Dear Friends,
This week, please join us in prayer for Gerardo Corpeño, a Salvadoran from Guatemala.
The smallest country in Central America, El Salvador is also the region’s most densely populated nation, with over 6.4 million people (47% Catholic, 33% Protestant, and 17% irreligious). El Salvador’s neighbor Guatemala, once the heart of the Maya civilization, lies to the south of Mexico and is the most populated Central American country. Among Guatemala’s 17 million people, 47% are Catholic, 40% Protestant, and 12% irreligious. Following centuries of Spanish rule, decades of political and economic instability in both nations culminated in bloody civil wars that ended in 1992 for El Salvador and 1996 for Guatemala. In recent years, hundreds of thousands have fled prevailing violence, poverty, and political repression in these contexts.
Originally from El Salvador, Gerardo has served as a professor of theology at Central American Theological Seminary (SETECA, a Vital SustainAbility client school) in Guatemala City for the past eleven years. Currently, he is pursuing his PhD in Theology from Wheaton College in Illinois, USA. Gerardo’s research focuses on the implications of Christ’s cross for reconciliation in violent societies. Gerardo and his wife Debora, a Guatemalan, have two children: Xaris (meaning “grace”), who is fourteen years old, and Gerardo Samuel, who is nine years old.
Gerardo shares the following prayer requests:
Pray for our health, and for the health of Debora’s and my families in Guatemala and El Salvador
during this pandemic.
Pray for me regarding the challenge of writing a dissertation at home during this quarantine.
Pray for the challenges that our kids and we as parents face in this new hybrid mode of learning and working (partially online and in-person). Pray especially for my daughter, as she faces a new challenge as a freshman in high school.
Pray for the post-coronavirus economic situation at my seminary, SETECA.
Gerardo Corpeño