Send Update November 2018 (School development in Malawi) Jesus said: Go and make disciples of all nations Read about the people and organisations which we as a church support!
Meg Longman I am now a little over half-way through a two-year placement at an architecture and engineering design firm in Egypt. Since the last bulletin I have been working on a number of projects, including the office for a sports ministry in Cairo and for a children s hospital in Malawi. The office design was to renovate and remodel three storeys of a building for a rapidly expanding sports camp ministry. We provided training spaces, meeting rooms and offices and were delighted (if slightly amazed) to visit the almost finished facility just two months later. The trip to Malawi was the second of three projects serving CURE hospitals I will be involved in. It was encouraging to see their holistic approach to treating patients and their families especially in the context of a country with such a poor development record. We worked on renovations and a master plan to help the campus move towards international standards in healthcare. I praise God for the many and varied opportunities he has given me here to learn about the culture, the language and people as well as to develop professionally. I thank him for answers to prayer especially for a new location to teach refugees English, for guiding us through many transitions in the office and for being able to read the Bible with my Arabic teacher. Looking forward, please pray for preparations for the upcoming project to CURE Ethiopia and that I ll make the most of chances to share the hope I have with those around me here. Thank you for your continued interest, prayers and support; I am very grateful and pray that God might be using me to serve and glorify him in this part of the world.
Sam Gladstone Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world and rural schools are not given the funding needed to run efficiently or well. Fisherman s Rest, together with its partners, engage in numerous building programmes: whole schools, classrooms, kitchens, toilets, libraries as well as other community development projects. Classrooms We are building quality classrooms to facilitate learning. The new classrooms are designed to be spacious, light and a welcoming environment for students and teachers. Teacher housing Where teacher housing is provided, staff are more likely to be on time for lessons and the school day is less disrupted by Malawi s transport system! Toilets We are aiming to improve toilet facilities in schools. Many have only mud holes and poorly-maintained walls, often without doors. We build good toilets, separating boys and girls, offering privacy, security and hand washing facilities to improve hygiene practice. We work in partnership with the community and require them to supply river sand and unskilled labour as their contribution to building projects. Fisherman s Rest and its funding partners then provide the building team to carry out the skilled work using soil stabilised bricks rather than moulded bricks which require kiln/ wood curing. The building projects have a massive impact and we love working to see change happen.
Connected Church Background For a number of years we have been supporting Tearfund s Connected Church programme, which has linked us with the Anglican Church of Kenya s development work in the Mount Kenya East region in the north of the country. Through Church and Community Mobilisation, now also called Church and Community Transformation (CCT), we have seen some of the poorest communities being trained to use their own resources to lift themselves out of poverty and improve their physical, emotional and spiritual situation. The majority of the costs of CCT are the provision of the trainers who teach and mentor the volunteers from each community. Other local costs are for training venues and materials and for travel for trainers and volunteers. Success! The effect of CCT is that many communities are no longer dependent on outside financial support and a number of dioceses in the region are now able to cover the local costs of the CCT programme. Tearfund has therefore decided that the time is right to work more broadly with the Anglican Church of Kenya. What does this mean for us as a church? Instead of supporting CCT work only in the Mount Kenya East region (which incidentally is a very large area!), our tithe donation to Connected Church will now be supporting the costs of CCT trainers and facilitators throughout Kenya and impacting the whole country! This is very exciting news and we thank and praise God for all that we ve been able to give and the responsible and careful way it has been used to such great effect in the Mount Kenya East region. We pray for Tearfund s staff and the staff of the Anglican Church of Kenya as they continue this vital work. If you have any questions, please have a chat with me. Church representative: Ros Taylor
Leicester Diocese Link with Tanzania: Dioceses of Kiteto and Mount Kilimanjaro In July 2018 Bishop Martyn and Stuart Burns, Diocesan Director of Mission and Ministry, visited our link dioceses on an eight-day whistle-stop tour. Although time was limited, they visited both dioceses and saw some of the 200 new churches planted in recent years. Bishop Martyn took part in three Confirmation services, where a total of 200 people were confirmed, as well as many baptisms! The picture shows Bishop Isaiah during a baptism in a grove of trees in Kiteto Diocese. There is spiritual hunger and people are very open to the gospel and to prayer. Life is communal, and often the whole village become Christians together! New churches are planted by evangelists, and initially meet in the open, often under a tarpaulin shelter, but a programme of building simple church buildings has been very successful. In some areas there is opposition, especially accusations of attempting to convert Muslims. Pastor Jasper in Toloha, a remote Masai village (featured in the November 2017 bulletin), has fears for the safety of the children in the school he has set up, and he and Bishop Stanley are considering moving the school to Arusha. This would clearly present big problems for the children and their families. Praise God for the vision of Bishops Stanley and Isaiah in prioritising evangelism when there are so many other needs. Pray for the evangelists, teachers, and the congregations of new believers. Pray for strength and wisdom in facing opposition. Church representative: Margaret Leverment
