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Saskatchewan
Synod Convention
Closing Worship
Prince Albert, July 2006
Kathy J. Magnus – LWF Officer for North America
It is evening in Kenya now and the sun has just set
in the Kakuma Refugee Camp. It
has been a hot and dry day with red dust blowing everywhere.
A woman is tending her children and watching a pot of cassava
bubbling over the open fire. We
come closer to the fire and engage in conversation with her.
Her name is Sabina.
Sabina tells us, “The rebel forces came into our
village and began burning homes. They
wanted everything we had, up to the last clothes on our bodies.
I saw them kill several of my family members and neighbors.
My husband was in the fields and so I just grabbed our six, four
and three year old children and ran.
I had the baby on my back.”
The journey through the steppes and stony desert of
southern Sudan to the northwest Kenyan border where Kakuma Camp is located
lasted nine days with temperatures hovering around 40 degrees. The family had hardly anything to eat or drink.
Sabina buried the baby under an acacia tree.
Upon arrival at the camp, Sabina was met by the LWF
staff and immediately received the basic necessities for herself and her
children. They could eat and
sleep temporarily under the big corrugated iron roofed reception centre.
She was given some cooking utensils and enough blankets for beds
for the whole family. Within
a few days they were assigned a hut of their own and the family began to
reconstruct a life.
As we gather around the light of the cooking fire in
the now cooler evening, Sabina tells of how you
dramatically changed her life. You
gave her two hens and a rooster – along with a pumpkin plant.
She had eggs and soon had baby chicks.
The pumpkin plant has provided two types of vegetables for her
family – the pumpkin itself and the edible spinach-like leaves.
After settling in, she applied to the LWF for a loan
to purchase two goats. To be
eligible for the loan, she had to agree that the first two goats born to
her family would be given to other families.
Do you know about goats? They
provide rich manure for the pumpkin patch (and make the pumpkins happy). They provide nutrient rich milk for the children (and make
the children happy). They are
also quite amorous creatures and multiply like crazy – (probably making
the goats happy!)
Two hens, a rooster, a pumpkin plant and two goats.
The richness of God’s bounty shared.
You were there – as members of the Lutheran World Federation.
You were there …in Jesus name.
Kakuma Refugee Camp was begun in 1992 by the United
Nations to care for 30,000 refugees, mostly young boys from Sudan.
An agreement was entered into with the UN High Commissioner for
Refugees and the Kenyan government with a mandate for the LWF to manage
the camp. Today the
population of the camp has grown to nearly 90,000 refugees.
44,000 are under the age of 17.
The LWF is present around the world this morning in
Kakuma Camp with pumpkin plants, hens and goats, and in countless other
places with trucks, grain banks, clean water projects, evangelism
training, farming techniques, ecumenical relationships, advocacy for human
rights, HIV and AIDS workers, theological education - - our name is around
the world this morning and our name is LWF!
Together we are in mission and ministry for the healing of the
world.
YOU are the Lutheran World Federation.
The ELCIC is a vital partner in our global Lutheran family.
Thank you for your support in prayer and through your commitment to
our work together. In the
ELCIC, your generous gifts to GHDA flow to Canadian Lutheran World Relief
and directly on to support the work of LWF projects.
I’ve often commented that North America Lutherans
have a distant, warm feeling about the LWF.
They kind of like it, but they don’t know what it is.
There are about 66 million Lutherans in the Lutheran
World Federation. And let me
tell you, 66 million Lutherans do make a difference!
The LWF is 140 national churches in 78 countries.
Are we diverse? Oh yes! Do we
share one vital and life-giving faith?
Oh yes!
Our Gospel lessons over the past several Sundays have
told us story after story of Jesus teaching, healing the sick, feeding the
hungry and caring for those whom no one else cared for. God was at work in the world.
God is at work in the world. God
continues to heal – those with broken bodies, and those with broken
spirits. Those, like
Sabina…without hope.
We are called into these Gospel stories as God uses us
in God’s activity in the world. One
of the ways I believe that happens is through our work in the Lutheran
World Federation.
Come with me for just a moment or two to Mauritania.
When our LWF staff person, Colette Bouka Coula meets us at the
airport, our first impressions are of a blur of heat, sand and strange
smells. If camel smells and
sandstorms are your “thing” then you will think that you have come to
paradise!
