Reparando

Suler Acosta, associate pastor of New Life Philadelphia Presbyterian Church sent this email:

March 15, 7:00pm. Trocadero Theatre 1003 Arch Street.

I want to invite you all to participate in viewing this award-winning documentary on March 15 at 7:30pm. In light of what I believe God is calling us to consider as a community who inhabit the place where God has put us, and in light of the struggles of loving hard-to-reach people, this documentary is a stirring testimony not only of God’s power to restore, but a call to us to imagine what God can and will do in our community as we step out in faith and obey him.

Come see the documentary that has won multiple film Festival Awards. Invite your congregations, your family, neighbors, friends, co-workers.

On the morning of June 18. 1954, the US CIA dropped leaflets in Guatemala City demanding the resignation of the president. Guatemala was ravaged by Civil War for the next 36 years. But hope is rising. In the midst of incredible odds, victims have been transformed into champions who willfully embrace the pain of their past to help repair the next generation. This is their story. Shorty – a former gang member who is now a pastor, and Tita – a woman who started a school in Guatemala’s most notorious slum have joined forces to repair La Limonada.

This is a powerful story about grace and healing, about hope that refuses to die, about faith that refuses to quit, about seeing glimpses of glory within the pain of neighborhoods ravaged by deep systemic evil. This is a film that demonstrates very clearly that when God restores a person, God has God's eye on an entire community!

We urge you to come and not only be moved by this story, but to be challenged to hope again for the hard-to-love places in your world and to stir your imagination to consider together--What can we do together to be "repairers of the ruined cities"

Come and join us. We will be joined by Dr. Joel Van Dyke, director of the Strategy for Transformation, former pastor of Bethel Temple Community Bible Church, and husband to Marilyn Van Dyke, father of two awesome children, and child of the living God who has allowed him to see first-hand the power of grace when it flows downhill and settles in the lowest places and sends back up to God the aroma of His grace. Come hear through film and testimony the poems of grace that God has composed in Guatemala--poems he is seeking to compose in our city!

The cost is $10 per person. This is a movie appropriate for all ages. Doors open at 7:00pm. The film will start at 7:30pm. To buy tickets, go to www.thetroc.com.