Hand in Hand Global Mission Support Blog Digest

Philip Knutson is the regional program assistant for southern Africa for the ELCA’s Global Mission unit. He works with companion churches, companion synods and mission personnel throughout southern Africa.

The Rev. Jose Mabasso is the first bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Mozambique.

Dear Friends,

Greetings from Cape Town, South Africa.

On May 1 I was privileged to attend the consecration of bishop-elect Rev. Jose Mabasso in Maputo on behalf of the ELCA.  This is the first bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Mozambique.   Visit the new Lutheran Communion in Southern Africa website for more information about the Lutheran member churches in the region.

I also recently I received the following report from Mr. Armando Manhisse and would like to share his Easter letter with you.  (Mr. Manhisse is co-ordinator for Renasce Esperança, a project of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Mozambique involved in various community-based projects, which are supported in part by ELCA Global Mission and ELCA World Hunger.)

Easter 2011 was a historical one in the central region of Mozambique for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Mozambique (IELM) central District, Sofala and Manica provinces. The Rev. Matsimbe started at the Beira congregation on Maundy Thursday …  by conducting a service with Holy Communion. On Friday he proceeded to the Chimoio congregation where he conducted the Good Friday Service.

After Chimoio, on Saturday, he joined the local evangelist and others from Chimoio who traveled together to Munene where around 200 Christians were waiting, including the baby Martin whose mother had brought him to church for baptism. (The first baby born at the recently opened Martin Luther Clinic in Munune was named Martin by his mother.  The clinic was built with the support of ELCA World Hunger.)

The evening service at the Munene congregation, started after dinner at around 9 p.m., accompanied with singing and dancing up to 12 p.m..  After midnight the Easter Sunday Service began with baptism for 22 children, including the young Martin and nine adults followed by Holy Communion.  The service ended at 5 a.m. Afterwards the delegation proceeded to Macossa, a preaching point near the Munene congregation. In Macossa, Rev. Matsimbe also conducted an Easter Sunday Service with the baptism of children and adults followed by Holy Communion.

On the way back to Chimoio, the delegation had to stop again at Munene for food and some quick visits to the Renasce Esperança project site and the Martin Luther Clinic to see a new baby born at around 10 a.m. on Easter Sunday!

Thank you for your continuing support and prayers for us and for the ELCA Missionary Sponsorship Program.

Yours faithfully,
Philip Knutson

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How many eggs can one person carry?

A dancer performs during the Sports Day.

Spring has brought a busy schedule for the schools and educational programs of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, says the Rev. Elly McHan, an ELCA missionary in Jerusalem.

Here’s just a few of events that have been happening:

• Ninth Annual Arts and Crafts Fair – The Evangelical Lutheran School in Beit Sahour held it’s ninth annual Arts and Crafts Fair on April 14. It showcased  artwork and crafts made by students of all ages and raised money for their arts program.  Click here to see pictures from the opening ceremonies and to view their artwork!
• Al-Mahaba Kindergarten Easter Egg Hunt – Just before Easter al-Mahaba Kindergarten on the Mount of Olives headed outside for an all-out super-fun Easter Egg Hunt!  Click here to see pictures from the day!
• Sports Day at Dar al-Kalima – Dar al-Kalima Evangelical Lutheran School in Bethlehem held its annual Sports Day on May 7, complete with dance performances, juggling, gymnastics, basketball drills, and lots of other sporting events!  Click here to see pictures from the event!

And with graduations just around the corner there are many more springtime events to come. Please visit the ELCJHL website to learn more about the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land.

The Rev. Elly McHan works with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land to further English-language communication. Her varied background includes having taught violin for many years in Alberta, Canada.  She says she feels deeply called to walk with the people of the ELCJHL and is passionate about hearing and sharing their stories.

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Here’s an update from Dr. Jim and Carolyn Brown, ELCA missionaries in Cameroon. Jim is surgical program director at Ngoundere Protestant Hospital, which is part of the health care system overseen by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Cameroon, Carolyn is a recovery room nurse and oversees a benevolent fund, which provides money for patients who cannot pay for their care.

Ibrahima 3 months after surgery.

We would like to share a couple of patient stories.

