Preparing for the journey

As we finalize the suitcase packing, our team continues to share resources that relate to the journey to South Korea.   Team member Helen just shared a link to a wonderful article entitled "The Struggle for a Korean Peace Treaty"  to give us some reading material on the long plane ride ahead.   I've provided a link for you to also learn more about the continued movement for peace in Korea.   Thanks for checking in on us from time to time.    

 

Another Journey Begins...

Another Ubuntu Journey is ready to depart.   Ten women from California, South Carolina, Indiana, Illinois, New York, and Alabama will gather in Seoul, South Korea on Sunday, September 1.   We will meet for the first time  (face-to-face) around 8:30 p.m. at the Vabein II hotel. 

Our journey will be one of peace...being that this is the 60th anniversary of the signing of the  Armistice  after the Korean conflict between North and South Korea.  We are so thankful for the pre-planning and preparations that have been taking place for the past year for our 12 days in South Korea.   Women under the leadership of Rev. Heasun Kim from the Scranton Women's Leadership Center are the hosts for our journey and have planned a variety of experiences around the theme of Peace.  I would encourage you to follow Scranton Women's Leadership Center Facebook page as well as check in on their website.   Advocacy and training lead the women's organization in many areas of the Asian world.  

 

Your prayers will be much appreciated.  We are excited to be visiting a country with a very ancient history and culture.  Once a mission focus for the missionaries of the Methodist Church, the United Methodist Church in South Korea has come full circle and now the church is a mission sender bringing others to Jesus Christ through evangelism, education, and advocacy.   What a joy it will be to explore  how they see the message of Jesus in the world from a South Korean  point of view. 

 

I hope you will come back next week and join us from a distance on our Journey with our sisters in South Korea.    

Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons(and daughters) of God.   Matthew 5:9

Celebrating Operation Classroom with Bishop Yambasu

Carolyn, Gina, and Joe enjoy the moment. 

Celebrating 25 years with Operation Classroom as a mission focus for the United Methodists of Indiana was to be expected when Joe and Carolyn Wagner stepped aside this past month.   Their influence and tireless work with the people of Sierra Leone and Liberia will forever be remembered.   Thanks Joe and Carolyn for your unselfish leadership in a place and with people love you dearly. Gina Riendeau is thrilled to stand beside as she shares their passion for mission with others. 

 

On that evening Bishop Yambasu and his wife enjoyed the festive time and took time to have a photo with the members of our Ubuntu team who were present for the Operation Classroom Celebration.   Grand evening, great people gathered, and many memories revisited.   Let's pray for the future of Operation Classroom as it moves forward for we know this is where God has called us to serve. 



Bishop Yambasu, Rita Gather-Gant, Mrs. Yambasu, Vickie Newkirk and Bonnie Albert

Kono Musu and the Kissy Women's Centers

Thanks Carol for sharing a link to the wonderful article that was prepared by our Ubuntu Host Beatrice on the Women's Centers in Sierra Leone.  Our team has such fond memories of our time visiting the Kono Musu Center.  

Here we are with all of the women and a few men who are learning life changing skills. 

     
A special day was created just for our visit by Beatrice as our schedule was for us to be there on a Saturday.  We were welcomed with great Sierra Leonian hospitality.  
When United Methodist Women pay their Mission Pledge, it is ministries such as this that we are able to support.   The article written for the United Methodist Women's resource section of their website is under International Ministries.   More than 2000 girls and women (with a few men) have moved on to being self sufficient with the training received at these centers.  
Please consider a special gift for the Women's Desk of Sierra Leone to assist with women's and children's ministries throughout the country. These funds may be sent though the channels of giving and marked as Women's Desk of Sierra Leone. 

Can we make it happen?

On Maundy Thursday I shared pieces of the Ubuntu Journey to Sierra Leone with the Valparaiso 1st United Methodist Women. In preparation for the program, I was transported back to the warmth, smiling faces, the hugs of welcome, amazing singing and praise worship, and wonderful meals throughout the journey.

