Omokoroa Community Church’s work in Malawi has changed its community’s view of the church, says the Rev Fergus Keith.
More than 50 people in Omokoroa, which has a population of 2700, now sponsor a child in Malawi, thanks to the church’s promotion of mission trips and associated fundraising, as part of a partnership with World Vision.
“It’s certainly caused a shift of attitude in our community towards our church,” Fergus says.
The church has created a relationship between Omokoroa’s primary school and a school in Malawi, and people who aren’t part of the church but have useful skills to offer have gone on mission trips.
Omokoroa’s congregation, which has about 200 members, has organised three trips to Malawi since 2006, when Fergus heard the then-chief executive of World Vision New Zealand, Helen Green, speak at a presbytery meeting about the challenges of HIV/Aids in Africa.
According to Unicef, Malawi’s population of 14.8 million has a life expectancy of 53, with Aids the leading cause of death for people over 15. About a million people are infected with HIV, including 83,000 children.
In mid 2006, Fergus went on his first trip to Malawi along with a doctor from the congregation. They spent two weeks in Mikolongwe, in southern Malawi, which has been the centre of a World Vision development programme since 1999. Fergus spent a week training about 40 ministers in church leadership and HIV/Aids awareness, while Dr Neil de Wet spent a week doing some medical training.
Before the trip, Fergus had approached Omokora Point School about developing a relationship with Nsoni School in the project area. Gifts were sent with the mission team, and the school’s student committee decided to sponsor a child on an ongoing basis.
When Fergus and Neil arrived back in New Zealand, Omokoroa Community Church held a fundraising drive that purchased 45 bicycles for the pastors in the area.
A second team went to Malawi in 2007 and included a dentist, poultry farmer, and children’s ministry worker.
For each trip, the partners in Malawi produce a list of skills that they would like training in, and Omokoroa tries to match this from their community.
“We’ve asked them, ‘would you like us just to send all the money [that the trip costs]?’ They say that they want us to send money - but also that they do want us to keep coming and that they value the relationship.”
To minimise the burden on their hosts, the teams don’t stay in the village but instead use a hotel in the city, and pay for their own food.
A third team went in 2008, including a nurse, the principal of Omokoroa Point School, an agricultural trainer and a business coach, while Fergus took the pastors through a marriage course. He says it’s “very humbling” when the pastors tell him, “we’d like you to come back because you’re the only person who trains us”.
Omokoroa didn’t make the trip in 2009 because of the New Zealand economic downturn. There was no trip in 2010 because of the Football World Cup, which dramatically increased the costs of travel to Africa during the window of time that a mission trip is workable.
But a team will go in 2011 and another in 2013, before Omokoroa reevaluates its involvement in line with World Vision’s 15-year time limit on development projects.
The church has also begun to invest in an ongoing infrastructure project that will help the area’s farmers get better returns on
their milk.
World Vision started a dairy farming project that has grown to 400 cows, each providing milk that families can drink and sell, as well as fertiliser.
But each farmer had to undertake a two-hour return trip to deliver their milk to a collection point, twice a day. Power at the collection point was not reliable, and if the milk was not kept cool, the farmer would receive no pay out.
So the farmers formed a collective and purchased some land at a more central location.
Omokoroa invited members of its congregation to set up an automatic payment to World Vision to pay for the building and establishment of the collection point, including a refrigerated tank, generator, lab and class room. Cutting out the middle man means the farmers get double the price for their milk.
Mark Pierson, World Vision’s Christian commitments manager, says the aid organisation has a handful of similar, tailor-made partnerships with churches around the country, although Omokoroa’s level of community involvement makes it stand out.
While churches might not always associate World Vision with Christianity, Mark says he’s working to challenge that perception.
“We are a Christian aid and development agency. But on the ground in an overseas country, we’re there to do whatever needs to be done; not to proselytise or evangelise.”
By Amanda Wells