Ibrahima is a 3-year-old boy who came to Ngaoundéré last summer with a huge abdominal mass.  He was sent from here to the pediatric hospital in Yaoundé where he received an ultrasound. His family spent all their money, but he got no treatment.  His father brought him back to Ngaoundéré, and from here to Dr. Elisabeth Neier at Ngauobéla, where she treated him with chemotherapy for a Wilms tumor of his kidney.

At first Dr. Neier was reluctant to treat him since his tumor was so far advanced.  But he responded dramatically, and during our trip to Ngaoubéla in December Jim was able to remove the malignant kidney. After more chemotherapy, he is now doing very well.

We have written before about Hadidjatou, a 27-year-old woman whose first and only pregnancy at age 15 resulted in a dead baby and a vesicle-vaginal fistula, so that for 12 years she leaked urine constantly. As is often the case with these women, her husband divorced her.

She had an unsuccessful surgery in Nigeria before coming to Ngaoundéré in 2009. Jim tried twice to repair the fistula before realizing that she had had more than one injury, and she continued to leak from a site near the outlet of her bladder.

In December Dr. Danki, a Cameroonian urologist who trained in Germany, joined the staff at Ngaoundéré. He brought with him state of the art diagnostics for urology and was able to identify the exact location of the remaining fistula, which Jim could not see with our previous cystoscope.

Hadidjatou has had the first stage of her repair done and is doing well.  It gives us great joy to see women who have suffered for so long be given hope, and,in many cases, their very lives back.

We could tell many more stories of the patients who have been helped by your support of us. Patients like Ibrahim and Hadidjatou are examples among hundreds of others.

Thank you.  Thank you.

Together in mission,
Jim and Carolyn

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The Rev. David and Alicia Brondos are ELCA missionaries in Mexico. David is a professor at the Theological Community of Mexico, an ecumenical consortium of seminaries in Mexico City, which includes Augsburg Lutheran Seminary.  His work involves training pastors and leaders for churches throughout Mexico.  Alicia teaches English in Mexico City.

Alicia and David Brondos

David writes:

This past January, at the request of the seminary, I was asked to develop the new online course program for the seminary and serve as its coordinator during its initial stages. This has been a tremendous challenge for me and a great learning experience, since I had never taken or even seen an online course previously. During the last four months, this has occupied a great deal of my time.

We will begin in June, offering two shorter free courses: “Introduction to the Bible” and “Martin Luther and the Reformation.” These free courses will hopefully draw a large number of students and enable people to become acquainted with the courses. For most people this is something totally new, since the area of online courses has not been developed nearly as much in Mexico as in the U.S.

Because the greatest need is for courses at the congregational level, in the initial stage of our program, our focus is on lay information. We will be recording videos for the classes, and that will be our biggest task during the month of May. One of our graduating students, Karina García, will be helping me quite a bit with the courses.

Please remember this new program in your prayers!

To learn more about David and his work, please visit his website.

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The Rev. Mark and Linda Nygard are ELCA missionaries in Egypt. Mark is the coordinator of graduate studies at Evangelical Lutheran Seminary in Cairo.

An Egyptian flag morphs into a Christian priest and a Muslim imam.

Happy Easter from the East.

On a wall across the street from the seminary there is a clever painting of an Egyptian flag that morphs into a Christian priest and a Muslim imam, embracing each other with one hand and making the sign of victory with the other.  The red part of the flag  is really the priest’s robe, and the black part turns out to be the imam’s, while the white in the middle with the Egyptian eagle upon is, in fact, actually the link between them.  I take it as a prophecy of new religious friendship and respect in a land that has been too often troubled by interfaith hostility and violence.

This prophecy has been struggling for shape in the past few months.   After the New Year’s church bombing in Alexandria, Mariam in the seminary’s international office told me that, the following Sunday, Muslim neighbors had come to her congregation, offering chocolates to worshipers on their way in and actually sitting through the services with the congregation.  It was as if to say publicly, “We Muslims share your sorrow and fear,” and, “If anybody tries to bomb this church, they’re going to take Muslims with them!”

Some of you were watching the demonstrations on Tahrir Square during the revolution when Christians responded in kind.  When we show that kind of respect for each others’ convictions, maybe we’ll find fresh ways to hear and speak these convictions across social barriers.

