CDSP student Lin Borgen of the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast with schoolchildren during last summer's Panama Project

Each summer since 1986, the Episcopal Diocese of Panama has welcomed up to four students at Episcopal seminaries, including CDSP, for three weeks.

 

During their stay in Panama, students undertake a week of intensive orientation and two-week field assignments in congregations, diocesan schools or Episcopal Church-sponsored social programs. "One outstanding feature of this program is its introduction to the social, economic and political dimensions of life in Panama, including the country's complex relationship with the United States and the dynamics of colonialism and imperialism," said the Rev. L. Ann Hallisey, dean of students. "The program has proven invaluable to students interested in Hispanic ministries."

 

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From January 2-6, seventeen CDSP students took the Episcopal Church's General Ordination Exam, which this year one participant compared to Mr. Toad's wild ride in The Wind in the Willows. 

CDSP prepared students for the experience with weekly seminars, available in person and on video, that reviewed canonical areas and covered test-taking strategies. During the exams, CDSP held morning and evening prayer each day and provided breakfast and coffee in the morning and lunch mid-day as well as a celebratory dinner at the exams' conclusion. CDSP staff also provided technical assistance, which this year turned out to be especially necessary as the exam process was fraught with online snafus.

"I admire our students' efforts to support one another, to persevere in a very difficult situation, to pray and breathe and laugh--and sometimes cry--until they came out on the other side together," said Dean of Students L. Ann Hallisey, who oversees the GOE process at CDSP.

To learn more about how CDSP supports students preparing for the GOEs, talk with Dean Hallisey.

Students

Linda-Suzanne Borgen has been awarded a grant from the Evangelical Education Society of the Episcopal Church to develop a database of national agencies that provide services to survivors of human trafficking. This project arose from her volunteer work at the SAGE Project (Standing Against Global Exploitation) in downtown San Francisco over the last semester. Borgen asks that congregations remember victims of trafficking and all who need rescuing from exploitation using prayers on page 826 in the Book of Common Prayer.

Anne Clark has been awarded a Seminary Consultation on Mission grant to attend an intensive Spanish program in Costa Rica, visit the Iglesia Episcopal Costarricanese at the invitation of the bishop, and attend the 2014 Panama Project.

Reed J. Loy has been awarded a Seminary Consultation on Mission grant to study for seven weeks during summer 2014 in the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui through partnership with Ming Hua Theological College, St. John's Cathedral, the HKSKH Welfare Council, and local parishes and schools.

In Memoriam

The Rev. Roger Alan Pickering ('62) died on January 13 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he lived. He had served as priest-in-charge at All Souls for the Deaf in Philadelphia from 1969 to 2004, vicar from 2006 to 2007 and vicar at Holy Spirit Church of the Deaf in San Lorenzo, California, from 1962 to 1968. He is survived by his wife, Sandra, their son Gorden and his wife Mary Ann, and their daughter Kirsten and her husband Wayne Houseknecht. Read the obituary.

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