Reps Circular
From Sheenagh Burrell, ALMA Communications Officer
almacomms@london.anglican.org T: Tuesdays: 020 7932 1231
Dear ALMA Reps and Friends,
I do hope you had a good Christmas and that you are well settled into the new decade! It’s good to know that we will be seeing each other soon at the ALMA Reps Meeting on 27 January. This promises to be a very interesting meeting as well as a practical one, as Lent Appeal resources will be available for collection too. Please do RSVP for catering purposes and for Chaplaincy time. If any of you are free to help with doing the Lent Appeal sample mailing to parishes tomorrow afternoon please let me know.
This mailing contains:
Thursday 21 January Mailing out Lent Appeal sample materials to parishes. Many hands would make this a quick job. 2.30pm at London Diocesan House
Sunday 24 January Concert – vocal baroque - with cake at St John’s Pinner 3pm to raise funds for the building of a school in their link parish in Benguela, Angola
Wednesday 27 January ALMA REPS MEETING 5.45 light refreshments. Meeting 6-8pm at London Diocesan House, 36 Causton St, London SW1P 4AU. Tube: Pimlico. Agenda:
PLEASE MAKE EVERY EFFORT TO ATTEND THIS MEETING IF YOU POSSIBLY CAN. We have the main meeting hall and the smaller rooms booked for Chaplaincy Time. All Welcome! RSVP to Sheenagh for catering purposes.
Friday 5 February UNICEF’s 2010 Day for Change focuses on Mozambique. This fundraiser for UNICEF is oriented towards awareness raising in schools. A resource kit is available which may serve to introduce schools without links or ALMA connections to Mozambique.
Monday 8 February ALMA TASK GROUP Meeting
Angola has been in the news as the host of the African Cup of Nations and then, sadly in a less positive light after the fatal shooting of three of the Togo team in Cabinda which drew attention to ongoing threat to peace in that area. The Times had an insightful leading article on this on 11 January and so did the Scotsman.
Currently Angola is at the top of Group A and Mozambique at the bottom of group C!
We have had two pieces of news recently from Bishop André – one joyous and one a request for prayer.
On 5 December Mike Stead, formerly Deputy Head of Mission and Consul at the British Embassy in Luanda, talked about his experiences to Sandi Toksvig on Radio 4’s Excess Baggage programme. Mike is also co-author of a new Bradt travel guide to Angola. You can listen in via the BBC site - John has kindly worked out that the interview starts at 17 mins!
Although we haven’t had news from Lebombo recently, Lebombo is in the news here! The new radio 4 series ‘History of the World in 100 objects’ by Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum which started yesterday has received a lot of press coverage. Each programme takes a single object, describes it, and draws lessons from it. One of the hundred items chosen is the throne of weapons –a swords into ploughshares sculpture by Kester which is in the British Museum. ‘Our’ programme won’t be broadcast until September but it featured in several news items e.g. the Daily Mail. (See also our article on Bishop Dinis’ connection.)
We continue to pray for Niassa’s two priests who have been ill for some time: Archdeacon Damiao is back in Lichinga after two months in hospital in Maputo with heart trouble. He is doing well, if a little thin. Padre Luciano in Cuamba is not improving and he is to be transferred to oncology unit in Nampula.
Rev. David Geraldo has taken indefinite leave of absence from the diocese and Bishop Mark has nominated Rev Helen Van Koevering to be his successor as Director of Ministry. Helen who returns to full time work in the diocese will in this role be responsible for disciplining and leadership development, and will also be the ALMA link officer.
