learn and serve in this third-world country.

Stephen invited me to come share my new ministry at the Chapel of the Cross on Sunday, August 13, and share how my family here can be involved. I am in need of three specific kinds of support.

The first and foremost is prayer support. Please commit to praying daily for me and my relationship with God. I cannot give anyone a drink out of an empty cup.

Second is emotional support. This is a grand adventure of faith, but the reality is that there will be hard times. Please be in touch to let me know that you know I am out there -- letters, e-mails, newspaper clippings, care-packages, you name it. My address is P.O. Box 399, Ambridge, PA 15003 or cameron.graham@iteams.org. Both addresses are good for my entire stay abroad as mail will always be forwarded to wherever I am.

The third is financial support. I must raise a budget of $30,000 a year for ministry and living expenses. If you are able to help in this (tax-deductible) way, please make checks payable to SAMS and mail them to P.O. Box 399, Ambridge, PA 15003.

Please prayerfully consider joining me in this ministry as a prayer partner and/or financial supporter. I look forward to sharing this journey with you and thank you, my home and my family, for what you have already done in my life.

© 2001: Chapel of the Cross