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It’s hard to think of a better place than Kenya for the Africa People in Mission conference – hosted jointly by CMS Africa and CMS. Kenya is undergoing substantial socio-political reforms. In the words of CMS Africa: “It’s an exciting time to be around.”

This was my first trip to Africa, so these are my first impressions of a new country. When you’re in Nairobi you feel its vibrancy and edginess – people are talking about change and reform, you see new buildings going up, new roads being built and hear conversations about self-sufficiency.

But you are also struck by social incongruities like informal settlements cheek by jowl with swish, high-end housing developments, occupied by rich Africans and ex-pats.

Against this backdrop more than 120 mission workers and church leaders from Kenya, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda,

Burundi, DR Congo and Tanzania gathered for a week of fellowship, knowledge sharing, worship and a chance to hear the leaders of CMS Africa and CMS talk about shared strategies and their vision for the future.

As CMS executive leader Philip Mounstephen said afterwards: “We were a wonderfully mixed bunch! CMS mission partners, mission associates and Timothy mission partners mixed with CMS Africa’s champions and representatives and other guests from across the continent.”

There was a packed schedule throughout the five-day event, which included worship, Bible study and sharing in short workshops. The evenings were punctuated with short, punchy and thought-provoking presentations from people in mission.

From those with emerging

missions, to other more established missionaries, there was a strong feeling of “solidarity in mission” in God’s eyes. There was honest and open sharing of stories, struggles, hopes and fears.

A CMS Africa champion, with an emerging mission in Nairobi, commented: “It [the conference] really opened my eyes to see that my work, as little as it may look in my own eyes, has a great impact for the purpose of extending God’s kingdom.”

During his keynote address, Philip referred to CMS’s strategy of establishing an Interchange network of autonomous, mutually supportive expressions of CMS around the world – including the formation of CMS Africa in 2009.

“We could have carried on in

Extending God’s kingdom in Kenya – and beyondFebruary 2014 – CMS and CMS Africa People in Mission conference report by Sarah Holmes, Africa News editor

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the old paradigm, of sending people from global north to global south – in which case this gathering would have been overwhelmingly white. Or we could have turned our backs on Africa, and moved out to focus on our own backyard in Europe – in which case the gathering in Nairobi would have been overwhelmingly black.

“But instead we have chosen a path that is more complicated, certainly – but one which is surely better. In its essence it expresses the wonderful truth that at its best mission is always both very local, and focused – and yet has global, and indeed eternal, implications.”

Philip added: “As I looked at us all I thought how much this gathering reflected CMS’s desire to work in a genuinely collaborative way in global mission, giving tangible expression to our long-held belief that mission should be ‘from everywhere to everywhere’.”

The conference: outcomes and way forwardSummary by Steve Burgess, CMS regional manager for Africa

Outcomes

There was a real sense of coming together, with 50 CMS people in mission and 50 CMS Africa partners.

One participant said that for her it was, “a time of discovering other members of the CMS community, sharing experiences and praying together and clarifying the strategies and relationships between CMS and CMS Africa”.

Timothy mission partners, some of whom are also CMS Africa champions, said, “Now I feel part of the CMS family, I understand better who we are.”

This is what we hoped to achieve: fellowship, sharing, valuing each other and looking for opportunities to network, as well as learning from each other and wanting to connect up in country groups. All this was achieved at the conference.

Way forward

How then did participants see a way forward? Here are some responses from a joint session with all present:

• Continued collaboration and synergy with others and learning from each other, sharing experiences and exchange visits

• Intentional facilitation of the sharing of resources and capacity development: the objectives of both CMS and CMS Africa have much to complement each other

• Start a story bank of impact stories to encourage others

• Share widely the CMS Africa training tools

• Holding networking meetings within a country to localise the fellowship and relationships

Yatta field trip

Getting to know each other

A personal reflection from the event

Worship by Manasseh Tuyizere

Admiring the crops

The way forward is clear, in the sense that CMS and CMS Africa need to encourage closer networking at the grassroots level. This can be facilitated partly by CMS and CMS Africa as organisations, but also organically between those who participated.

