Photo courtesy of Bishop Weaver.
Key points:
- The Peter D. Weaver Congo Partnership was born out of the Hope for the Children of Africa initiative and the realization of the desperate need in many parts of Congo.
- The heart of the Congo Partnership is knowing that, no matter what, “Yesu Azali Awa” (“Jesus Is Here”).
We desire to follow the mandate of our Lord and to act in solidarity with our new brothers and sisters, “to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.”
The above words are at the center of the June 2003 Peninsula-Delaware Annual Conference resolution establishing the Congo Partnership as a “new long-term, ongoing partnership with the people of the Congo.”
The partnership had been launched in 2001, and the Peninsula-Delaware resolution arose out of the July 2002 experience of a conference mission team to the Congo as a part of The United Methodist Church’s Hope for the Children of Africa emphasis. Jonathan Baker, who would become a strong leader of this work, encouraged the conference to prepare to send a medical team to the Congo in August 2004.
As a member of the 2002 team, I vividly recall the war tensions between the Congo and Rwanda, the hundreds of orphans malnourished along the roads, and the desperate need for food, water and shelter in so many places. Yet, in the early morning, we heard drumming, dancing and children singing, “Yesu Azali Awa” (“Jesus Is Here”) in the Bantu Lingala language.
I heard it sung again in the wilderness, beside a crude medical clinic that our mission had built. It had less medicine than my medicine cabinet at home. And yet, a little boy was being born in the heat and dust, and everyone was singing and dancing “Jesus Is Here.” A team member contracted malaria, but we sang “Jesus Is Here.” A village elder died, but we affirmed in song “Jesus Is Here.”
For me, and so many in the Congo, the heart of our partnership is helping each other to know that no matter what, “Jesus Is Here,” and so are we, in his name. Praise God that the Congo Partnership continues!
News contact: Julie Dwyer at [email protected]. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digest.
