Thursday, July 9, 2026

A Pasadena Church Carries a Kenyan Partnership Into Its Fourth Decade

A Sunday session at All Saints will trace the rehabilitation ministry born from one physical therapist’s calling to Eldoret

More than three decades ago, a physical therapist from Los Angeles answered a call from an Anglican bishop in western Kenya. What grew from that encounter — a community-based rehabilitation program serving people with disabilities across the North Rift Valley — is still going. On Sunday, Pasadena parishioners will hear where it stands.

All Saints Church will host “Faith & Formation: A Story Still Being Written: All Saints, Kenya, and the Power of Partnership” on July 12, from 9:00 to 9:45 a.m. in the Guild Room. Grace Dyrness and members of the Hutcherson Rehabilitation Center Committee will lead a conversation about the ministry connecting the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles to the people of Eldoret, Kenya, according to the church’s event listing.

The partnership traces its origins to 1990, when the late Canon Percia Hutcherson, a physical therapist who had provided more than 45,000 treatments to children and adults with disabilities over her career, traveled to the Diocese of Eldoret at the invitation of the late Anglican Bishop Alexander Muge. Hutcherson, born in rural Mississippi, developed and implemented the North Rift Rehabilitation Centre’s community-based rehabilitation project in rural areas of the region, according to accounts from the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles and the NORIREC website.

Hutcherson continued that work for nearly two decades. She also founded Changing Lives International, a nonprofit dedicated to helping people with disabilities in East Africa through community-based rehabilitation, according to the organization’s website. Bishop Frederick Borsch named her a lay canon of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles in 1997, according to the diocese.

Hutcherson died on January 9, 2018, at age 95 at her home in Los Angeles. The diocese’s Program Group on Global Partnerships took up her ministry to the disabled in Eldoret after her death, according to the Episcopal News.

The Sunday session will include stories from the field and reflections on recent travels, and will explore how lives have been transformed on both sides of the partnership, according to the event description posted by All Saints. Presenters will also consider what the next chapter might hold for those seeking to put faith into action. The church describes the effort as one built on “relationships of trust, solidarity, and hope.”

Dyrness, an Altadena resident with a background in community development research, will lead the session alongside members of the committee that carries Hutcherson’s name.

The event falls at a notable moment for All Saints and the broader diocese. The day before, on Saturday, July 11, the church will host the consecration and ordination of the Rev. Dr. Antonio José Gallardo Lucena as the eighth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, according to the diocese and the church’s calendar. That ceremony, officiated by Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe, will draw attendees from across the region to the Pasadena church, one of the largest Episcopal parishes in the country.

“Faith & Formation: A Story Still Being Written: All Saints, Kenya, and the Power of Partnership” takes place Sunday, July 12, from 9:00 to 9:45 a.m. in the Guild Room at All Saints Church, 132 North Euclid Avenue. Admission is free and open to all. Validated parking is available at Plaza Las Fuentes, with the underground garage entrance on Union Street between Los Robles and Euclid avenues; Sunday validation is good until 1:00 p.m. Free parking is also available at the Kaiser Parking Structure at Euclid Avenue and Walnut Street, open until 4:00 p.m. on Sundays. For more information, call (626) 796-1172 or visit allsaints-pas.org.

The community-based rehabilitation center Hutcherson built in Eldoret still operates today, now serving multiple counties across Kenya’s Rift Valley and western regions.