wfn.org | Volunteers Return to Zaire

[umethnews-request@ecunet.org]

"UNITED METHODIST DAILY NEWS" by SUSAN PEEK on Aug. 11, 1991 at 13:58 Eastern,
about FULL TEXT RELEASES FROM UNITED METHODIST NEWS SERVICE (3059 notes).

Note 3055 by UMNS on July 12, 1996 at 16:53 Eastern (5997 characters).

SEARCH: mission, Zaire, refugees, missionaries, volunteers

Produced by United Methodist News Service, official news agency of
the United Methodist Church, with offices in Nashville, Tenn., New
York, and Washington.

CONTACT:  Ralph E. Baker                    341(10-21-31-71){3055}
          Nashville, Tenn. (615) 742-5470            July 12, 1996

Mission volunteers return 
to Zaire with new leadership

                        A UMNS News Feature
                       by  John Coleman Jr.*

     NEW YORK (UMNS) -- After a three-month hiatus, the United
Methodist Church's mission agency resumed sending volunteers to
Zaire this week to work at refugee-relief sites.
     Among people recruited to go are a retired bishop and a new
missionary couple to help manage the operations there.
     A new team of Volunteers for Africa -- the 24th since the
program began in August 1994 -- left their homes July 12 and
arrived in Nairobi, Kenya, on the 14th, en route to refugee sites
in Bukavu and Uvira. The seven members, adding to the more than
260 who have volunteered previously, will offer skills in
dentistry, nursing, social work, teaching, care giving and
construction. 
     Six volunteers are United Methodists, including one from
Germany. Once again, volunteers from the Kenyan Methodist Church
will accompany them.
     Stringent new regulations for foreign visitors to Zaire
forced the General Board of Global Ministries to postpone three
teams since April, according to project coordinator Richard
Williams. 
     An agreement reached with the aid of Central Zaire Bishop
Onema Fama exempts the board's volunteers from the government's
recent edict that all foreigners entering the country must be
processed through the capital, Kinshasa. That mandate would have
cost the project extra time and travel expense. 
     Tensions remain high, according to board staff, stoked by
conflicts between refugees and residents outside Goma and by
reports of more than 500 refugees daily crossing the border from
Burundi into Uvira. 
     Sporadic fighting continues in Burundi, where more than 200
Hutus allegedly were killed by Tutsi soldiers in April. Thus,
rather than fly into Burundi's capital, Bujumbura, and make the
short trek from there, said Williams, volunteers going to Uvira
must fly into Bukavu and endure a rugged four-hour drive instead.
     "We're monitoring the problems there closely, but the areas
where we're working are reasonably secure right now," said the
Rev. John McCullough, head of the board's Mission Personnel
Resources Department. "As long as it's safe, we'll start sending
teams in there again, because a lot of work being done is at
critical stages," McCullough said.
     Lydia and Joseph Templeton, first-time missionaries from Los
Angeles, will leave for Goma July 22 to help manage the Board of
Global Ministries' work from there. Another missionary couple 
Niels and Birgitte French are supervising work in Bukavu and
Uvira, including development of churches, clinics, living quarters
for volunteers and other projects.
     Mrs. Templeton will serve as the board's overall country
manager. In that position, she will administer the volunteer
program, the United Methodist Committee on Relief's contracts to
provide rehabilitative services and its collaboration with
churches, government agencies and other relief groups in Zaire.
     Mr. Templeton will serve as site manager in Goma, where
United Methodists are building a church and a tent village to care
for orphaned and unaccompanied children. 
     The couple, both attorneys and married just nine months, are
members of Holman United Methodist Church, Los Angeles. They
received a brief orientation in June, and will return to the
United States in 1997 for extensive training and commissioning as
missionaries, before continuing their three-year commitment.
     Recently retired Bishop Forrest C. Stith, New York, is
serving as project manager in Nairobi, where he and his wife,
Josephine, arrived last week. In directing general aspects of the
mission effort there, he will work with Bishop Onema, Bishop J.
Alfred Ndoricimpa of Burundi, now living in exile in Nairobi, and
Bishop Zablon Nthamburi of the Methodist Church of Kenya.
     Stith, who has led several United Methodist tour groups to
Zaire in the past, will conduct orientation for volunteers as they

VOLUNTEERS RETURN -- 4
arrive in Nairobi, along with the Rev. Charles Makonde of the
Methodist Church of Kenya. Stith also plans to visit Tanzania with
Ndoricimpa to explore the need for United Methodist relief and
evangelistic work among more than a million Rwandan and Burundian
refugees encamped there.
     "Even though the political conditions in Central Africa
remain uncertain," said McCullough, "the General Board of Global
Ministries is committed to establishing a stable, permanent
ministry among the refugee and indigenous populations in that
region. The leadership of Bishop Stith and the Templetons will be
an important development for a part of the church's mission that
all of us care deeply about.
                            #    #    #
     * Coleman is a communications consultant to the United
Methodist Board of Global Ministries.

NOTE: If policy allows please add as a box:
     Donations may be sent to the Bishops' Appeal and Campaign for
Africa, UMCOR Advance #101275-4. For information on volunteer
teams contact: Richard Williams, telephone (212) 870-3659. 

EDITORS NOTE: Photos of the Templetons are available from the
Board of Global Ministries.  Telephone (212) 870-3660. 

                      Volunteer Team to Zaire

Scott Cline              Paul Letot          Barbara Stapleton
Stockton, N.J.           Dallas, Texas       Huntingdon, Pa.

John Davis               Richard Liebel      Wilhelmine Ungermann
Honolulu, Hawaii         Erie, Pa.           Grundau, Germany

                         Laura Lanier
                         Greensboro, N.C.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

 To make suggestions or give your comments, send a note to 
 umns@ecunet.org or Susan_Peek@ecunet.org

 To unsubscribe, send the single word "unsubscribe" (no quotes)
 in a mail message to umethnews-request@ecunet.org

-----------------------------------------------------------------------