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[Mennonite Central Committee Communications]

TOPIC:  ZAIRE'S CIVIL WAR IS ON BRINK OF ENGULFING MENNONITE COMMUNITIES
DATE:   March 21, 1997
CONTACT:  Pearl Sensenig
V: 717/859-1151 F: 717/859-2171
E-MAIL ADDRESS:  mailbox@mcc.org

AKRON, Pa. -- Rebel troops are on the brink of entering Kasai
Oriental, Kasai Occidental and possibly Bandundu, the three provinces
where most of Zaire's 140,000 Mennonites live.  The rebels, also
known as Alliance troops, now control a wide swath of land in eastern
Zaire.  They recently captured the key city of Kisangani and are
moving rapidly west.

However, "most people are not nearly as afraid of the rebels as they
are of potential looting by Zairian soldiers," reports Bruce Janz, co-
director of Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) programs in Zaire.  

Defeated Zairian government soldiers, who often serve unpaid, have
been taking out their frustrations on the local populace.  In Bukavu, a
town captured in late October 1996,  retreating soldiers and desperate
Rwandan refugees stripped crops from fields and belongings from
homes.  In late February, Krista Rigalo and Fidele Lumeya, MCC
workers in Bukavu, and local churches distributed seeds and tools to
help people re-establish themselves.  These items were purchased with
money from MCC's "Central Africa Healing Fund."  MCC continues
to request contributions to this fund so the agency can respond to
needs in war-torn Zaire, as well as in neighboring Rwanda and
Burundi.  MCC shipments containing 32,968 blankets and 1,713 school
kits are also currently en route to Bukavu, Zaire.

Many Zairians are tired of the way Zaire's President Mobutu has ruled
their country since 1965.  The resource-rich nation is now
impoverished.  Friends tell Janz, "Change is what we need."

"Zaire needs the intervention of the Holy Spirit at this critical time,"
says Nzash Lumeya, a leader in the Zairian Mennonite Brethren
church.

Kinshasa, Zaire's capital, is the nation's seat of power -- ethnic,
economic and political.  There the "radio trottoir," literally sidewalk
radio or rumor mill, has gone into overdrive.  Residents -- including
MCC workers Bruce Janz and Ann Campbell-Janz -- are struggling not
to let fear paralyze them.

"If you listen to all the rumors, you can end up doing nothing for
weeks on end," observes Janz.  Each night people go to bed fearful
that Zairian troops will begin looting the city.  They fear both the
troops based there and those returning from the war front.  Gas
stations that usually stay open 24 hours now close overnight.  People
are trying to hide their valuables.

After talking with her neighbor, a woman who supports her family by
selling grilled meat, Janz-Campbell says, "All the political games have
little to do with our neighbor's reality.  She just wants a better life for
her family.  I think this illustrates where a lot of people are at."  
Many residents of Kinshasa can afford only one meal a day, if that.

Zaire's civil war began in October 1996 after the government issued a
ruling that ethnic Tutsis who had been living in Zaire for several
generations had to leave.  The Tutsis, known as Banyamulenge, took
up arms and were soon joined by others opposed to President
Mobutu's government.

At this point, the five MCC workers in Zaire have no plans to leave. 
"A measure of prudence and an ear to the ground" is the way Janz
describes the precautions they are taking.

Bruce Janz and Ann Campbell-Janz, co-directors of MCC's Zaire
programs, live in Kinshasa.  They are from Elkhart, Ind. Michael
Salomons works with Zairian Mennonite church development programs
in Kahemba, in Bandundu province near Zaire's border with Angola. 
He is from Rocky Mountain House, Alta.  Krista Rigalo and Fidele
Lumeya work with peace and forestry programs in Bukavu, on Zaire's
eastern border with Rwanda.  Krista is from Crystal River, Fla.; Fidele
is from Kikwit, Zaire.