Our lives get away from us once we get home.  We had families waiting for us to help finalize the holiday preparations.  And once we left, the women of Sierra Leone who had so carefully planned for our every minute had to return to their waiting jobs after being set aside because our team had arrived and our journey together was in full swing. What would we have done without Beatrice and Matilda? Their roles are so vital in the UMWO in Sierra Leone.   These women with the help of many others made our journey so valuable and memorable.    



Princess making candy
 cane ornaments

Today I would love to have another conversation with the girls at Harford School for Girls. We had the greatest girls who attended to all of our needs for our overnight at the school. Meet Princess. She's in her final year at Harford and seemed to rise to the occasion of taking care of house guests. She is seated at the dining room table of house where we stayed and we are making a Christmas decoration using some special beads and red pipe cleaners. All the girls loved the activity and they were then prepared to teach the children in the pre-school. 

 

Tatmata

Marina

As we were working much later in the evening than the generator was fueled for, Princess made her way to the generator to put more petro in so we could continue with our activities of making Christmas decorations and having a photo shoot. By the end of the evening, the girls had at least one 5x7, two 4x6 and four wallet sized photos to share. They were thrilled. That's why it was so important to fill the generator with petro. All wanted their photos before we got on a schedule for the next day.



Alison with the candy
cane earrings!

How nice it is to be thinking about our less than 24 hours on the campus of the girls school. This school has a long history of preparing young women for leadership roles. Beatrice Fofanah who now leader the Women's Desk for UMWO is a product of this school. Each of these girls are looking forward to making a difference in their area of influence in the future. Our United Methodist Women continue with their support of this school that impacts the lives of many. 
 

I'm not sure what all it would take but this school would benefit from a large generator so that power consistent enough to give these girls a computer lab. Computer access would give these girls a link to the world outside and help prepare them for university studies.  Can you imagine a school here that would not have at least a computer lab?    How can we make this happen?   If we could find $20,000 this impossible thought today would be possible very quickly. 
As you can tell the Ubuntu Journey never really ends.  Thanks UMW for giving this opportunity to not only the women here in the US but to our sisters around the world.   


A reunion of sorts...

I'm so jealous... Vickie sent me a note to say that she and team member Cindy had been in Nashville for a UMW leadership meeting where Finda and Elmira were in attendance..  Then our teammate "Tennessee Mary" joined them for a mini-reunion.   Oh.. how I wish we had all been there.  The remaining team members are sorry to have missed this gathering....we are just pleased that you were thinking of us too.    

 

Just a quick note about the journey to South Korea that I'll be leading in September.   I'm very pleased to share that in the past few weeks, women have signed up and our team of 8 or 9 are in the process of getting airline tickets. We will now work on team building and doing our home work to prepare for the journey.   I would ask all readers to lift our team in prayer during this preparation time. 

 

 

Hope for the Future

Last week in my blog entry on faith, I shared the difficulty of finding the words to describe my Sierra Leone Ubuntu Explorer Journey experience.  I have resolved it is all in God’s time; especially since last week and this week, several Sierra Leone United Methodist Church ministries are highlighted in the United Methodist Women’s 2013 Prayer Calendar as the Mission Focus.  Guess my timing is right on time!

The Mission Focus for today, February 11, is Sierra Leone United Methodist Church:  Nursery School in Moyamba, Sierra Leone.  This is appropriate because I visited this ministry but also this blog entry is about hope and the children and youth of Sierra Leone are the hope.  My heart was touched deeply by them.  Their joy and beautiful smiles was infectious.  I saw a spirit within them that assures me all will be well in Sierra Leone as they continue to rebuild their lives and communities after a civil war which forever changed their landscape, physically and emotionally.  I will never forget a little boy walking home from school that came running after our SUV giving a thumbs-up and yelling “I love you.”  In that moment, tears welled in my eyes, because Christ had to come to me through the smile, the thumbs-up and words of this little guy, “I love you.”

I’m grateful we got to travel beyond Freetown, a heavily populated city, to more remote, less inhabited villages and towns such as Bo, Kono, Moyamba and Kenema.  In Kono and Moyamba we met wonderful women, children/youth and men that were very hospitable and gracious to us.  Their extraordinary joy and faith was inspirational and an illumination of Christ.  Many had lived through their civil war and yet the love of God exuded from their being.  Their great passion to help empower others on their journey affirmed that like us, United Methodist Women (UMW) in the United States they are very concerned about and committed to the education of women, children and youth and their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as given by our Creator God.

