Today, Debra Hepler announced her retirement as the Executive Director of the Ghost Ranch Education and Retreat Center of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), effective February 1, 2019. Hepler has served as Ghost Ranch’s chief executive since April 2008.
The Christmas holidays were not so merry and bright for people across six Midwestern and southern states as stormy weather wreaked havoc in many communities. Parts of Texas, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, New Mexico and Alabama were hit with snow and rain, freezing rain, tornadoes and flooding.
A sudden storm raged through Ghost Ranch Education and Retreat Center around 7:00 p.m. July 7, 2015, resulting in a flash flood that caused over $500,000 in damages. There were no injuries or fatalities. Losses include the Box Canyon aqueduct, the arts and craft buildings of Pot Hollow, Short House, the Pole Barn, the equipment shed, the Low Ropes Course and the new Fiber Arts Studio.
When Cameron Newell joined the Ghost Ranch college staff for his second summer, he was eager to work with the children of the guests and staff of the busy national education and retreat center.
Call it a twin thing. Wherever identical twin brothers Tom Zehnder and Tim Gibbs Zehnder go, they can’t help but make music. Together. And that’s how they tell their Ghost Ranch story.
Imagine being out on a morning walk only to discover two fossilized vertebrae from an ancient creature, possibly a small reptile. Now imagine that the two vertebrae, found near—but not next to—each other, fit together.
All good ideas have their time to come alive.
For more than a decade, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America had been in conversation about starting a ministry for immigrants in New Mexico, but things just never came together.
But the churches never forgot about the idea, and the pieces finally did fall into place, forming the Camino de Vida new church development.
Both churches saw the need for a Hispanic ministry in the Albuquerque area.
The ELCA’s Rocky Mountain Synod had been thinking about a new startup since the late …