                             -30-

pls21march1997
TOPIC:  MCC SUPPLIES FOOD, WATER TANKS, SEEDS TO DROUGHT VICTIMS IN
KENYA
DATE:   March 21, 1997
CONTACT:  Pearl Sensenig
V: 717/859-1151 F: 717/859-2171
E-MAIL ADDRESS:  mailbox@mcc.org

Akron, Pa. -- Birds are dying.  A baboon recently attacked a villager. 
If wild animals are unable to find food, then there truly is none, and
people are frightened about their own fate.  

This was a March 16 report from Francis Ole Sakuda of Olosho-Oiber,
a Maasai community in Kenya.  Several successive years of below-
normal rainfall have parched much of Kenya, leading to widespread
crop failure and loss of livestock.

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) staff are working out the
logistics of providing a six-week food supply to some 8,000 people. 
Because many people have become so hungry they have eaten the
seeds they would normally save for planting, MCC is also providing
maize, bean and sorghum seeds, and water tanks for five Maasai
villages.  These items are set to arrive at the end of March, before the
new rainy season begins in April.

With many large organizations aiding people in the hardest-hit
northern areas, MCC decided to fill a gap by focusing on assisting
Maasai villages in the south.  However, MCC did provide the Wajir
peace group (featured in a July 12, 1996, MCC news service article)
$14,000 Cdn./$10,000 U.S. to transport water.  As well, the peace
group earlier used half of MCC's annual $14,000 Cdn./$10,000 U.S.
grant to buy fuel.  Dekha Ibrahim, the woman who heads the group,
reported that without this money, much food and water would never
have gotten to famine victims in this isolated town in Kenya's arid
north. 

In early February, Erna and Larry Loewen-Rudgers, who direct MCC
programs in Kenya, received a letter from a long-time pastor friend
who works among the Maasai.  He wrote, "Drought has seriously
gripped the area and animals are dying.  The stock price has drastically
fallen so even for those who still have cows, life is so hard and
demanding."  

Soon afterwards the Loewen-Rudgers paid a visit and found several
village schools closed as children were too weak to attend.  Some
health clinics had also shut their doors due to lack of water, while at
the same time many people had become ill from dysentery after
drinking impure water.  Others, weakened from poor nutrition, were
susceptible to pneumonia.   

As the MCC workers traveled, they reported "bloated, swollen corpses
of dead cows littered the winding road."  Farmers had herded their
cattle to the highway to try to sell them to passersby before the
livestock died.  Often a cow brought only the equivalent of $3 or $4. 
Others had tried to drive their cattle across the border to Tanzania
where grass and water were rumored to be more plentiful, but the
weak cattle died of exhaustion and dehydration along the way.

When the Loewen-Rudgers inquired why people did not simply
slaughter the animals and eat them, they were told Maasai people
traditionally eat their goats and sheep, but not their cattle, which are
akin to money in the bank.  

Most donkeys -- the main "beasts of burden" -- have also died.  Now
people must walk up to 30 kilometers/18.6 miles to fetch water. 
Because they can only carry back small quantities, they can no longer
cook maize, their staple food.  Beans have doubled in price and are
hardly available in the stores; milk disappeared from the shelves weeks
ago. 

Two MCC volunteers -- Carolyn Schan of North Bay, Ont., and
Melody Mast of Oley, Pa. -- serve among the Maasai, one of Kenya's
minority groups who are known for their colorful beadwork.  Schan
and Mast help community women market their handicrafts.  They also
conduct English and literacy classes.
                             -30-
pls21march1997TOPIC:  POVERTY COMPOUNDS SUFFERING WHEN NATURAL DISASTERS STRIKE THE
PHILIPPINES
DATE:   March 21, 1997
CONTACT:  Pearl Sensenig
V: 717/859-1151 F: 717/859-2171
E-MAIL ADDRESS:  mailbox@mcc.org

Few disasters are strictly natural, says MCC worker

AKRON, Pa. -- It looked more like the cover of a tourist brochure
than a disaster site.  Turquoise water lapped the empty palm-lined
beach on Mindanao island in the Philippines.

A tidal wave had recently washed over the area.  Camera-laden
Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) worker Jeff Lehman was there
to assess and document damage in his role as staffperson of the
Citizens' Disaster Response Center, a Filipino agency that provides
relief and rehabilitation to communities suffering disaster.

