Waitsburg Presbyterian has new pastor

WAITSBURG - The Waitsburg Presbyterian membership has made it official; Heidi Lum has been named Pastor of the church. She takes over from Pastor Stan Hughes, who has been serving in a transitional role since April 2019.

Lum, her husband Ellery, and son Matthew moved to Waitsburg last year after Hughes invited her to intern at the church. She met Hughes at the Presbytery of the Northwest after the Lums moved to Kettle Falls, Washington from Honolulu, Hawaii. Lum said she chose Washington to look for an opportunity to continue her ministry work in a small, rural community.

Since 2005, Lum has worked in two African nations to help orphans and their communities. She founded Advocates for Africa's Children in 2006, working in Swaziland, now Eswatini, and Tanzania. Lum said the focus in Eswatini was on creating self-sustaining projects to provide clean water and food and covering education costs. She said the programs have become sustainable, and the organization is wrapping up its work there.

In Tanzania, the focus is on providing accessible schools to rural children. The organization started a school in a village where 80% of kids were not in school, offering three preschool classes, grades 1-4, and will add grade five in January.

Since the area is very rural, Lun said they have school buses to bring the kids in from multiple villages in the area.

"We work in very rural areas, so we have school buses because we don't want the little three-year-olds coming through the tall grass to school," said Lum.

She and her family traveled to Africa frequently, spending two months over the summers when the kids were younger. She hopes to bring people from Waitsburg to Tanzania next year.

"I like to travel with groups and introduce them to a radically different culture," she said.

The new pastor said her Involvement in the community may be more indirect than direct. "As a pastor in the church I'm trying to get people out of the pews and into community, said Lum.

An example of the church's outreach is the Waitsburg Kids Club afterschool program. The program is offered by the church to kids between grades 1 and 5 on Mondays. The church heard from some parents that they needed an additional day of afterschool care to add to what is available from the Cardinal's Nest program. With the Kids Club, there is now four days, though space is limited.

On Sunday, July 14, after services, the church will host a farewell party for Pastor Hughes. The celebration will be a potluck and open to the public. Lum said she already misses Hughes, no longer seeing him daily as he winds down his responsibilities.

"She comes with a boatload of life and ministry experience," Hughes said. "she has been easy and enjoyable to work with"