One of our convictions is that we have a Lord who died for us and rose from the dead.  That conviction was widely celebrated in Egypt this past week. Perhaps most memorable was a Presbyterian Good Friday service we attended in Giza that was supposed to run from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., concluding with a potluck.   Our hostess knew about low levels of Western endurance, so she invited us to come just for the last hour and then eat with them.  As the last speaker got up to speak about 4:00, she was translated, “I know you have been sitting for a long time, now, so I won’t keep you.  We’ll limit ourselves to 17 hymns!” There was mild amusement at the joke, but it was only half a joke. Eight or 10 hymns later, each punctuated by another word of grace, we Americans straggled out, 45 minutes late.  Gasp.  There’s no question that here are people committed to the climactic News of the Day and in no rush to move on to other more mundane affairs!

Sincerely yours,
Mark and Linda Nygard

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Sarah Griebler is an ELCA volunteer teacher in Cieszyn, Poland, teaching English. Here’s an excerpt from here blog, a post she says is inspired by Neil Pasricha’s “1000 Awesome Things,” a website that celebrates the little joys in life.

Sarah Griebler, left, with Dominika, a fifth-grader.

* The Polish and Czech tradition of making lamb cakes for Easter, and this year getting to celebrate this tradition with Dominika, the fifth-grader I’ve tutored for two years.
* Drinking English Breakfast tea and watching Kate and Will’s wedding live with 50 of my eighth-grade students.
* Eating cake first and dinner second when you visit a Polish home.
* How anytime I come across a word I’ve never seen or heard before – in any language, English, Polish, Italian, German, etc. – I find myself automatically trying to sound it out using the Polish sound system, which, of course, only works if the word is actually a Polish one.
* How our school secretary keeps trying to find me a nice Polish boy to marry so I’ll stay another year.
* How people, when I tell them there’s an “H” in my name, will put it anywhere except at the end (“Sahra” or “Sarha”) because Polish female names always end in “A.”
* How loving physical touch is so much a part of the culture here. Personal space is almost non-existent (which was startling at first but now I love it) and people are wonderfully affectionate with their friends and family.
* How the greeting “cześć” (kind of like “Hi” in American English except it really is only spoken to people you know well) sounds so friendly and loving and you really feel like you’re embracing the person in a hug when you say it.
* Knowing Poland’s “bathroom secret” — that the circle is the symbol on the women’s bathroom and the triangle is the symbol for the men’s — and getting to help people not “in the know” go into the right one. Although it’s also hilarious when you find yourself face to face with a member of the opposite sex who ended up in the wrong bathroom and is just as shocked to find you there.
* My students’ amazement (and sometimes applause) when they can’t remember a word in English and I’m able to translate it from Polish without consulting a dictionary.

Sarah’s blog, “Out of Great Joy,” with her many photos of her time in Poland, is at http://sarahpoland.blogspot.com/.

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Kristen Opalinski, an ELCA missionary, is the communication specialist with the Lutheran Communion in South Africa (LUCSA).

ELCA missionary Kristen Opalinski (left) supports communications efforts in Lutheran churches in southern Africa.

Greetings from the LUCSA offices in Bonaero Park!

I’m emailing you during what is a very exciting and busy time at LUCSA. We have hosted the Lutheran World Federation’s (LWF) African Lutheran Leadership Consultation. This biennial meeting includes the leaders of LWF’s three African sub-regions and LWF staff from Geneva to discuss strategic plans to best meet the needs of the 19 million Lutherans living in Africa.

We are also excited that we have launched our new LUCSA website at http://www.lucsa.org/. We look forward to having it become a vital communications tool to be used by both member churches and global partners. Be sure to check it out and let me know if you have any questions. Also, please check my blog in the coming weeks at www.opieinafrica.blogspot.com if you haven’t already, as I hope to get a couple of posts up by the end of April.

LUCSA has begun 2011 with a renewed sense of spirit and direction. Our new communications strategy is now in full swing and our various programs have launched some new and dynamic workshops and projects. We look to continue to develop 2011 into the year of “taking LUCSA into the future,” which will be one of the major themes of this year’s general assembly in Lusaka, Zambia, in July.

I want to thank you all for your continued prayers, love and support (both financial and spiritual) during my time here. I cannot express how much it means to me to know that so many friends and family across the U.S. are thinking about me and lifting me up in prayer. I’ve really enjoyed receiving your various letters and emails as well!

In God’s Peace & Love,

Kristen Opalinski

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