Local people told Lehman the idyllic scene was deceptive.  Some 20
thatched-roof huts had once lined the beach.  All the homes and
several children had been swallowed by the sea.

For those who lost their belongings and loved ones, it was a disaster. 
But was it strictly a natural disaster?  Lehman points out that if the
houses had been constructed of cement block, they would likely have
withstood the tidal wave.

The Philippine island chain is perilously poised atop the Pacific "Ring
of Fire" -- an area vulnerable to volcanoes and earthquakes.  As well,
typhoons -- similar to hurricanes -- frequently batter the Philippines. 
In 1995, for example, three typhoons in one month smashed into the
Philippines, killing hundreds and leaving hundreds of thousands
homeless.  But, says Lehman, most disasters have a human component,
like the case in Mindanao where poverty kept people from building
sturdy homes and prevents them from moving to more costly, safer
areas.   

Poverty plays a big role not only in keeping Filipinos vulnerable to
disaster, but also in preventing them from recovering quickly.  "The
Philippine president could declare a disaster area but would have few
resources to put into it compared to the United States and Canada,"
explains Lehman.

The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 made headlines around the
world.  But few people realize the disaster continues, due to both
natural and human causes.

Although relatively little lava flowed from the volcanic eruption, in the
six years since, a mixture of volcanic ash, mud and water, known as
lahar, continues to periodically stream down the mountain, enveloping
houses and fields in its path.  Initially, experts said the lahar flow
would stop after 10 years; now some predict it may last much longer. 
Meanwhile, lahar silts up rivers, causing them to overflow their banks
and flood.

Many area residents remain homeless, camped in tents, waiting for the
government to resettle them.  Lack of resources and corruption have
caused delays.  As well, many farmers have no way to make a living. 
This once fertile, rice-growing area now looks like a desert.

"There is a shortage of good jobs in the Philippines to start with, so
what do you do?"  ponders Lehman.  "When we come up with that
answer, we'll be able to help a lot of people."

One way the Citizens' Disaster Response Center assists is by working
at disaster prevention.  "Staff go into communities where they know
typhoons will hit and try to lower people's vulnerability," explains
Lehman.  This may include helping people draw up evacuation plans
and organizing a weather monitoring system.  The agency also
advocates on behalf of victims to help them access government
services.

However, Lehman lists three major causes of manmade disaster in the
Philippines -- deforestation, pollution and economic policies -- and
notes this type of disaster is increasingly common.

Deforestation allows rainwater to pour down denuded mountain slopes,
causing flash floods.  The most dramatic example occurred about eight
years ago in Ormoc when water rushed into a low-lying area, cutting it
off from the mainland.  Hundreds drowned. 

Pollution, particularly that associated with mining, can create much
hardship.  Last year on the island of Marinduque, for example,
millions of tons of toxic mine tailings spewed into a major river
system.  While no lives were lost, scores of people sickened after
drinking water from wells adjacent the river.  Farmers lost their main
irrigation source as the river is now poisonous and will be for many
years to come.   

The foreign investment policy being pursued by the Filipino
government provides financial incentives to entice international
corporations to the country.  The Filipino government's goal of fast
economic growth has often caused suffering for the poor, such as when
foreign corporations cultivate vast tracts to grow export crops, forcing
poor farmers onto disaster-prone land.
       Recently the government decided to enlarge a port near
Manila, the capital, to encourage more international shipping
industries.  However, the area slated for development was home for
hundreds of families who lived there in concrete, plywood and
cardboard shacks.  The residents had no legal titles to the land, not
unusual in the Philippines where titles are difficult to obtain, but many
had lived there for several generations.

Lehman recalls on his first visit he had to turn sideways to squeeze
through the squatter community's narrow alleyways.  The next time he
stopped by, the area had been leveled by bulldozers.

