Dear ALMA Reps and Friends,
This summer the seemingly ever-present rain and the floods in other parts of Britain have given us a glimpse of what Angola and Mozambique endured earlier in the year. As we pray for the restoration of homes and communities here we do likewise for our ALMA partners –may all our autumns be drier!
This mailing contains news of:
- ALMA REPS MEETING WITH BISHOP DINIS Wed 12th September
6pm London Diocesan House, 36 Causton Street, London SW1P 4AU
- OTHER EVENTS
- ALMA Sunday
- TASK GROUP AWAYDAY
- DPP partners from Angola visiting London also Mercy Air in London
- USPG Prayer Diary Mozambique week
- VISITS AND VISIT REPORTS
- ANGOLA: WATER SUPPLY IN LUANDA
1. ALMA Meeting with Bishop Dinis @ 6pm 12 Sept Diocesan House ***ALMA friends welcome***
PLEASE do make every effort to attend this meeting – it is very special to have Bishop Dinis of Lebombo at one of our regular ALMA meetings. Long-standing reps and friends know what an inspirational speaker Bishop Dinis is and newer reps have a treat in store. Many of you will know of his leadership in the ‘preparation for peace’ programme at the end of the Mozambican civil war, which let to the transformational ‘swords into ploughshares’ initiative. Others will perhaps be aware of his key role in campaigning for debt cancellation and for his championing of malaria education and prevention in Roll Back Malaria. Do see the ALMA website for an even fuller picture!
PLEASE LET ME KNOW (by email if possible) THAT YOU ARE COMING TO THIS MEETING AND IF YOU ARE BRINGING ANY ONE FROM YOUR CHURCH WITH YOU.
We are having the meeting in the large room at Diocesan House and will have all the chairs set out more formally than usual so we can fit as many people as possible in.
Reserve your places now!
Refreshments will be in room A. It would be nice to make this a special meeting so offers of cake or nibbles to go alongside the sandwiches ALMA provides would be greatly appreciated as would offers of help in setting up and serving refreshments.
If people from your church have visited Lebombo please do invite them to this meeting. It would be so good to gather together all those who have been to Lebombo over the years.
2. Other Events:
- ALMA SUNDAY was well celebrated by, among others, St Martin’s Ruislip, St James Hampton Hill, St Pancras (who had the pleasure of seeing its travellers to Niassa return in time for ALMA Sunday) and St Mary Stoke Newington who were thrilled to treble the normal numbers at their midweek Mass for ALMA –thank you to those who travelled to join them!
- ALMA TASKGROUP AWAYDAY 8th September will be an opportunity for the Task Group and the new ALMA Chaplains to look back at the last year and make plans for the next few. Stephen Lyon, Partnership Secretary for Partners in World Mission will be facilitating our day at St Mary’s Convent, Edgware. If there are burning issues you want us to consider please do get in touch.
- Tues 18 Sept Disability and Development Partners (formerly Jaipur Limb Centre) are hosting a visit to London from one of the leaders of their Angolan partner - the national disabled people's organisation, LARDEF from 13-20 September. The Mayor of London’s Disability office is hosting this meeting which will be of particular interest to those of you twinned with Angola.
Carla Luis, National Co-ordinator of Liga de Apoio a (Re)Integracao dos Deficientes ( the league to integrate and support the disabled - LARDEF) - a national organisation of disabled people in Angola - is visiting London as the guest of UK charity Disability and Development Partners (DDP) - LARDEF’s programme partner.
A young wheelchair-using double amputee, Carla is a terrific role model for disabled people. From running LARDEF's economic support programmes in Luanda, Benguela, Moxico and most recently Huambo province, Carla is now leading a new national Women, Youth and Children's programme.
The Disability Office of the Mayor of London is kindly hosting an evening meeting at 6.30 pm (timing t.b.c.) on Tuesday 18th September 2007 at which Carla will talk about Advocacy and Inclusion in Angola. All are warmly invited.
- Mercy Air: Paul and Cathy Middleton of Mercy Air, who did such valuable work in Mozambique during the floods, will be in London in the next month. They report ‘Mercy Air is still working along the Zambezi and although the flooding is gone, there is still a problem with food in the rural areas’. For further information see www.mercyair.org
- 7-13 October USPG Prayer Diary will focus on Mozambique. We will try to have these intercessions on our website well before 7/10 so we can join with USPG supporters around the world praying for Mozambique. The latest issue of the USPG newsletter – now called Transmission – has an interesting article by Bishop Mark on Mass Conversion, which we will again try to put on the ALMA website.
3. Visits and Visit Reports
- Revd Joe Hawes, Roseangela Ashdown, David Stevens and Louise Adams from All Saints Fulham are currently in Angola visiting their twin parish St Augustine’s Viana. They have taken a new version of the ALMA poster with appropriate amendments for St Augustine’s, which reads ‘This church is linked with the church of All Saints Fulham in London Diocese’. If you would like a version of the poster for your link church please contact me – I can send it to you by email.
- Dinos Kousoulou is going to Niassa in September and has very kindly agreed to take any letters to twin parishes with him. He will be visiting Diocesan Headquarters in Lichinga and all the four archdeaconries and would carry your letters as near to their ultimate destinations as possible. If you would like to take advantage of this opportunity to send a letter it is just still possible. Letters and emails need to be with Dinos by Monday 3rd September at the latest. Please email me for his contact details.
- Nacala school is still benefiting from Richard Ennals’ (All Saints Hampton) visit in May – see his report. Thanks to Richard’s other work and connections through UNESCO with Don Mc Burney of Largymore School in Northern Ireland, who is on the UK UNESCO education committee and the organiser of the Ray of Hope Charity, Nacala school has received several batches of educational and other materials. A huge thank you to Don and to the children he teaches who have made email contact with children in Nacala school.
- Two students from St Paul’s Ealing, Stephanie Hawkins and Rebecca Burrell along with two other students Jo and Jen, have just spent three weeks working with Gloria, the local Equipas da Vida supervisor in Cobwe, on the lakeshore in Niassa. They have taught English, worked with orphans, built latrines, tended the Equipas garden and learnt how puny they are!
PLEASE keep the visit reports and the link profiles for the website coming in. They are so helpful in providing a picture of our links and of how relationships across the distances blossom and grow. They also encourage and embolden us.
4. Angola: Water Supply in Luanda
An article in IRINNEWS is too long to copy in this email but is well worth reading. It notes that more than half of Luanda’s population lives in informal settlements perched on mounds of waste with no access to piped water. These people are dependent on private water tankers for their water with the result that ‘A family of four in the musseques, earning less than $50 a month, could spend as much as $60 on their monthly water needs. According to Cain (Allan Cain, director of the Development Workshop (DW), an anti-poverty non-governmental organisation) “this often does not include the basic minimum required per person per day - you might find families managing with a 20-litre jerry-can per day”’.
PLEASE do let me know numbers for 12th Sept and if you can help with catering.
