Madonna Adopts Baby in Malawi

Madonna Adopts AIDS orphan in Malawi?
Her baby boy is just one in a million in Malawi!

Controversial pop superstar, Madonna, who offended Christians this last Spring when she staged a mock crucifixion during her world concert tour, declared her intention to donate a million dollars to support an Orphan Care Center in Malawi. Then she announced her desire to adopt a motherless baby boy from "Home of Hope" Orphanage run by the Presbyterian Church of Central Africa in Malawi. Now that she has custody of David Banda, she wants to build a new orphanage for some of the 800,000-1,000,000 remaining orphans and abandoned children in Malawi. Her intentions and efforts, however controversial, have succeeded in calling world attention to this tiny, Pennsylvania-size country of 12 million people in central sub-Sahara Africa.

The tragic story of David Banda, whose mother died of AIDS and whose father left him at the orphange when he was two weeks old, mirrors that of thousands of other orphans in Malwai and throughout Africa. International adoptions may help, but support for those left behind is critically important.

I returned last month from Malawi where I saw first-hand the desperate needs of AIDS orphans and vulnerable families coping with severe famine, extreme poverty and life-threatening disease. They need all the help they can get from people of good will and right motive. While I welcome celebrity involvement, including Madonna’s, I Christians and people of good will should reach out and care for orphans and abandoned children in Africa in any way they can. Not only by adoptions but by sponsoring a child within Malawi who needs nutrition, education and medical assistance, or by supporting a Malawian family that has enlarged its nuclear family unit by including orhans in its household, and/or supplying medical aid to Africa's most vulnerable.

Personally, I favor faith-based approaches to ending poverty and AIDS because such ministries can be more holistic in addressing the needs of the body, soul and spirit. Evangelism and giving a cup of cold water and a warm meal in Jesus’ Name is the whole gospel for the whole person. That’s why I like what CitiHope is doing in northern Malawi.

If Madonna, who does not understand the true meaning of the Cross, can adopt motherless child and contribute a million dollars to help AIDS orphans in Malawi, so can those who understand both the suffering of the Savior and the power of the Resurrection, reach out and do what we can. Jesus told his disciples not to forbid the little children to come unto him. That’s why we provide daily meals and medicine to 1000+ orphans and 10,000 patients: that they might come to Him and live.

www.citihope.org

Mother Shalom

South Central, Los Angeles, was the neighborhood in the city where Communities of Shalom began in 1992. I met Marx Gutierrez from El Salvador who was there attending High School at the time. He remembers what happened at the corner of Florence and Normandy Streets in South Central, LA, when Reginald Denny was pulled out of his truck and beaten while the crowd looked on and the police did nothing; and how the Rodney King beating resulted in a not-guilty verdict for the police and resulted in a major, 3-day uprising in the neighborhood, until the National Guard came in and finally imposed law and order. He can still remember the fires, the bright orange night sky, the mass looting, 45 unsolved killings, the social chaos...And how the United Methodist Churches responded by creating a zone of shalom in 7 neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Today, Marx is a community organizer, and married to Jennifer Gutierrez, Conference Shalom Coordinator in the Calif-Pacific Annual Conference, and Rev. Vilma

First Generation Lambs Club Reunion

Fifteen of us gathered Saturday night at the Lambs Club for a 35 th year reunion of those who helped start the Lamb’s Church in Times Square in the mid to late 1970’s, including: Rev. Paul S. Moore , Founder of the Lamb’s Church of the Nazarene, and his wife, Tamara Dr. Michael J. Christensen , charter member and former associate pastor, and his wife Dr. Rebecca Laird Fr. William (BJ) Webe r, former Associate Pastor and Director of the Lamb’s Residency, and his wife Sheila who lived at the Lamb’s Jim and Dustee Hullinger, who were on staff together and made the Lamb’s their home for over 25 years Effie Canepa , who was the church pianist under 3 pastors, and her husband Peter Shirley Close, who attended the Lamb’s in the late 1970’s while studying, performing and teaching music and voice Carl "Chappy" Valente , former associate pastor Rev. Bob DiQuatto , lead singer of the Church’s “Manhattan Project” and staff member of the Lamb’s, and his son Jason Rev. Gabriel

Liberation Spirituality: Henri Nouwen and Gustavo Gutierrez in Dialogue

Liberation Spirituality: Henri Nouwen and Gustavo Gutierrez in Dialogue Lecture Notes: Presented by Michael J. Christensen, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Practice of Spirituality and Ministry, Drew University; and International Director, Communities of Shalom, The United Methodist Church Introduction “There is a little man in Peru, a man without any power, who lives in a barrio with poor people and who wrote a book. In this book he simply reclaimed the basic Christian truth that God became human to bring good news to the poor, new light to the blind, and liberty to the captives. Then years later this book and movement it started is considered a danger by [the USA, or Rome], the greatest power on earth. When I look at this little man, Gustavo, and think about [the President of the US, or the Pope], I see David standing before Goliath, again with no more weapon than a little stone, a stone called A Theology of Liberation (Henri Nouwen

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