Lehman of Kidron, Ohio, recently completed his MCC assignment in
the Philippines.  Now he is considering spending time in a different
disaster response -- helping Mennonite Disaster Service clean up flood
damage in the Ohio River Valley.  Lehman is a member of Kidron
Mennonite Church.
                             -30-

Pearl Sensenig, MCC Communications

21march1997

MCC photo available:  A Filipino woman attempts to dig out her
house, which has been covered by lahar.  Although relatively little lava
flowed when Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, in the six year since, a
mixture of volcanic ash, mud and water, known as lahar, continues to
periodically stream down the mountain.  People continue to lose their
homes, and many still live in evacuation centers, waiting to be
resettled.  (MCC photo by Jeff Lehman)  TOPIC:  MCC WORKERS IN RUSSIA RECOGNIZED ON INTERNATIONAL W
DATE:   March 21, 1997
CONTACT:  Emily Will
V: 717/859-1151 F: 717/859-2171
E-MAIL ADDRESS:  mailbox@mcc.org

AKRON, Pa. -- Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) workers Ruth
Ann Stauffer and Cheryl Hochstetler Shirk were recognized on
International Women's Day by the Prefecture of the Central District of
Moscow.

Via MCC partner agency Compassion Ministries, the prefecture, or
local government, gave the women tea sets -- six cups and saucers, a
teapot and sugar bowl.

"Cheryl and I were honored as a way to show appreciation for MCC's
work in providing humanitarian assistance to needy people in Moscow
and the Moscow area," says Stauffer, who serves as MCC's social
services coordinator in Russia and the Ukraine.  MCC food and
material resources reach prisons, orphanages, hospitals and other
Moscow-area agencies helping people in need.

^From New York City, Stauffer is a member of North Bronx Mennonite
Church.

"International Women's Day is a big holiday in Russia, and also in the
Ukraine," Stauffer says. "It's a day to honor women.  It's not just for
mothers, like our Mother's Day, nor is it just for lovers, like our
Valentine's Day."

Although Saturday, March 8, was the actual holiday, it was celebrated
the preceding Friday at offices throughout the city, Stauffer says. 
Women were shown appreciation with flowers, chocolate, tea and
similar gifts.  "There is another holiday for men," Stauffer adds.

Cheryl Hochstetler Shirk serves as MCC co-director for the former
Soviet Union.  She is from Goshen, Ind., and a member of East
Goshen Mennonite Church.

                             -30-

esw21march1997
TOPIC:  MCC RUSSIA PARTNER MIKHAIL ZHIDKOV: FROM LOFTY PULPIT TO
PRISONS, POLICE STATIONS, PSYCHIATRIC WARDS
DATE:   March 21, 1997
CONTACT:  Emily Will
V: 717/859-1151 F: 717/859-2171
E-MAIL ADDRESS:  mailbox@mcc.org

MOSCOW --  "Our family's relationship with Mennonite Central
Committee (MCC) goes back over 70 years," says Mikhail Zhidkov,
who is now nearly 70 himself.  Zhidkov's grandfather Ivan and father,
Jacob, were members of the Evangelical Christian community that
worked with MCC to distribute its very first food relief shipments -- to
famine-stricken Russia and Ukraine in the 1920s. 

Zhidkov currently directs Compassion Ministries here, a relief and
social service agency he founded in 1989 that has become one of
MCC's major partners in Russia.  MCC shares office space with
Compassion Ministries in the old central Evangelical Christian-Baptist
Church compound.  "This helps support all of us spiritually and
socially, and it helps us better understand Russian realities," comments
Steve Hochstetler Shirk, co-director of MCC's work in the former
Soviet Union.

"KGB agent"!

Zhidkov has some unique remembrances of his interactions with North
American Mennonites throughout the years.  While visiting Mennonite
churches in Pennsylvania in the 1960s, Zhidkov relates, the
organization Mission Without Borders organized anti-communist
demonstrations.

MCC veteran Peter Dyck, now of Scottdale, Pa., recalls a potentially
volatile situation when demonstrators carrying "KGB Agent" placards
entered a Mennonite church where Zhidkov was to speak, ready to
"occupy" it.  "Bishop John A. Lapp handled it beautifully," Dyck
relates.  "He said, `We are in church; this is our church and it's God's
house and we want no disturbances here.'"  The demonstrators took
their protest outside, and Zhidkov spoke.

