TRAVEL BLOG Johannesburg, Africa

Paul Moore Jr., Vice President of Citihope, Dr. Tanya Soldak, Medical Director, and I, serving as African Regional Director, left JFK today (9/8/06) at 6pm on a 17 hour flight to Johannesburg via Dakar. We will overnight at the downtown Hyatt before catching tomorrow morning's flight to Malawi (9/10/06) where we will be met by our hosts (Rev. and Mrs. Munthali), CitiHope Country Diretor (Ya-Mei Haung) and World Children's Fund representative (Doug Kendrick), one of our major funders.

In JoBurg we enjoyed a delicious seafood dinner at the Hyatt restaurant before settling in our most comfortable bed for the night. Thank God for Gold Club membership which got us a great discount in this ***** international hotel. It was to be our last great meal before two weeks of enduring the bland diet of available food in Mzuzu, Malawi--our mission destination.

Paul's mission is to monitor food security and distribution of the 75 metric tons of emergency food our staff has delivered in partnership with USAID's Food for Peace program. Dr. Tanya's mission objective is to secure a memoradum of understanding with the Minister of Health to continue our medical deliveries and systematize our pharmaceutical management programs in Malawi. My mission is to launch PACCT--our Pastoral and Congregational Care Training program to prevent the spread of AIDS.

A three-day curriculum development workshop for 40 pastors and NGO respresentatives is scheduled for next week which will result in a training resource manual for use in church-based AIDS education, behavior change interventions, and greater community protection of women and children at risk of infection.

The international sponsors of these programs are World Children's Fund, HopeGivers International, DaySpring, and Central Presbyterian Church of Summit, NJ. Together with CitiHope, we continue to large supplies of food and medicine to 36 institutions in northern Malawi.

I hope you will follow our steps for the next two weeks, pray for good success, and share this travel blog with others who may be interested in faith-based approaches to ending Poverty and AIDS in Africa.

9/10/06

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

WorldHope Corps

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