La Mesa

In February 2022 at our annual retreat, we cast a vision for a ministry that would invite our Hispanic siblings into fellowship with us at St. Margaret's. Our initial thoughts were that this should be something to do with language and cultural exchange, and that food should be involved. Thus, La Mesa (which translates to "The Table") was born. Over the past year we have quietly been laying the foundation for this ministry, which publicly kicked off with our first round of classes on January 15th, 2023.

Some of this foundational work included:

*3 people received training via the Episcopal Latino Ministry Competency Course during 2022 and we hope others will complete the training in 2023!

*Multiple meetings with Elmer Romero, from Houston, to learn more about teaching language classes and think about curriculum development.

*Multiple meetings with our larger leadership team to decide on the format for the classes and handle details such as advertising, food, childcare, etc.

*Using the Beer and Hymns event as our first fundraiser to have some seed money.

*Ultimately raising $12,000 (praise God for people's generosity!) for our first full year of ministry (2023).

*Planning and carrying out cultural exchange activities for our church family including the altar for the Day of the Dead and bilingual masses and feasts for Our Lady of Guadalupe and Las Posadas. More than 40 people attended each of our bilingual masses in December, and a group of 20+ put together the altar, which remained up for a couple of weeks in October/November.

We began meeting and learning English and Spanish on January 8^th.

*We meet at St. Margaret’s on Sundays from 6-7:30pm for 10-week sessions. Each of the two weeks of class so far have included around 40-45 participants total (a mix of native English and Spanish speakers seeking to learn the other language).

*We continue to seek people who can help prepare meals for La Mesa (plan to feed 50 people). We also need childcare volunteers to help watch children during the classes. We are also looking for language teachers – those with experience teaching ESL / Spanish – interested in volunteering and assisting with ongoing curriculum development.

For more information please contact Danielle Miembre via email by clicking HERE