"Now we are friends and Mission Without Borders supports our work,"
Zhidkov says. During the Cold War, however, some American
Christians viewed any Russian Christian who worked within the
confines of the Soviet system as a government minion, even a KGB
agent. These U.S. Christians trusted only "unregistered" Christians who
would have nothing to do with the Soviet system.

Looking back, Zhidkov still believes it was better to gain limited
freedom for worship by accommodating to the system rather than so
vigorously oppose it as to lose all freedom to engage in religious
activity.

After 1956, when North American Mennonites, through MCC's
initiative, slowly resumed contact with Soviet believers, they avoided
partisanship, seeking instead to build trusting relationships with
evangelical Christians across the spectrum, including leaders of the
Soviet-government sanctioned Evangelical Christian-Baptist Union, of
which some Mennonites were members.

While some MCC and Mennonite leaders may have been uneasy with
their relationship with Zhidkov and other religious leaders who worked
with Soviet approval, they were committed to walking alongside all
Christians in the Soviet Union and to help build bridges among them,
"choosing not to judge," says Walter Sawatsky, MCC consultant on
East-West relationships.

True calling

During the Soviet era, Zhidkov pastored Moscow's Central Baptist
Church.  One Sunday, Zhidkov delivered a sermon on compassion and
invited church members to join him in a ministry at a local psychiatric
hospital.  There they bathed, held and fed patients.  This occurred in
1989, when social work became permissible with perestroika, or the
opening of Soviet communism. Compassion Ministries had been born.

Zhidkov, who had retired from his post as first pastor just several
months earlier, now realized he had found his true calling.  "The pulpit
in Central Baptist Church is elevated," Zhidkov says.  "I was high
above the people, separated from them.  When I began to work with
Compassion Ministries, I came down from the high pulpit to be on the
level of the people."

He obviously relishes life at this level.  And while Compassion
Ministries has grown -- it now has more than a hundred volunteers and
a number of paid staff, a large enterprise to oversee -- Zhidkov still
takes time to visit those in need wherever they are, in soup kitchens,
prisons, orphanages, hospitals, refugee camps and at police stations. 
He too was one of the few ready to assist persons infected with the
HIV virus. His are not harried "administrative" visits but rather
pastoral, Zhidkov emotionally connecting with those in need.
       While visiting young men crammed in a small, dark, stinky
cell in the dungeonlike Yegorevsk Remand Prison, built in 1785,
Zhidkov speaks to them gently, as a grandfather.  He relates to them
how his grandson was imprisoned for three years after being accused
of stealing a tape recorder, but has lived a productive life since his
release.   God is forgiving and provides endless second chances, he
tells the shaven-headed group of men.

"They need hope," Zhidkov explains. "They think their life is over."

Hope -- and chocolate cream eggs

Later, with obvious gusto, he joins in a silly "chicken" dance with
teachers and children at the Tomeleno Children's Shelter in an
impoverished Moscow suburb, afterwards distributing cream-filled
chocolate eggs.  He had thought to bring along a large box of them. 
Taking a child on his lap, Zhidkov asks her how she is adjusting to her
new home since arriving just a week previously.  Tears well in his
eyes as the teachers fill him in on her traumatic background.

At the police station, where people without documentation are
sometimes detained for up to a month, Zhidkov visits some of the cells
and notes the need for winter clothing and for canvas to stretch across
the bed frames.  There are no mattresses.  He speaks kindly to the
despondent, incarcerated men and women and offers some Christian
literature, translated into Russian, to those who are interested.

While providing literature is an important part of Compassion
Ministries' work, Zhidkov firmly believes that, in sharing Christianity,
"showing" is more effective than "telling."

"`Showing' is more difficult than merely `telling.'  It takes more time;
it is more sacrificial," Zhidkov says.  This conviction came to him
through childhood experiences.  He was 10 when police came to his
home and arrested his father.  During the couple of years of his
father's imprisonment, his mother had difficulty scraping together
enough for her children to live on.

"It was extremely dangerous to help the family of a man arrested for
`political' reasons, and Christians such as my father were arrested for
`political' reasons.  By Friday or Saturday our resources would be
down to zero," Zhidkov recalls. "On Sunday I went with my
grandmother to the Central Baptist Church.  Believers would come up
to us and ask how things were going, then would cautiously look
around and quickly put something into our hands." 