Goodwin Mnyawa, Headmaster of Nacala School, has had an interesting overseas trip to Lucknow in India to the 12th International Convention on Student Quality Circles. This was the result of the church twinning relationship between All Saints Nacala and All saints Hampton. ALMA Rep Richard Ennals from Hampton introduced Goodwin to Student Quality Circles and writes ‘My instinct is that the approach of Student Quality Circles, empowering young people, fits both the traditions and needs of Mozambique’. At the convention in Lucknow Goodwin also met Tony Breslin, chief executive of the Citizenship Foundation in the UK. We look forward to seeing how this and the new link between Nacala school and Edward Betham Primary School in Greenford develop. (A full report on the ALMA’s Children Nacala School project is part of the additional materials for the 2010 Lent Appeal).
Bishop Mark will also be doing a lot of travelling in 2010 – he plans to be on the road in his huge diocese for 180 days – with his third Diocesan Synod happening in September.
Kylie Van Koevering has just started her new school in South Africa, which is close to Matthew and Jake’s schools. It’s good to think of all the Van Koeverings on the same continent.
Beryl Warren our ALMA Intercessory Chaplain has written a very helpful article on just how she prays for ALMA – from all link priests and parishes in Angola, London and Mozambique, to all ALMA Reps and the Task Group - on a regular, systematic way and on the importance of our link being underpinned by prayer. This will be in the prayer section of the website.
Paul Peterken, who works so hard on our website, has been making some improvements you might like to know about. Here is news from Paul:
The eagle eyed may have noticed some small changes to the way the ALMA web site works. To ease any future reorganisations, we are changing the way the pop-out menus on the left hand side of each page work. The most noticeable change is to use a clearer font and different background colours. At present, some of the pages (including this one) have been changed, and we plan to complete the changes by Easter.
Unfortunately, there will be some side effects that will be seen by users of older browsers, particularly Internet Explorer 5 and 6. The lower levels of the pop-out menus do not work in these browsers. It will still be possible to navigate through the whole site, but you may have to go via intermediate pages, rather than directly. We are sorry if this is a problem to anyone.
The ALMA site now has an RSS feed on its Recent Changes page. This is a mechanism which gives you automatic notification of changes to the site. Do sign up on the icon at the bottom of the Recent Changes page to receive these. We hope this will prove useful.
Any feedback about these changes, or about any aspect of the site, is welcome. Please contact the Communications Officer.
At our Reps meeting resources on Wednesday 27 January Lent Appeal resources will be available for you to collect for your parishes. Lent Appeal Posters, Cards and Gift Aid envelopes are available. A materials request form (
35Kb) is available for download.
Bishop Richard sent an email about the Lent Appeal and the Transformative Lent Course to all clergy this week. He wrote:
The Lent Appeal ‘Transforming Lives .. ALMA’s Children’ grounds our London Lenten journeys in the experience of our partners, whose context is so different from our own. The challenge of ministering to the young is one we all share but Angola and Mozambique have almost 50% of their population under the age of 18 and a third of these young people have had no formal education. The challenge is immense but our Lent Appeal provides us with the opportunity to be agents of transformation through the donations of our Lenten sacrifices and gifts. The Lent Card gives information on the Appeal. In addition there are reports and stories of past ALMA’s Children projects, and images of whole communities transformed on the Lent Appeal website [www.london.anglican.org/lent] and the ALMA website [www.almalink.org].I would be delighted if every church in the diocese, even those with link parishes, were able to donate one Sunday’s collection in Lent to this appeal.
The additional resources for the Lent Appeal will include reports on past ALMA’s Children projects and a power point of images, which can be used in several ways. We will preview this at the Reps meeting. Our partners are also contributing stories and reflections on the transformations they have witnessed.
Finally, apologies as some of you couldn’t see the picture of the nativity scene from Lichinga in the December Circular. Our website version has it, so do look!
I look forward to seeing you on 27 January and, please if you could spare two hours from 2.30 – 4.30 tomorrow come to Diocesan House and join me in stuffing the 420 Lent envelopes to the parishes. If there were several of us we could be really quick!
With all good wishes
Sheenagh
Sheenagh Burrell ALMA Communications Officer Diocese of London
Email: almacomms@london.anglican.org
T: Tuesdays 020 7932 1231