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Mission partner Ruth Radley (South Sudan):

I loved being with some of my wider CMS family and always get

so envisioned and excited at hearing all that the Lord is doing worldwide. We particularly shared and got excited about Africa, but also were mindful of God’s mission in Asia, Europe and Latin America, too. We were a good blend of African brothers and sisters from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, DR Congo, Burundi and South Sudan, as well as westerners working in those countries.

It was wonderful to have such support and encouragement from others involved in mission in cultures different to their own and all that comes with that – both blessings and challenges. At this time in South Sudan, I particularly valued this support and was encouraged by others who have lived through difficult and traumatic times, but who have seen such healing and transformation in their nations – bringing me hope for the beautiful country of South Sudan.

I was privileged to sit with Bishop Emmanuel from Rwanda during a meal. He shared that there have been many families identified as having been totally wiped out during the 1994 genocide. He said there were also some families with only single survivors. Of course, this made me think about what has been happening in some areas of South Sudan. My heart was grieving.

However, during an evening presentation, the bishop shared more about his work. Stories of healing, forgiveness and restoration flowed, not through an easy process, as the process was at times so painful, but in the end it made something beautiful.

As I listened, I found hope growing in me for my adopted nation. During the ceasefire, fighting has continued, and during our week together in Nairobi serious fighting broke out in the town of Malakal again. I had been feeling somewhat despondent, but I also know that many of my South Sudanese friends have the same godly heart as my new bishop friend, and I know that Jesus has not left South Sudan or her

people; rather he is there, sitting in the ashes, weeping with and for his people.

I was also reminded in a presentation from a friend living in Ethiopia how the church there has grown, thanks to the South Sudanese who sought refuge there in the last war and who established churches in the refugee camps, which have continued even as people slowly returned home. This reminded me of how the gospel was first spread in Acts 8, when the first believers faced persecution and fled to other countries, taking the good news of the gospel with them.

All in all, it was a great week...Much was shared of the gospel bringing transformation, in individual lives or communities; this is what we live for, that the world would come to know Jesus – knowing Jesus brings transformation, and lives are changed.

Mission partners Laura and Simon Walton (Tanzania):

It was an inspiring time as we heard how churches in a variety of

dioceses throughout Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, DR Congo and South Sudan have embraced the goal of bringing about transformation of minds and changing of lives through the gospel. Seed projects have been established as the church looks to address the needs of its community, starting with what it does have.

It was a challenging time, sitting in groups discussing joint issues and concerns with pastors and bishops and then sucking fish bones with them at lunch or sharing the jam pot at breakfast time. The CMS Africa team were wonderful hosts and very gifted people so it was a pleasure and a lot of fun.

Mission partners Christine and Paul Salaman (Tanzania):

It was a wonderful opportunity for fellowship, sharing and

learning from one another, as well as a chance to explore the aims and vision of CMS for the future. The boys enjoyed a wonderful children’s programme.

Africa People in M

ission Conference reflections

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Philip’s Bible study

What impression do you have of Africa? If you’re a reader of Africa News it’s likely to be positive, enlightened, and informed. However that’s not the understanding most people have in the UK. Relief agency telethons depend on short films that portray often harrowing scenes of life – and death – in Africa. Of course there is much to be concerned about: poverty, disease and corruption. But that is far from the whole story!

I love to travel to Africa. I find that I have left behind corrosive European cynicism and scepticism

– from which Christians are not immune. Instead I find myself among people who are motivated by different things, such as hope and expectation that things can and will change – and indeed that they can change them. What is the source of this positive expectation? It surely lies in the fact that to be a person of faith in Africa is not strange or unusual. Indeed it’s strange and unusual to not believe in the goodness and love of God.