Konomusu students practice hair-styling techniques.

 

In Kono, our first stop on bun-shaker road, we visited the Kono Musu Training Center, a ministry of the Sierra Leone United Methodist Women Organization (UMWO) and an international project supported by UMW of the U.S.  The center trains teen girls and women (all ages, tribes, abilities and faiths) to become skilled in sewing, hair styling, embroidery, soap making, weaving, tie dying, gardening and soup making. 

Almagaila shows her prototype for a school uniform.

Courses are offered for up to one year.  It was amazing to see the extraordinary lessons being taught and the use of ordinary tools (not 21^st century technology) because no electrical power is available, i.e. treadle model sewing machines and an open fire for soup cooking and tie dying.  This reminded me that simplicity of life is possible; life is sustainable without the latest and greatest technological gadget…we westerners could learn a lesson to slow down and live a simpler, just as fulfilled life.

I do not want to sugar coat the immense poverty we saw in our travels, including in Kono, a city known for its diamond mining.  My continued cry to God throughout the journey was, why is there such poverty in a place with an abundance of natural resources equated to wealth—diamonds, iron ore, etc.?  Why, oh God do the children have to suffer?  Many have sickness/diseases that are likely preventable if they had access to health care or clean water.  It was reassuring to see many pre-natal/maternal care facilities in the remote areas as well as in Freetown like the UMC Kissy Hospital.  The poverty is real and yet it was clear to me that God has not forsaken them, God’s grace is their source of strength and joy.

When we visited the Harford School for Girls in Moyamba, the young women were talented, studious and committed to obtaining the education and spiritual life provided.  We arrived on a Friday evening when they were readying themselves for evening vespers.  Of course we were invited to worship with them; a joy.  We were awakened early Saturday morning by beautiful singing.  It was the girls gathering for morning vespers before they began their weekly chores of washing clothes.  The song, “The Women Gather” by Sweet Honey in the Rock came to mind as I observed the girls gathering around the well to collect water and chat as they moved about the campus. 

We were blessed by five young women, Edna Tucker, Mary Sawyer, Fatmata Sillah, Princess Williams, Marina Seisay (l to r in photo), who assisted us by drawing our water, helping get our belongings up and down the stairs and learning to create a Christmas craft project that they would teach to the children in the Nursery School (mission focus) housed on their campus, because we knew we would not have time to share the project with the children as we hoped. 

Even though parents and family were gracious to bring the children to school Saturday so that we could interact with them, we were only able to read and sing to them after they had kept us spell-bound in retelling the Christmas story, singing and blessing us with gifts. 

Beyond the visits and interactions, general observations of how the women mentored the young, not just in age but also those with less leadership experience gave me hope.  As is common in most societies, the women get it.  They understand as followers of Jesus, they have to work for the good of all in the community…transcending boundaries of class, tribes/race, languages, religions, gender, etc. 

The mentoring was also demonstrated in the multi-layered structure of the United Methodist Women Organization—women, young adult women, youth/teens and girls.  I met a young woman, Beatrice, at an after church UMWO fellowship for us at Bishop Baughman Memorial UMC in Freetown.  Beatrice was so excited because she was now a UMWO member, having recently advanced from the young adult group.  They are working at all levels to raise up women with voice and strength to make a difference in Sierra Leone and the world.  The United Methodist Women Organization of Sierra Leone gets it and because of their commitment to education and empowerment of women and girls, Sierra Leone will continue its future with hope as God promises in Jeremiah 29:11.  Thanks be to God!

Lastly, my hope is that United Methodist Women will continue to support the mission work in Sierra Leone through our Regional Missionaries, Elmira Sellu (Project #14019Z) and Finda Quiwa (Project #3109572), the Women’s Coordinator, Beatrice Fofanah and the UMWO of the Sierra Leone UMC Conference further reinforcing the concept of Ubuntu and our vision to empower women, children and youth at home and around the world.

Thanks Sally for your contributions to the blog.   Looking forward to next week.