Church Pastoral Aid Society (CPAS) Making Mission Possible This home mission society plays a very important part in the life of our church. It is the Patron of the parish of Rothley, which means it nominates our vicars - indeed, it is Patron for some 500 churches in the UK, something which is hugely important in terms of Christ-centred leadership across the Church of England. The overriding aim of CPAS is to enable churches to help every person hear and discover the good news of Jesus Christ and it does this through a wide variety of training material and events up and down the country. For example, our own Parochial Church Council attended their PCC Tonight course and this has had a major impact on its effectiveness. Please pray for John Dunnett, General Director of the Society, as he and his colleagues determine future priorities, especially in terms of encouraging and equipping both ordained and lay leaders at local level. An exciting initiative by CPAS is the introduction of Schools Ventures. Earlier this year a group of youngsters from Rothley Primary School, together with Rob Gladstone and Jackie Wainwright, went on one such weekend near Northampton where they had a super time and learned all about the love of Jesus for each one of them. A similar Venture is currently being planned for 2019. Please pray that another group of youngsters from the village will see the relevance of the Christian faith for them today. Give thanks also for the way in which Rothley School backs this initiative so enthusiastically - without the school s wholehearted support and its excellent liaison with our church, these wonderful Ventures would not be possible. Church representative: David Wilson
Crosslinks: international mission Latest news from our mission partners, Jirka and Keira Kralovi, committed to Christian outreach to university students in the Czech Republic: We hope that you are well. Thank you so much for your ongoing support for this work amongst university students in Olomouc and other cities in the Czech Republic. We were not able to make it to the UK this summer as we had originally planned as we had an unforeseen repair on our car (and large bill ). Instead, Jirka was able to use the time to give extra teaching seminars to young people, help with practical work on our church building and to take on some summer preaching. The start of term has gone really well. Jirka has been teaching from Acts and the response has been good. About half of the students are new so it has been a time when everyone has been getting to know one another. Please pray that the group would learn to serve Jesus together, for his glory in Olomouc. There has been a lot of interest in the Bible studies. We have been studying Philippians and we have had the room full and all the chairs full. We are so encouraged. Thank you for praying for students to come! Please pray that there would be an opportunity for Jirka to disciple one or two students individually. Jirka was invited to teach people to use the Christianity Explored course (Czech translation!) in Ostrava (north of Olomouc) and Prague. We hope it will be an encouragement to churches and groups to share the gospel this way. Please pray that more church leaders might use this course here in the Czech Republic and that it helps people to understand the gospel clearly. Church representative: Rob Gladstone
Wings of Love to People in Need From Paul and Cathy Middleton in South Africa: Flying For Life Eye Cataract Surgery Paul has been privileged to take an eye cataract surgery team up to Thohoyandou in Limpopo, the northernmost province of South Africa. Access to eye care is extremely difficult for those living in remote areas. Families often travel for hours by foot to obtain even basic medical treatment. Flying overcomes the barriers of weak infrastructure, mountains and distance. This means that the volunteer eye surgeons can spend less time travelling on dangerous roads and more time transforming lives. We pick a team of volunteers up in Johannesburg every two months and this was the fourth trip we d done this year to fly them out to work at a hospital for the day. The team work all day at the hospital and then are flown back at sundown. All in all, a very long day. There is a waiting list of 400 people for cataract surgery as it is not hugely prioritised by the Department of Health. The little we can do goes a long way towards helping a few people who would otherwise have minimal hope of a better life. Church representative: Rob Gladstone
www.mothersunion.org Mothers Union in Ethiopia Ethiopia is located in the area known as the Horn of Africa, the easternmost part of the African continent. It is bordered by Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti and Eritrea. Once known as Abyssinia, Ethiopia is the most populous landlocked country in the world and the second-most populous nation in Africa. Its population of more than 102 million is very diverse, with more than 80 different ethnic groups and languages. Mothers Union started in Ethiopia in 2004 and there are now over 3,000 members, many of whom arrived as refugees from South Sudan. Their activities include hospital visiting, prison ministry, health awareness, literacy, peace and reconciliation, emergency relief. Meg Longman recently met Mothers Union members there and sent this news: We asked a local pastor what sort of outreach the church did and he said that it was nearly all done through the Mothers Union. Mothers Union carry out health and education programmes in all the villages. Representatives from each branch have been trained in basic child care, which they went on to teach to the whole branch. Within a year in one area the number of infant burials reduced from 500 to none! There were local customs that had to be overcome, such as the belief that a baby should not be given water to drink if it has diarrhoea. The head of the local Bible School said: If you want anything done in the church or community, asking the Mothers Union is the best way to get it done. Meg said when she went to visit a church, her group were welcomed by the local Mothers Union who sang a welcome song, showed them around, introduced them to the Sunday School, cooked their lunch and then sang as the group left! Church representative: Sue Wilson
The aim of Send is to present to everyone in Rothley Parish Church the challenge of where and how we are seeking to serve the spread of the gospel beyond our immediate context. As members of the worldwide church we have God s heart for the nations and so seek to both send and support Christians so that others might hear and know God s love in Jesus. We do this through: Raising awareness to keep us an outward-looking church, widening the horizons of the whole fellowship to life beyond Rothley Supporting organisations and individuals who promote the spread of the gospel, both as a church but also promoting the interest and involvement of individual church members Encouraging the sending out of individual members of the congregation to become personally involved in practical ways This half-yearly update brings news from the societies and individuals we support as a church.