From Church Leaders
[March 2011]
ALMA Friends in London
Greetings from Lebombo.
As you launch the Lent appeal for 2011 we assure ALMA of our fervent prayer for the success of this effort to equip God’s people with deeper knowledge through Christian Formation to better serve and glorify God.
Last week end we had a very blessed pilgrimage to Gwambene, Bernard Mizeki’s birth place. People travelled from all Archdeaconries and also from Zimbabwe and Niassa to an apparently isolated and small village to have a vigil with Baptism, Confirmation, admission to M. U. ; Bernard Mizeki, Anglican Youth groups, lasting from 17.00 Saturday to 4.30 Sunday, culminating with the Solemn Eucharist at 6.00 a.m. with about 800 people present. The presence of young people and children calls for a better methodology of teaching the faith so that they will grow well equipped as God’s people. Thus ALMA’s lent appeal is pleading for a timely and urgent response to meet relevant and vital need in Lebombo.
Three days later as I celebrated at the Cathedral in Maciene, at 6.00 a.m. about 400 children crowded the Cathedral, joining about 300 adults, to be marked with Ashes on Ash Wednesday, in an attitude of exemplary devotion which I strongly believe it caused God to smile with delight. At 9.30 a.m. at Nhamavila, about 150 students from the neighbouring school to All Saints Church left classrooms to join worshipers in a similar act of devotion. Very similar stories are being reported from different parishes.
Equipping God’s people through training/Christian formation means that these young people will be enabled to be “the salt of the earth and the light of the world”. They are surrounded by noisy and apparently attractive invitations to engage in the world of crime, dishonesty and sin and our effort through ALMA’s effort can help them and the adults to be impenetrable to these ills with God’s help.
May God prosper our efforts.
Together in the Gospel
+ Dinis