• Submitted by: manso
• Society
• 10 / 20 / 2010

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Staff reports. October 19, 2010. ASHEVILLE — Mark Siler, a prison chaplain in North Carolina, begins a nine-month long series of prison ministry trainings for local church leaders in Cuba, beginning with workshops in three eastern cities of Camagüey, Holguin and Bayamo.

Siler, a member of Circle of Mercy Congregation in Asheville, has spent many months preparing for this assignment in response to an invitation by the Cuban Council of Churches.

Arriving in Cuba on Oct. 8, along with his wife, Kiran Sigmon, and daughters, Joy and Leigh, Siler will also teach a course in pastoral counseling at the Ecumenical Seminary in Matanzas, where he and his family will reside.

“The Cuban government has relaxed restrictions on churches’ contacts with prisoners,” explained the Rev. Ken Sehested, Circle of Mercy’s co-pastor, who has maintained contacts within the Cuban Christian community over the past two decades. “This prompted a Council of Churches plan for mobilizing local congregations for pastoral ministry with inmates.”

Circle of Mercy’s partnership with Iglesia Getsemani, a Baptist congregation in Camagüey, Cuba’s third largest city, set the stage for this larger partnership with Cuban churches.

Kiran Sigmon, an OB/GYN doctor who will help host church groups visiting Cuba, has chaired Circle of Mercy’s Cuba Mission Partner relationship since it was formed in 2005. Siler, Sigmon and daughter Joy have traveled to Cuba several times in recent years.

“This is one of those old-fashioned, free-range, leap-of-faith callings,” wrote Sehested, in a letter raising funds for the family’s travel and living expenses. “Just when you thought our climate-controlled, pension-secured culture had squeezed all the chutzpah out of the believing community-no more burning bushes, flaming tongues-of-fire, scary angelic appearances, even still-small-voices-the Spirit erupts again.”

Founded in 2001, Circle of Mercy, 1 School Road, is affiliated nationally with the Alliance of Baptists and the United Church of Christ, both of whom have congregations partnered with Cuban congregations. Sehested, along with Nancy Hastings Sehested and Joyce Hollyday, serve as Circle of Mercy co-pastors.

Source: www.citizen-times.com/