They Will Pound Their Swords into Rakes
A mission co-worker’s journey through hospitality, faith, and a garden where peace takes root across borders.
At the end of every term of service or appointment by Global Ministries, mission co-workers dedicate time to visit churches, both in the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, sharing the good news of how we are walking in hope with others in God’s mission around the world. Together, in so many ways, we are nurturing dignity, upholding justice, caring for creation, and celebrating an abundant life for all. Since the first of September 2025, I have travelled from Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Ohio to Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut with stops in Texas and Utah. I am looking forward to Missouri in February 2026!
This opportunity to visit churches and stay in people’s homes is a wonderful privilege. At the same time, it requires great spiritual discipline and letting go of control. I often don’t know where I will sleep, what I will eat, or who I will meet. Sometimes, however, I have been welcomed back into the same church or home. What a joy it is to catch up and share what God has been doing in our lives and communities!
I had one such visit to Harmony Springs Christian Church and at the home of John and Debbie MacDonald. I have followed the transformation of this congregation from High Street Christian Church with its traditional downtown building, through the sometimes painful and always exciting process of change: first downsizing and selling a cherished space until creating a thriving community center in a new location. I visited the older congregation in the older building, then the nomadic congregation in a borrowed meeting room, and now, the intergenerational congregation in an evolving, versatile, “still becoming” indoor and outdoor space. As a new congregation, Harmony Springs seeks to help people discover and follow the ways that God is calling both individuals and the community to use their passions to build the “kindom.”
Debbie felt the pain at the news of each death from gun violence in the depths of her being. She wanted to do something. Then God led her to just the program: Guns to Gardens. Since Harmony Springs had already envisioned a large community garden to “reduce food insecurity,” and provide “local, nutritious and responsibly grown produce,” (Harmony Grows website), creating garden tools from firearms seemed a natural extension to what the community was already doing. The Harmony Grows (the nonprofit created by the church) website states:
“The United States has a gun problem, too many unwanted firearms are not being handled or stored safely and securely.
We are joining with others across the country to dismantle unwanted firearms. We believe as an organization we can affirm Isaiah’s call to beat our swords into plowshares and end gun violence.
Many people are in possession of unwanted firearms and have no trusted place to discard them without turning them back out into the market. It may be a gun you’ve inherited, or one used in suicide. It may be a gun where children, grandchildren or elderly people are in the home.
These guns lead to unintentional shootings and can be stolen and used to hurt others. Dismantling your unwanted gun is the only way you can be sure your gun will not be used for harm.
During one of our events, bring your unloaded firearm(s) stored in the trunk of your vehicle where an experienced gun handler will remove it for dismantling. Raw materials are sent to a blacksmith to be made into tools.”
My life as a mission co-worker with Global Ministries in Chiapas, Mexico has been affected by gun violence. According to Mexico’s Attorney General, 74% of the firearms entering Mexico originate in the US. I have friends who work for the local police in San Cristóbal de las Casas and have listened to their stories of fear and frustration when they compare their equipment to what the cartels have. Each year, I have watched the arms race playing out in my barrio, city and state. As the Mexican military and police forces try to control the cartels, the cartels purchase more sophisticated weapons with which to strike back. Then the army and state police buy better arms also from US weapons dealers. It is Dr. Seus’s “The Bitter Butter Battle” book all over again and makes a terrific business plan for the American weapons manufacturers and dealers. Mexico has very strict gun laws, but is losing the fight against the tidal wave of guns shipped in illegally from the US. Do you know how many legal gun stores there are in the entire country of Mexico? One. And it is carefully controlled by the Mexican armed forces. The cartels are able to keep trafficking drugs and people north because they are able to purchase cheap guns from the country that has the laxest firearms laws in the world and ship these south. As Mexicans are wont to say, “poor Mexico, so close to the United States and so far from God.” The two countries are inexorably tied together by so much more than just a very long border.
At Global Ministries, we believe in mutuality, walking in hope with others in God’s mission, but sometimes it is hard to find real, local, practical, actions that impact our siblings in Christ in other parts of the world. So you can imagine my excitement upon visiting Harmony Springs and learning about its Guns to Gardens project. Now I have a story of mutuality to take back to Chiapas with me. Debbie and the congregation at Harmony Springs gifted me with one of the transformed garden tools. I can´t wait to share it with the participants at the Institute for Intercultural Studies and Research, especially those in our sustainable family garden program who live in the rural communities which have been devastated by the massive influx of weapons.
Each gun transformed into a gardening tool in Uniontown, Ohio, is also one gun less that might end up in Mexico. A butterfly fluttering its wings among the vegetables at Harmony Springs Christian Church just might change the weather patterns in the mountain gardens of Chiapas.
“He will settle arguments
between nations.
They will pound their swords
and their spears
into rakes and shovels;
they will never make war
or attack one another.
Isaiah 2:4 (Contemporary English Version)
Written by Elena Huegel Global Ministries Mission Co-worker