Fifty years for LeadaChild

On April 18, 2018, Pastor Abdiel Orozco Aguirre, president of the Lutheran Church in Guatemala, preached at a special service marking 50 years since the founding of the Edie Jorns House for Students in Zacapa, Guatemala. Jim and Edie Jorns, both graduates of Kansas State University, served as agricultural missionaries to Guatemala from 1964 to 1968. At the end of that time, they set up the boarding facility to allow students from impoverished rural families to attend Divine Savior Lutheran School in Zacapa.

This was the beginning of Children’s Christian Concern Society, now called LeadaChild, which now supports the Chris

Luz Maria with Edie and Jim Jorns, founders of LeadaChild, at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Wichita, Kansas, in 2006.

tian education of 26,000 children in 29 nations. This includes children at Epiphany Lutheran Mission of La Caramuca, Barinas, Venezuela. LeadaChild began work in Venezuela in 1996.

On April 15, 2018, Arturo Maita, one of the first Venezuelan children to receive support from LeadaChild, was installed as the pastor of Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. I first heard of the work of Jim and Edie in the 1980s, when I was a member of St John’s Lutheran Church of Topeka, Kansas, the congregation in which Edie was raised. Luz María and I were privileged to meet the Jorns in Wichita in 2006.