wfn.org | Louisiana team ministers to African children's soles

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

July 30, 1998	Contact: Linda Green*(615)742-5470*Nashville, Tenn.
{452}

NOTE:  A photograph is available with this story.

By Bobbie Armstrong*

It was a long way to go to place tennis shoes on the feet of needy
children, but a six-member team from Louisiana traveled to Angola to do
just that.

The trip was the culmination of a long-running campaign in which United
Methodists across the Louisiana Annual (regional) Conference collected
34,000 pairs of sneakers for Africa's children. Ten months after
collecting the shoes, the conference's Tennis Shoe Delivery Team laid
dozens of pairs on the altar in the Central United Methodist Church in
Luanda, Angola. The footwear was consecrated by Western Angola Bishop
Emilio de Carvalho on July 12.

A container with 8,000 pairs of shoes is en route to Angola. The
remaining 26,000 pairs have been shipped by the United Methodist
Committee on Relief Depot in Louisiana to other African countries.

The team included Bishop Dan Solomon and his wife, Joy. The group was
commissioned at the recent annual conference session to personalize the
delivery of the tennis shoes to Africa. They were the first United
Methodist annual conference delegation from the United States to visit
Angola, according to de Carvalho.

For Joy Solomon, placing tennis shoes on the youngsters' feet was the
high point of her two-year mission to help African children, who get
sick and sometimes die from walking barefoot in unsafe places. The
children, who must walk long distances for survival, cut their feet and
get infections from open wounds.

"The need is so immense here," she said. "I wanted to go home and get
100,000 more pair."

In the African country, ravaged by 25 years of civil war, the team
witnessed abject poverty everywhere, Bishop Solomon said. "Angola is not
just in crisis, it is a crisis. The people's needs are as acute as any I
have ever seen."

Amid the hopelessness and bleak surroundings in Luanda, the port city
where the team was based, the United Methodist Church offers five
centers that are "little oases of hope in a desert of poverty," the
bishop said. 

Farther north, the team visited a refugee camp, where many Methodists
have fled after losing everything to warring factions. They have "the
remarkable courage and capacity for hope you see among people of faith,"
Bishop Solomon said.

They also have a wonderful spirit of community, said the Rev. James
Haynes, a member of the team and pastor at St. Mark United Methodist
Church in Baton Rouge.

Although poverty stricken, churches from across Angola came together and
brought $5,000 to $6,000 for the Africa Church Growth and Development
Fund, along with commodities such as bread, cloth and whatever else they
had for their brothers and sisters in the refugee camps.

"They were dancing and singing and giving it joyfully," Haynes said. "I
wish we had that kind of spirit here."

While delivering the shoes was primary, the journey meant much more.

"I think our visit meant a lot to the United Methodists in Angola," said
team member Ray Caraway, president of the United Methodist Foundation of
Louisiana. "To them, isolated and shut off from the rest of the world,
our offering of help shows that someone cares . . . that someone knows
they're suffering and wants to help."

# # #

*Armstrong is editor of the Louisiana United Methodist Review, the
newspaper of the Louisiana Annual Conference.

United Methodist News Service
(615)742-5470
Releases and photos also available at
http://www.umc.org/umns/