| A Voice from Nicaragua: Ecumenism Strengthens Social Engagement |
|
|
| Written by Helle Rosenkvist | ||||
| Thursday, 02 March 2006 | ||||
 Sao Leopoldo, Brazil - From 12-25 February 150 persons attended an international conference in Brazil about ecumenism and mission in Latin America. Helle Rosenkvist from Habitus was present and has collected personal testimonies from the participants. Rafael Urbina Fernández who is a Pentecostal priest tells about his church in Nicaragua.- I belong to a Pentecostal church called the Church of God. In my church there are 20 families with 80 people. Often when people hear that it is a Pentecostal church they think that we are only praying and singing, but this isn’t so. When we meet in the church to worship people feel the love of God and they become motivated for serving others. - Near to my place there is a rubbish dump and many people are living there. They don’t have real houses, but only a kind of house shelter build of plastic. In this place people live by selling the rubbish for recycling. They only earn very little and only enough for food since for instance 100 pounds of plastic only pays them 10 córdobas which is equivalent to app. 0,6 USD. My church is working with these people especially with the children. There is an attempt to try to give the children the possibility not to need to work so that they instead can attend an elementary school. - However it is not enough that the church works alone. In order to run different kinds of social projects there is a need of ecumenical cooperation. Some of the present projects consist in providing food and clothes for children and to send teachers to various courses in order that they can themselves learn the subjects which they are later teaching in the schools. Another project is to try to reach the youth to prevent that they will get a criminal attitude, and to visit families in order to prevent domestic violence. - All this can not be offered by our church alone, and we are therefore in cooperation with other churches and organizations. For instance we succeeded in an attempt to make the Baptist University help us by providing professional people to the meeting with the families. In the USA a Presbyterian church in California is supporting our project financially so that we can buy materials for dentist treatment of children. There is now a project where children in the age of 6-12 are receiving dentist care. When it began 50 children were part of it and now the amount has increased to 280. For the time being we have among us in the church a missionary from Korea who takes part in our projects. For instance he is helping when we twice per month are distributing food to the children. - From this perspective it is essential that the cooperation among the churches is extended. Some churches have better social conditions and can help financially, others might be able to send people to work in the projects or they can perhaps contribute with concrete things to for instance buildings. Unfortunately social responsibility is not common among the Pentecostal churches in my area. People there rather only meet for meetings, but our church is now trying to involve other Pentecostal churches in Nicaragua in a more contextual and social work, and I am personal optimistic about getting a cooperation with some of the churches in the northern part of the country. Did you enjoy this article? Please bookmark it onto:             
Only registered users can write comments. |
||||
| Last Updated ( Thursday, 02 March 2006 ) | ||||
Be first to comment this article
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
|
|
Login
Latest Commented
Members Online
No Users OnlineNewsletter
Copyright © 2004 - 2009 Habitus Network.
Aarhus - Bucharest.
Contact us
