WorldHope Corps

Earlier this month, I was in San Francisco celebrating my past and future ministries. On October 6, 2006, Golden Gate Community, Inc. turned 25 years old. On that same day, I signed official papers registering WorldHope Corps as a new ministry. The next day, October 7, my youngest daughter turned 14, signaling another change in our family. The following week was the 25th Anniversary alumni celebration of my graduation from Yale Divinity School where I first felt called to international relief and development work during my first trip to Haiti to deliver emergency food provisions during a famine. As I reflected on the timing of these seemingly unrelated events--the end of one era and the beginning of a new one--in my favorite city in all the world--if felt like syncrinicity--acausal effects somehow being connected. It felt like a special moment of kairos when past, present and future time all came together as one. Past ministry and future mission meeting in the present moment. Let m...

Mission Update: Through the generocity of Hopegivers International, we were able to sponsor the first HopeHome in Mzuzu, Malawi last week. A HopeHome is simply an extended family unit that receives nutritional food aid medical assitance, and educational scholarships from external sources. Instead of adopting AIDS orphans from outside the country, our approach is to strenghten extended family units within the country of origin. It's hard enough for a family of five in Malawi to support themselves where extreme poverty prevails. It is almost impossible for nuclear families that have informally adopted another 10 or so orphans to care for their basic needs. But many families in Malawi are willing to do this, and we want to help them do it. That's why we found a way to sponsor the first HopeHome in Mzuzu. Since 2003, CitiHope has provided emergency food and life-saving medicine to 1000 orphans in four day-care centers (feeding outposts) in Malawi on a daily bases. In additi...

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 o...

News Archieve: PACCT Program Launched in Malawi Pastoral And Congregational Care Training (PACCT) began in September in Malawi as part of the on-going relief and development efforts of CitiHope International—one of the ministries supported by Y-Malawi at Central Presbyterian Church. Forty pastors and community leaders participated in the three-day PACCT Workshop, including: 20 Presbyterian ministers selected by the Livingstonia Synod of the Church of Central Africa; four ministers from United Methodist, Assembly of God and Adventist churches; and representatives of the Malawi Ministry of Heath, Ministry of Education, National AIDS Commission, World Vision, and the Livingstonia Synod AIDS Program (LISAP). The workshop was focused on curriculum development for what is projected to be a series of training events for pastors, spouses and lay leaders around the religious issues of HIV/AIDS in the congregations: transmission modes, prevention measures, stigma and discrimination, voluntary co...

On my recent trip to Malawi, I visited FOMCO--one of the orphan day-care centers we support. On the road leading to the center I saw a sign advertizing wood coffins. Children’s’ Coffins! A lot of children die in Malawi due to famine and disease. Coffin-making has become the #1 industry in Malawi, I was told. “You make coffins for the children you can’t save, so that you can save the ones you can,” my colleague Paul Moore Jr. observed. FOMCO means Friends of Mzuzu Community Orphans—a community-based organization run by members of the community who volunteer their time and services. Established in June, 2000, the Center feeds 200-300 orphans and abandoned children their one and only meal, which is served outside to the orphans as they sit quietly on the red African dirt with their plastic bowels in hand. Church volunteers also come daily to the FOMCO Center to help feed, clothe and care for the kids. When visitors visit, the kids love it because they get to play with donated soccer ba...