Nowhere have I seen this positive, faithful, hopeful spirit given better expression than in the work that CMS and CMS

Africa are engaged in on that great continent. CMS in Britain supports some wonderful people engaged in significant transformational ministry, and CMS Africa, through their country representatives and champions and programmes such as Samaritan Strategy, are doing just what their strapline says: “Renewed Mindsets; Transformed Communities.” And these people and programmes,

planted in the rich and fruitful African soil, are bringing about significant change and progress in lives and communities, animated and enlivened by the life and love of Jesus Christ. Would that we

saw transformation in the UK and Europe.

I think there’s an irony in all this. Agencies such as CMS are often accused of perpetuating a colonial attitude that promotes dependency. The truth is, the work we do is about enabling people, by the grace of God, to walk tall. It’s the images circulated by relief agencies that deny the strengths and riches of Africa. I look forward to the day when African telethons promote the needs – spiritual and physical – of the UK, for the people of Africa have so much to give us.

Dispelling myths about AfricaEditorial by Philip Mounstephen, executive leader of CMS

In Africa people are motivated by different things – hope that things can and will change

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Davis and Maria

Right place, right timeLast year Maria Ball felt she wasn’t where God wanted her to be.

“I felt the four walls closing in and realised I wasn’t even in the right country,” she said.

So she prayed and asked her friends and family for advice. One friend in particular was a man called Philip, who was Maria’s former vicar from her church in West Streatham, South London more than 20 years ago. Maria remembered the stories of visiting missionaries from Africa and how they were restoring communities.

She got in touch with Philip and asked if he knew of any such openings.

“Well, Maria, I think you should come and speak to me,” he said. Unbeknownst to Maria, Philip (Mounstephen) was now executive leader of the Church Mission Society.

So after a visit to CMS’s Oxford office, Maria went through a formal recruitment process. Following a meeting with Africa regional manager, Stephen Burgess, Maria was put in contact with CMS Timothy mission partner Davis Manana, director of Bungokho Rural Development Centre (BRDC) in Mbale, Uganda.

A Church Army Africa project, BRDC was led by CMS mission partners Bob and Rosalind Arnold from 2003–2011. They passed the baton to Davis, who had joined BRDC in 2005 as principal of its vocational school.

BRDC is a place where God is at work and people are being helped to help themselves. Set in 14 acres of land donated by a Ugandan woman, there are several different strings to BRDC’s bow. It has a very successful nursery school with 190 children from the area. BRDC also offers training in vocational skills and business programmes to help young people of Mbale district gain worthwhile employment or make a success of self-employment. The centre also has a thriving outreach programme – working with women and youth in the surrounding area, often in mixed faith groups.

The idea of focussing on women is that “once you touch the heart of a woman you would have touched the heart of a family, and of a nation,” Davis explains. As a result of BRDC’s work local women have created income generating groups, including savings and loans groups. This has enabled women to save enough

to set up small businesses. They meet once a week and share their concerns.

At the vocational training school, there are a variety of courses including agriculture and horticulture, building and construction, masonry, community services, healthcare, tailoring and textiles and hairdressing.

BRDC also boasts a working demonstration farm teaching local people how to make the best use of their resources and grow crops that they can both live off and sell.

Maria’s background is in food and farming – her grandparents were farmers in County Mayo, Ireland and from the age of 15 she knew that this was what she wanted to do for a living. Maria studied agricultural engineering, then did a degree in agriculture and the environment and enjoyed a successful food and farming career.

When she was ready for a fresh challenge, a six month placement at BRDC as a CMS short termer was a perfect fit. Her placement is almost finished.

“It’s been a time of blessing and joy,” she explains. “I have used my communications skills across the board, I’ve helped with a youth conference, developed the new website for BRDC, worked with recruiting and inductions for new staff and gone out with staff into local communities to help people communicate their stories.”

“Agriculture gives food and prosperity,” she explains. “And for Uganda especially with the land being so fertile and people wanting to work hard, there is a real opportunity for people to grow and prosper here.”

Wies Landheer – helping women deliver safely

By CMS mission partner David Sharland, an agriculturalist in Arua, Uganda, where he helps run a demonstration farm for Madi and West Nile diocese

Meet my friend Disco. As his name suggests, he was conceived at a discotheque. He has no idea who his father is.

