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Meeting Report - 25 November 2006

Sadly this meeting with two excellent speakers was not as well attended as usual. However, we gained a lot of practical insight and wisdom on starting and maintaining long distance relationships in very different contexts and had the opportunity to share ideas, impressions and dreams with each other.

The Sudbury Mural
The Sudbury Mural at Messumba

Rev. Felicity Scroggie from St Andrew’s Sudbury spoke about how a relatively poor church could engage in ALMA and be transformed in its local ministry by doing so. It is important that relationships between partners are about more than finance – the mural sent from the Sudbury community to Messumba is testimony to this. We need to share our problems, concerns and difficulties too – remembering to show more than ‘tourist’ London when we are hosts. We also need to be aware and prepare for the hardship that can be encountered on visits.

Beryl Warren from St Mary’s Stoke Newington echoed this and spoke of how all the setbacks they encountered led them to a closer dependence on God. Her full report is elsewhere on this web site along with Rev. Graeme Watson’s – here is a short section:

‘In so many ways God taught me how to look deeper and beyond outward appearances. He showed me honest compassion through the graceful generosity of spirit that was shown to us from every Mozambique we met. A people who seemed to know how to be very much in the present. Their aspirations are the same as people anywhere in the world - food, good healthcare, clean water and an education for their children. The difference is nothing is taken for granted and having a Church building is of paramount importance to them.

There is nothing like seeing things first hand and the four of us came back enriched and empowered. If asked “What do the people need?” I would answer A CHANCE.’