wfn.org | Mozambique team brings ministry to U.S.

["NewsDesk" <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

May 15, 2003  News media contact: Tim Tanton7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn. 
10-31-71BI{284}

By Holly E. Nye

BURLINGTON, Vt. (UMNS) - Teams of Volunteers in Mission frequently go to
African nations, helping build churches or homes. Now, for only the second
time, a Volunteer in Mission team has come from the African nation of
Mozambique to the United States - to build relationships, unity and faith. 
 
Eleven men and women - both clergy and lay - from the United Methodist
Church's Mozambique Area, arrived in Burlington May 4 for a three-week visit.
The team attended the Troy Annual Conference session and is spending time
with congregations across the conference. The first Mozambique Volunteer in
Mission team to the United States visited the Troy Conference in spring 1998.
 
The Mozambique Area and the Troy Conference have been in relationship for
more than a decade. Troy teams have traveled to Mozambique nine times in the
12 years since the African country emerged from civil war. Volunteers from
those teams, wishing to build a relationship of ministry and support with
their friends in Mozambique, suggested inviting teams to the United States.
Local churches raised about $40,000 to bring the team here.
 
While North Americans tend to think of "doing mission" as a way of offering
help and inspiration to a "less developed" part of the world, the church in
Mozambique challenges North Americans to consider mission and ministry a
two-way experience.
 
"To have peace in Mozambique, Troy Annual Conference helped our church and
our country. We wish to bring peace to the United States, with all the
challenges you face," said the Rev. Zaqueu Ranchaze, team leader and
Mozambique Area Volunteers in Mission coordinator.  
 
"We are here today because Troy Annual Conference and the Mozambique Area are
one church," Ranchaze told the conference assembly.  
 
In response to a question about how the North American church can work in
partnership with African brothers and sisters, Ranchaze said, "Come to
Mozambique and see what we really need - your hearts will tell you what to
do." He stressed the importance of direct relationship and mutuality: "We
have to share with each other; we have to share experiences."  Financial
support, he said, is less important than direct relationship.  

Team member Naftal Oliveira Naftal agreed. "The money doesn't stay," Naftal
said. "(Sending money) doesn't give people an experience that will last."
 
The message of unity and mutuality was repeated throughout the conference
session.  "Ours is a message of love rooted in the person of Jesus Christ,"
said the Rev. Zefanias Augusto Chihulume, a pastor studying at United
Methodist-related Africa University in Zimbabwe. "It's our strong belief that
we have something in common, and we need to have time together to share what
is common" between Africans and North Americans.
 
To provide for such sharing, Chihulume proposes an ongoing exchange.  He
would like his church to send two young people to the United States to be in
mission for two years, while two young people from the United States would
work in his country. This way, he said, his church could "share our spiritual
resources" with North Americans. In addition, he wants to see more short-term
teams from Mozambique invited to the United States.
 
Chihulume noted differences between the cultures that could be instructive to
North Americans. "Ours is a church of the young," said the 27-year-old, who
was ordained an elder four years ago. "And, we find value in life apart from
material things."  

Even when he has to travel miles by foot to do his work, even when he has to
go a day without food, even in times of suffering, he said, "I still know God
is there."  Wealth in the United States, he suspects, can distract people
from their relationship to God. "In Africa," Chihulume said, "everything is
done in a spiritual way."  
 
In the United States, he noticed, "people are in a hurry." He took note that
"in the U.S., everything seems to have to follow the schedule. If the paper
says it's time for worship to end, you end, no matter what. We believe that
the Spirit will lead."
 
Team members were eager to speak of the vitality of their churches and their
ministries with children, youth and women. Cecelia Jose, who was a member of
both VIM teams from Mozambique, spoke of the 25,000 children under age 12
served by the Women's Society in her annual conference. 

She challenged Troy Conference Christians to reach out to children and youth.
"I felt sorry," she said, "when we went to a church here and some women told
me the youth are not very involved.  I would like EVERYONE to be involved in
getting the young people to church."
 
The Rev. Telma Arminda Eduardo, a former district superintendent, now serves
as women's coordinator for the Mozambique Area. She described the life-giving
ministries of seven training centers, an orphanage and a center for the
elderly. Even some Muslim women, she said, go to United Methodist training
centers to gain self-supporting skills in areas such as sewing, public
health, computer work. Some of the women have been cast out of their families
for being childless or have been accused of being "witch doctors," but the
United Methodist Church gives them skills to survive.
 
On the final evening of the Troy Conference session, the Mozambicans led the
assembly in prayer and songs from their tradition. Team leader Ranchaze
offered "thanks for making us feel warm in these cold temperatures" and
voiced the hope that the two annual conferences would continue in a
relationship of mutuality. 
 
The team presented to the conference a wooden carving of a map of Mozambique.
The planning committee from the host conference gave the team a wall hanging
portraying mountains, echoing the conference theme "Come to the Mountains,"
and evoking the mountains of Mozambique, Vermont and northern New York.
 
As a gift to Bishop Susan M. Morrison, the team wrapped her in a scarf with a
map of Mozambique woven into it, and a head wrap, in African fashion. The
visitors also presented the bishop with a small tin "to keep treasure in."
 
"The treasure," the bishop responded, "is the relationship. Every time I am
with people from Mozambique, my heart gets fuller, with a sisterhood and
brotherhood I didn't know was possible."
 
Morrison has been to Mozambique twice. In summer 2002, she took part in a
Volunteers in Mission team from Troy Conference. During that visit, she
joined Bishop Joao Somane Machado in consecrating the Xinhambanine Temple in
Maputo, a church that Troy volunteers had helped build. Joaquim Chissano,
president of Mozambique, attended the consecration.		       
 
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*Nye is the communication director for the Troy Annual Conference.

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United Methodist News Service
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