Disco is a watchman at Eden farm, a place seeking to show ways to God through low-impact farming.

Every shilling of Disco’s pay goes to build a house for his family, or to support his sons in their education. He and his wife have five children. He is very thin, as he doesn’t like to spend money on food.

Eden Farm is a humble plot of about five acres, which was almost barren, abandoned and thorn-strewn when we began work there. It was a place of fear, a hideout for thieves. As we cleared the vicious thorns, we found radios, bicycles, pots and pans – stolen then lost in the tangled bushes.

Now, by using methods that other local farmers can copy, Eden

has been turned around to a place of fertility and productivity. There are so many ways to reclaim soil that has been exhausted by insensitive farming methods. These include lines of the right trees across a slope to hold and enrich the soil, or nitrogen fixing plants sown at the first rains and then dug in before planting food crops and seeds that will grow to an abundant harvest. If you use mixed cropping in the place of mono-cropping, plants are able to strengthen each other.

In the time I’ve known him, Disco has changed. From a rather dour face, a huge smile emerges. From

doing the least he could get away with, he is now a keen worker.

In our small team, we chat about our faith as we dig together, and look at the Bible over a cup of tea. We often pray together and share our vision of a changed environment. As he’s seen the land become productive and families touched by God’s word, the message of God’s grace has come through, and a few weeks ago Disco opened his wounded,

troubled heart to Jesus. What a visible transformation. He is beginning to love life.

On Wednesday afternoons, we look at God’s word together – with CMS mission partner Patricia Wick’s discipleship course Following Jesus. As we looked at who God is, we learned the three most common names used for God locally: Roman Catholics know him as the great creator, some know him as Jehovah, the powerful leader of his people, and some as Mungu, the all-present One. Father, Dad, Carer don’t seem easy to grasp. As we explored God’s fatherhood together, I was moved by the absence of a caring, protective, loving male in most people’s experience.

Now Disco knows a Father who loves and cares for him.

The Bible can look so intimidating. I gave Disco an illustrated book of Bible stories – he loves it! Disco’s experience is leading me to try to make an accessible, illustrated Lugbara booklet of Luke’s gospel, as a way into Scripture. I’m just a farmer – so pray for me in this.

Disco finds his real father

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“From a rather dour face, a huge smile emerges”

Disco: learning to love life at Eden

Just behind the small holding another family is tending its crops – some very healthy looking maize and beyond that rows of onions, chillies, tomatoes, sweet potatoes and mango trees.

Welcome to Operation Mwolyo Out (OMO), a church outreach project of Christian Impact Mission (CIM) whose success in community transformation has spread far beyond Yatta, where it is based. During the recent Nairobi conference I visited the project along with members of the CMS Africa team.

The word mwolyo is a Kamba word that means relief. So “operation relief out” captures the ethos of the project – empowering people to attain food security and wealth creation by fending for themselves and not accepting “handouts” from relief agencies. CIM aims to transform the mentality of the communities from being recipients of

development aid to reliance on God and the exploration of their God given resources.

OMO comprises thousands of profitable farms in Makutano, Yatta district, part of the semi-arid area of Ukambani in eastern Kenya. Thanks to the vision of Bishop Titus Masika, who grew up in the area and had seen the effects of famine and drought, communities here have been transformed from poverty to prosperity. This has been achieved by an ambitious vision where villagers have dug dams (or water pans) to supplement the water needed to let crops mature when rains aren’t sufficient.

The plan was that within five years the 350,000 local people would have water and enough food without having to rely on the government or NGOs. They decided to work together to ensure that each homestead had a dam to harvest water. It was agreed that groups of about 10 to 15 people

would use the merry go round method of digging for each other. People used their local savings to buy the tools.

As the bishop’s wife, Agnes, explained: “People have been empowered to attain food security and wealth creation and can make their own comfortable livings and afford to give their children an education.”

Before this transformation, families (usually mothers and children) were walking as far as 20 kilometres a day to collect 20 litres of water for the family – taking four to six hours each time. Most of the men had left the community to look for work in Nairobi.

