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Global Mission Office

From the Global Mission OFfice

globalmission(at)presbyterian.org.nz

Greetings everyone,

Well I have just completed my first month on the job as Global Mission Secretary and what a first month it has been. I have spent most of my time trying to get my bearings, meeting new people and discovering information about places I didn't even know were places! I have also been excited to discover the amount of work already being conducted overseas by Presbyterians and the amount of energy that exists for more to be undertaken.

Parish Roundup

I haven't received many responses to Neal Whimp's call for information from Parishes about where people from their Parish are serving abroad. However I have discovered that we have Presbyterians serving in Shanghai; Thailand; Madagascar; Nepal; Chad; Japan; Burkina Faso, West Africa; India; Indonesia; Phnom Penh; Taiwan; Singapore and Zambia. No doubt many of you are sitting there saying, 'what about...... in ......?' Please send in the information! Our hope is to create an extensive database that will obviously include the 60 or more members of our Church who have been cared for through the outstanding work of the Evangelical Presbyterian Missionary Fellowship.

Mission Organisations

Besides individuals, the survey has also indicated quite clearly that Presbyterians support a whole host of children through a variety of child sponsorship programmes as well as responding generously to calls for anything from disaster relief to Christmas Appeals. And then there is the outstanding work of the APW. It was pleasing to see that our 'official' agency, Christian World Service, was high on the priority list of many Parishes and we recommend that every parish become involved with CWS in some way.

All in all, an amazing amount of work is being accomplished!!

Friends

I have also visited, been visited, received emails and had phone calls from numerous people, all highly motivated about supporting a variety of projects, many in remote 'corners' of the globe. Indeed the long standing projects like 'Friends of Jagadhri Hospital' in North India, 'Friends of Helena Goldie Hospital' in the Solomon Islands and 'Friends of Ludhiana' - a Christian Medical College in India continue to undertake sterling work in support of these vital programmes.

Navota Farm - Vanuatu

In the light of the success of these efforts mentioned above, we have decided to establish a new 'Friends' team. Many of you will be well aware of the work of the Navota Farm on Vanuatu and the associated training programmes. The farm is again an area of grave concern and the Overseas Mission and Partnership Policy Group is keen to discover new ways of supporting this long standing partner of ours in an effective way. Rev Russell Rofe who has a great passion for Navota has agreed to be the contact person of the newly formed 'Friends of Navota'. Russell's newsletter containing more details is available from the Global Mission Office and will be available at our display table at Assembly. In due course, it will be sent to all Parishes in a Global Mission mail-out. The most pressing challenge at present is the shortfall on the purchase of a new truck for the farm. Please contact Russell directly (trinity.timaru@xtra.co.nz 03 688-1834) if you would like to join the "Friends of Navota" team or make a donation towards the truck purchase.

3 months in Bali

Thought that might get your attention. Information received from Robert Paterson, now retired in Dunedin, is that Volunteer Interim Ministers (VIM) is looking for ordained ministers to serve an English speaking congregation in Bali for periods of 3 months at a time. Robert recently returned from Bali and by the sound of things, it is a very comfortable deal. Rev Tom Aitken, an American Methodist Minister, is the contact person on tlaitken@aol.com or you can ring Robert on 03 477 7950 for more details.

Youth Group Trips Abroad

There seems to be a lot of interest around about getting a group of young people to one of the islands to have a cultural - work experience and to get a taste for how the gospel can be spread through word and deed. A group from the Mahurangi Parish in Warkworth, north of Auckland, has recently returned from Fiji. Whilst their group was not made up solely of young people, they certainly had an amazing time. Give Rev Mark Farmer a call on 09 425 9271 if you would like to hear how they went about arranging the visit. I would be keen to hear from Parishes who want to investigate such an option, so that we can try and coordinate visits and possibly achieve something quite significant through successive visits to a particular region.

Climate Change

With floods in Europe, Asia and Africa, as well as the deliberations of the World Summit in Johannesburg filling the news in recent days, many of us have been thinking about the challenges we are facing in terms of changes to our climate. There are some worship resources along with other useful information available on the church website on www.presbyterian.org.nz as well as from the New Zealand Climate Change Project on www.climatechange.govt.nz. Have a look as I am sure our people will be interested to consider how Christians should respond to such challenges.

And from the 'I cannot believe they said it' files

"Traditionally, most of Australia's imports come from overseas." Former Australian cabinet minister Keppel Enderbery

"I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people." Former U.S. Vice-President Dan Quayle

"Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that but not with all those flies and death and stuff." Mariah Carey, pop singer

Yours in Global mission

Andrew