But, he adds, "The `cup of water' and evangelism are absolutely
inseparable.  Showing by itself is not enough; preaching by itself is not
enough."      

Apt candidate for "work of compassion"

Zhidkov believes his life experiences have happily combined to make
him particularly suited for his current work, "the work of compassion,"
as he terms it.

As a young man in the late 1950s he was one of four Russian Baptist
students allowed to study theology abroad.  He attended Spurgeons
College in England and then McMaster University in Hamilton,
Ontario. Later, as first pastor of Central Baptist Church and leader of
his church union, he travelled abroad once or twice yearly, mostly to
the States, making many acquaintances.

Now, he notes, his English language skills and broad contacts have
enabled Compassion Ministries to grow and secure the material
resources needed to reach out to hurting, hungry people in Russia
today.

As foreign funding dries up with the subsiding wave of interest in
Russia, MCC supports Compassion Ministries with grants and material
resources.  MCC worker Ruth Ann Stauffer works half time with the
agency, communicating with foreign sponsors and assisting in the
development of self-help projects.  Stauffer, of New York City, is a
member of North Bronx Mennonite Church.

"While others administer Compassion Ministries' routine work,
Mikhail has a spiritual sensitivity that enables him to speak God's
grace to people who are really down and out," Shirk comments.

                             -30-

Emily Will, MCC Communications, with Ruth Ann Stauffer, social
services coordinator for MCC in the former Soviet Union.

21march1997

MCC photos available:  Mikhail Zhidkov chats with 7-year-old Seniya
at the Tomeleno shelter for abandoned and abused children in
Moscow.  (MCC photo by Howard Zehr)
 TOPIC:  MDS SEEKS VOLUNTEERS, FUNDS TO ASSIST RESIDENTS OF FLOOD-
RAVAGED OHIO RIVER VALLEY
DATE:   March 21, 1997
CONTACT:  Pearl Sensenig
V: 717/859-1151 F: 717/859-2171
E-MAIL ADDRESS:  mailbox@mcc.org

       AKRON, Pa. --  Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) volunteers
are investigating damage and helping to clean up in the flood-ravaged
Ohio River Valley.  MDS is focusing on assisting people around
Cincinnati, Ohio, and in small towns south of Louisville, Ky.  MDS
units in southern Indiana and Tennessee are also helping flood victims
in their local areas.

MDS seeks volunteers who can spend a week or two helping with
clean up, as well as longer-term volunteers for reconstruction work
throughout the spring and summer.  Interested persons should contact
the newly established MDS office in New Richmond, southwest of
Cincinnati, Ohio; phone: (513) 553-7200, or the MDS office in Akron,
Pa.; phone: (717) 859-2210.   

MDS also urgently requests funds; contributions designated for
Midwest Storms, can be mailed to MDS, P.O. Box 500, Akron, PA 
17501.    

 A violent weather system in early March lashed the Ohio River
Valley 
with rain and spawned tornadoes in Arkansas and Mississippi.  MDS is
helping 
to rebuild several homes in College Station, a suburb of Little Rock,
Ark.

                             -30-

pls21march1997TOPIC:  MCC WEB SITE:  NEW, COOL AND NOTABLE
DATE:   March 21, 1997
CONTACT:  Charmayne Denlinger Brubacker
V: 717/859-1151 F: 717/859-2171
E-MAIL ADDRESS:  mailbox@mcc.org

AKRON, Pa -- Mennonite Central Committee's (MCC) Web site is
"new, cool and notable" according to USA Today.  The paper's Web
page - http://www.usatoday.com - lists new "Hot sites" every day,
and on March 17, selected MCC's site with the heading, "Helping the
World."  

"[MCC] has been providing relief and development aid around the
world since 1920," says the description.  "[Their] Web site now lets
the world see the kinds of good things they've been doing."

Take a look!  The MCC web site is http://www.mennonitecc.ca/mcc/

                             -30-

dlf21march1997