WorldHope Corps

The first week of Lent seems an appropriate start of my third trip to Africa. I arrived today in Johannesburg, and will meet a mission team of ten who will arrive on Monday. Together we will seek to fulfill our relief mission in Malawi, particularly CitiHope’s PACCT program of AIDS education in the churches. I came a few days earlier than the rest of the team by invitation of the Regional Office of the Church of the Nazarene in South Africa to lead a Lenten retreat in the mountains on the theme of ‘spiritual direction’, based on the book Rebecca and I edited by Henri Nouwen. See Henri, my teacher at in seminary, has a tender heart for people living with HIV/AIDS and a commitment to AIDS ministry as well as ministry with the poor. On Ash Wednesday, one week ago today, I shared with my college class at Drew—“Religion and Social Justice: Faith-Based Approaches to Ending Poverty and AIDS”-- a remembrance of my friend, Joey. Joey was six year old when he was diagnosed with AIDS in Sa...

After learning about the flood disaster near where CitiHope has a food program, our local staff responded. Gabriel is our Operations Manager, and here is his update: Yesterday evening we had a very heavy hailstorm which has caused a number of damages. Trees along the road collapsed, roofs of houses and schools blown off and bill boards being bent while others completely collapsing on the ground. Our two telephone lines were broken. Praise God they have been fixed this afternoon. Dennis and his assistant left yesterday for Chitipa to deliver food, and the unfortunate part is that they spent a night on the way because their car got stuck in the mud. They are now out of the mud and have delivered to Chitipa. They are on their way back now to Mzuzu. I don’t know what time they are going to arrive. I went to Karonga to deliver food and found out more about the flood disasters in Karonga and how best to help the victims. The official told me that if we have food products and money for gas, t...