Lisa Hermann

My name is Lisa Hermann, and I am a finishing up my second year of study in the M Div. Program at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. I am originally from Charleston, South Carolina, and came to LPTS after teaching high school social studies and coaching women’s soccer for five years. I also served as a Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) through the PC(USA) in Guatemala in 2004-2005. I am under the care of the Charleston-Atlantic Presbytery, and a member of Santee Presbyterian Church in Santee, SC. When not devoted to my studies at LPTS I serve as the student intern at Briargate Presbyterian Church in southwestern Louisville, KY and a relief chaplain at the University of Louisville Hospital.

I look forward to the South Africa travel seminar as a way of taking advantage of the classroom without walls that has been created by our professors. For 20 days my classmates and I will be asked to get outside our comfort zones, placed in situations I can only imagine, and asked to just listen and be, more so than do. We are going to examine and wrestle with reconciliation, theology, justice and human rights – specifically apartheid and its dismantling. I can’t wait. The best part is going to be meeting the people of South Africa, and just listening to their story. Sometimes I wish I could go right now, but patience is a virtue, and January will be here before I know it.

Foreign travel, more importantly the cross cultural experiences that accompany it, are important to me because the world's backyard is getting smaller everyday. Our neighbors are no longer just those to our left and right. We have so much to learn from our neighbors across the globe and what better way to do that than meeting them where they are and learning from one another’s mutual experiences.

In 2004-2005, I had the privilege of working and living on the Southwestern Coast of Guatemala. I was a community development intern, and lived in a small town called Santa Fe, Retahuleu. I taught 10 first graders in spanish, served as a billingual bridge in helping to build a partnership between a church in Ohio and two of the churches I worked in. I also accompanied the Presbyterian Women of Guatemala to workshops and bible studies. For a year I shared a home with six other people. A home with no running water a latrine for a toilet, and cooking over an open fire. I will be returning there for the first time in three years this summer. It is going to be like going home again.

One of the things that excites me about going to South Africa, besides swimming in the Atlantic Ocean (on the other side of the world!!) is culinary exploration. I used food, specifically tortillas, to break down barriers and build relationships in Guatemala, I can't wait to see what will happen at a table of fellowship or in a kitchen in South Africa.

Just as living and working in community with the people of Guatemala helped confirm my call to a ministry of relationship building, pastoral care, and parish ministy I believe traveling to South Africa with my classmates will do the same. We will engage in intentional prayer, study, and a minstry of mutual exchange and presence which will only give me the opportunity to stretch and grow by getting outside my comfort zone, listening to people's authentic stories, and then returning to the United States and figuring out what to do with it all and how to tell the story.

This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for many us, that I believe will leave us with a lifetime of visions and stories to tell. Stories to tell - that is my passion for justice and human rights, both here in the United States and abroad. To learn about both sides of the story and then tell it to those who have never heard it or perhaps need to hear it again. I have never been out side of the Americas so while the flight will be long, the anticipation for what is ahead will be great. I encourage all those who read this to hold my classmates and professors in prayer as we continue to raise funds, begin prelimenary study, and organize.