wfn.org | UMNS# 04548-Aid worker killed in Cote d'Ivoire had United

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Aid worker killed in Cote d'Ivoire had United Methodist links 

Nov. 22, 2004	 News media contact:   Linda  Bloom * (646) 3693759*  New
York {04548}

NOTE: A related report, UMNS story #547, and photographs are available at
http://umns.umc.org.

By Elliott Wright*

NEW YORK (UMNS) - The news reports simply called him an "American aid worker"
- the lone civilian killed Nov. 5 when fighter planes of the government of
Cote d'Ivoire bombed a French military peacekeeping post in the West African
nation. Nine French soldiers also died.

The following Sunday, Nov. 7, the Rev. Edith Gleaves, an executive with the
United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, worshipped at the Galilee United
Methodist Church in Englewood, N.J. The congregation was in shock. The
son-in-law of a member, the husband of a woman the people knew, had been
killed in Cote d'Ivoire. He was an aid worker.
	
He had a name. He had a wife and three children. The family had close ties,
on the wife's side, to the Galilee congregation.

Robert Carsky had been employed for six months in Cote d'Ivoire by the Africa
Rice Development Agency, an international agricultural program. He previously
had worked for another organization in Benin. He had been back in Cote
d'Ivoire for three days after spending three weeks with his family. His wife,
Rebecca, and their three children, ages 7, 16 and 17, were due to join him in
December.

Rebecca Carsky was raised a United Methodist, and her mother, Ruth Khelseau,
continues to be a member at Galilee church. Carsky joined her husband in the
Roman Catholic Church when she married. She calls herself an "ecumenical"
Christian.

Touched by the outpouring of love for the Carskys and Khelseau in the Galilee
Church, Gleaves decided to find out more about the Carsky family. With the
help of the Rev. Edmund E. Martin, the church's pastor, she located Rebecca
Carsky at her home in Rockville, Md.

Robert Carsky, his widow told Gleaves, had given no indication of impending
danger when she talked with him the day before the bombing. He and his fellow
workers for the Africa Rice Development Agency had been gathered in a
guesthouse. As the only American present in an area of rising tensions, he
was to be evacuated the next day with other Americans.

The U.S. citizens were to meet at a mission school. On the way to the school,
Carsky made a stop, perhaps to help someone, at the French military barracks.
And there the bombs hit.

The Rev. R. Randy Day, chief executive of the Board of Global Ministries, has
conveyed the denomination's prayers and condolences to Mrs. Carsky and her
children, to the parents of Robert Carsky, and to Khelseau, his
mother-in-law.
	

*Wright is the information officer of the United Methodist Board of Global
Ministries.

News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or
newsdesk@umcom.org.

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United Methodist News Service