Bishop Dinis visits London, including the Parish of Friern Barnet

It was a great joy to have a visit from Bishop Dinis Sengulane during his very brief visit to London for the MANNA AGM. As one of his commissaries, I was asked to help arrange his programme.

Given his very short stay, we were indeed fortunate that he could visit our parish. At breakfast on Sunday morning he told me I couldn’t imagine how delighted he was. He feels very close to us because of our involvement in the accident of November 1998 when his wife Berta died and the visit to our twin parish in Beira was curtailed. The close link of our parish with Zove, the name given to the site of the accident, is very special. In 1998 there was nothing there, but our primary school of St. John’s is now linked with the school that has been built. St Mary’s church and a health centre have also been built. Bishop Dinis told us there will be great celebrations in Zove in November 2008, which will be the 10th anniversary of the accident and of the beginning of his vision of turning a place of death into a place of hope.

There is also going to be a service of celebration at St. Paul’s on 13 July 2008, to celebrate ten years since the foundation of London’s partnership with Angola and Mozambique. All three bishops plan to be there, just before the Lambeth Conference begins.

At the ALMA meeting on 12 September, Bishop Dinis gave a full picture of the current situation in his diocese. He had been at a big Mothers Union gathering at Xai Xai. He had visited many congregations recently with our twin priest Father Isaiah and between 15 and 24 August had celebrated 16 Eucharists with 350 baptisms, 700 confirmations and some weddings. He spoke about the desperate situation in Mozambique where so many children die of malaria every day. He emphasised that malaria is a disease of poor countries and so does not attract the same support as HIV/AIDS, which is shared by the rich and poor countries. He ended with two questions for us: what makes God smile and what can ALMA do to make God smile in Mozambique?

At the MANNA meeting on Saturday 15 September Bp Dinis spoke even more fully and during his visit to St. John’s he made us aware of the huge resources needed to bring Mozambique into parity with us. He said, for example, that in Maputo 17,000 people had applied to attend the technical schools for which there were 4,000 places. Only 4,000! He said there are a million out of school, increasing the number of illiterates, and that ‘We must reflect God in education.’ The Council of Churches, of which he is chairman, has set up a campaign against crime called Choose Life. He hopes this will help reduce the very sad situation. He amplified the malaria point by saying that the Ministry of Health was giving properly trained nurses to health centres, because the church had set up its own initiative in having catechists trained by the Red Cross to give what help they could. He said that a church in Connecticut had given 16,000 mosquito nets last year and 33,000 this year, but 12,000,000 were needed! There is a Roll Back Malaria campaign, and we need to make a lot of noise! 31 people die of malaria every second in sub-Saharan Africa. This is a problem for humanity. We are a global village - we must include malaria in all our agendas.

The church has continued to grow in the diocese, and the synod has decided it wants to create two new missionary dioceses. The diocese is 300km by 16,000km and smaller, more manageable units are needed. The social, political and educational issues have increased. Where there is drought the children cannot get to school as they are too hungry to walk there. Many children still have to do what he did when he was a boy, walk miles to draw water, or to care for goats.

And yet all the time, God is good! We must continue to share and express his goodness, and to obey, trusting Him to give us blessings.