July 2017
Deaconess Elly Sifuentes was commissioned and installed at St. Matthew Lutheran Church, Chicago, Illinois, on Sunday, June 25, 2017. She began theological studies when Concordia Seminary’s Center for Hispanic Studies was housed in northern Illinois and completed the program in 2006, after the program had relocated to the seminary campus in St. Louis. Her internship was served with the Indiana District in Fort Wayne.
Elly and her husband, Pastor Cesar Sifuentes, were introduced to the Lutheran Church through a Spanish language program of The Lutheran Hour. They have served (he as a pastor and she as a volunteer) previously in northern Illinois, in the Michigan District and in the Pacific Southwest District.
Pastor Sifuentes was called to be pastor at St. Matthew and was installed in November 2016. The congregation extended a call to Mrs. Sifuentes this spring.
Since last fall at St. Matthew, she has helped prepare 28 students for confirmation and first communion. Her instructional work with the congregation’s young will continue, including organizing the annual Vacation Bible School in August that reaches many who are introduced to the church and then continue through the year in confirmation and first communion instruction.
She also is providing a devotion time that precedes the twice weekly soup kitchen lunches offered for the homeless, elderly and children of the Pilsen neighborhood in south Chicago, where St. Matthew congregation has ministered since 1871. The new choir that she is organizing for homeless adults will bring the voices of Pilsen’s different races and ethnicities together in song.
St. Matthew Lutheran Church is located at 2108 W. 21st Street, Chicago, IL 60608. For more information or to support the community outreach ministries of the congregation, call 773-847-6458.