The great droughts of the early 1970s caused massive
problems in this country where 70% of the people were nomads – people,
who for centuries had wandered the desert now lost their herds of camels,
donkeys, goats and sheep. Destitute
they flocked to the capital city or Nouakchott to a radically changed
urban life. Today only 15%
remain nomadic. LWF entered
this crisis in 1974 beginning with emergency relief.
Our work has evolved into rehabilitation and development.
Belts of lush green forest now exist around the capital city as we
have planted thousands of trees to hold back the encroaching desert.
In fact, there is a story that goes about in Africa that says 90%
of the trees in Mauritania are Lutheran!
66 million Lutherans DO make
a difference!
There was no training in Russia for Lutheran pastors
during the time of the Soviet Union.
The seminary in Novosaratovka is doing its best to educate a whole
new population of pastors, youth workers, church musicians and catechists.
With your support, the LWF is educating new leadership for the
church! Eight men
and women are now able to begin seminary each year. 66 million Lutherans DO
make a difference!
This week in Zimbabwe 3,000 people will die of AIDS.
Over 780,000 children in Zimbabwe are AIDS orphans.
Can you even begin to imagine what that must be like?
To be a child of eight or nine, grieving the death of your parent
and now responsible for the care, feeding and safety of three younger
siblings? Eight years, – that is the age of my grandson, Joshua.
Through the LWF you care for these kids and provide hope by
providing school fees, clothing and food packs.
66
million Lutherans DO make a difference!
I have just recently returned from a meeting of the
LWF Project Committee in Switzerland.
This is the meeting each summer when the LWF evaluates the requests
from the member churches for assistance with specific projects. In June we were approving grants for 2007.
It is for me, a time of enormous learning and deep appreciation for
the struggles, challenges and opportunities in our sister churches.
We learn not only of the immediate needs of the churches but also
of the context the church ministers in.
We learn a bit about the current life situation.
What I learn over and over and over again is not how different we
are, but how similar we are. Let
me share just one example.
The Lutheran church in the Philippines, a church of
about 27,000 members requested $7,500 from the LWF in order to conduct
continuing education seminars for their church workers over the next three
years. The objectives are to
upgrade knowledge and skills of the 51 pastors and deaconesses serving
this church – many of whom have limited formal education.
Topics to be discussed at the seminars include ministry,
leadership, conflict management, reconciliation, church organization and
structure. The bishop will
directly coordinate this work. Sounds
a lot like continuing education in Saskatchewan! I learned that this small
church has recently begun sending missionaries to Cambodia.
Through the LWF we are part of the supporting
framework for ministry in the Philippines.
Keep them in your prayers. We
gave them the grant. It will
make a difference in many lives.
We work with member churches to develop seminary
curriculums. We work
ecumenically and on Human Rights. We
bring leadership together in the regions to pray, plan and learn from one
another. The LWF provides the
table at which our global Lutheran family comes together.
Together we struggle over the needs of the world, and 66
million Lutherans DO make a difference!
The LWF is not just about giving. It is about receiving. It
is way beyond time for the churches of the North to take seriously the
gifts from our sister churches in the South.
They are the growing churches!
There are 4 million Lutherans in Ethiopia, three million in
Tanzania and three million in Madagascar!
We need to learn from them new methodologies for evangelism, for
sharing the Gospel message. We
need to hear of their experiences and their faith stories.
As we work in mission opportunities around the globe, our lives are enriched by the faith and gifts of those with whom we
work.
There are so many more stories of mission,
development and service I would love to tell you.
Another time. I’d
encourage you to look on the LWF North America website for stories and
resources you can use in your worship or newsletters or bulletin. (www.elca.org/lwf
) Please pray.
Please be generous in your gifts to GHDA.
Because, you see, there is this morning a young mom in Kakuma Camp
who has hope. There is a newborn baby whose future is bright and healthy
because fresh water flows freely into her village. There is a gathering of young men and women, studying the
scriptures and preparing for service in their church. There is an eight year old child who had enough to eat and is
sleeping soundly and dreaming of a future.
We are the
LWF. We go in Jesus name.
Amen
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