It was decided dams were the best option as they could be developed using traditional knowledge – and the villagers were encouraged to site their dams in places that showed no tree growth. Lack of tree growth showed that the solid rock beneath was less than four feet below thus ideal for holding water, Agnes explained. The dams were also dug deep to lessen evaporation and the vegetation around the water pan was not interfered with to prevent

Operation Mwolyo (relief) Out by Sarah Holmes

Sorting onions for market

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A young child is sleeping peacefully in the afternoon shade of an African fig tree, some chickens are clucking around the yard, a mother is chasing after a toddler on the loose, a tabby cat is linking tails with its brother and a tuk tuk full of trays of big, fat mangoes is parked outside a small house on stilts.

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soil erosion. Most of the villagers formed into small operational groups and were willing to work together in the water harvesting programme; some adopted the growing of high value crops, including French beans for export at the request of a Nairobi company, watermelons and sweet potatoes.

The OMO programme was officially launched in March 2009 and started with a small village, but by the end of the year more than 1,000 dams had been dug over a radius of some 30 kilometres. Fast forward to today: at least 3,000 dams constructed and the project has turned into a movement that is fast spreading to the rest of Yatta and beyond. Many of Yatta’s farmers are now considered “rich”.

“This is even more exciting since the results of the efforts have been achieved without any donor funding. Our desire is to see this programme replicated all over Kenya, East Africa and indeed Africa,” said Bishop Titus.

While we were visiting Yatta, CMS Africa’s international director Dennis Tongoi had gone to Arusha in Tanzania with Bishop Titus to a World Vision consultation that brought together for the first time a number of ministries that have witnessed communities transformed through their outreach projects. CMS Africa representative Paul Kibona mentored by Dennis Tongoi, together with the Samaritan Strategy Tanzania team of trainers, have been training more than 3,000 World Vision area development programme leaders. These leaders then visit Yatta to experience for themselves how poor communities can be transformed.

CASE STUDIESMargaret Kameti (right) is chairwoman of OMO’s Ngangani zone and treausurer of its horticultural group. Since she was born she has always known mwolyo (relief). “We queued for mwolyo ever since I was a girl. Then I got married and was still queuing for mwolyo to feed my family and thought this was really wrong.”

Today Margaret and her husband plant a variety of food on their three acre farm – all supported by a big dam that holds water even during long spells of drought.

“We grow chillies, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, French beans and grafted mangoes, most of it going to the market. We sell to an export company and also to brokers who now frequent this area. It is like a dream come true and we thank Almighty God for everything,” she says.

Margaret and her husband make about Ksh90,000 (£608) annually in sales from her produce – “that is a lot of money here” she says. “We have managed to take our four children through school thanks to this dam and farm.”

Another local farmer, Peter Musyoka, owns 4.5 acres and has planted 309 mango trees, 4,000 tomato plants, 1,500 paw paw trees and four kilos of cabbage seed, from which he’s expecting a harvest of 10,000 kilos.

Lydia Mwelu is another farmer we met – whose life has been transformed since Operation Mwolyo Out. “Before the dam and farm, we could not afford to pay for schooling. Now we can pay for three children at secondary school and one at college, and we have been able to buy another farm,” Lydia told us.

Dates for your diary 2014

Africa Conference – hosted by CMS14-16 November 2014, Hayes Conference Centre, Swanwick, Derbyshire. Contact: Nick and Val Fane, 1 Woodhsears, Malvern, Worcs WR14 3EA, Tel: 01684 566601, Email: ac2014@fanes.co.uk

Africa Day Conference in LiverpoolSaturday 27 September 2014, St Paul’s church, Fazakerly, Formosa Drive, Liverpool L10 7LB. Main Speaker: Rev William Challis. Chair, Africa Forum for CMS. Time: 12 noon for lunch, 1pm to 4pm for conference. Contact: Jean Mitchell, 0151 9283491; email: mitchjeph@talktalk.net