wfn.org | New office gives Upper Room presence in Africa

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

April 3, 2002 News media contact: Linda Green7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn.
10-31-71B{141}
 
NOTE: This is a sidebar to UMNS story #140.
 

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UMNS) - Upper Room Ministries is establishing a branch
office in South Africa, as part of an effort to expand internationally.

"Today, Christians in sub-Sahara Africa have virtually no religious
resources available to them," said Stephen Bryant, publisher and world
editor of Upper Room Ministries, a unit of the United Methodist Board of
Discipleship in Nashville. "Therefore we are very excited to have
established this new branch office - called Africa Upper Room Ministries -
which will allow Upper Room Ministries to more effectively provide published
and program resources to area individuals, congregations and denominations."

Through the new office, Upper Room Ministries is developing an African
Portuguese edition of the Upper Room daily devotional guide to be
distributed in Angola and Mozambique. Retired Bishop Emilio de Carvalho is
the editor. In partnership with the Methodist Church of Southern Africa,
Africa Upper Room Ministries has also begun efforts to publish and
distribute in South Africa new language editions of the devotional guide,
including English, Afrikaans, Sotho, Tswana, Xhosa and Zulu. 

Those ministries are being financially undergirded by two "significant
donations" to Upper Room Ministries' new $16 million campaign, Bryant said.

The South Africa office represents Upper Room's first branch outside the
United States, said the Rev. John Brown, an Upper Room Ministries executive.

The property is located in Eikenhof, outside Johannesburg and across the
road from Common Ground, a Methodist retreat facility, Brown said. The
office is being renovated and has been named "Anathoth," a word meaning
"hope" and taken from Jeremiah 32:6. 

The Methodist retreat facility will use Anathoth when the property is not
being used by Africa Upper Room Ministries, Bryant said. 

For example, the property was used for a 28-day workshop for women under the
auspices of the All Africa Conference of Churches. The workshop offered
women from 12 African countries training in basic community health care,
HIV/AIDS instruction, financing a household and family planning. The
participants then trained others in their home countries - Zambia, Malawi,
Zimbabwe, Angola, Swaziland, South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Kenya, Gambia,
Burundi and Sierra Leone.
# # #

*************************************
United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org