The Call to Teach
Our role as missionaries must include teaching. Since
our beginnings in Africa in 1868, mission schools have
been founded to enable individuals and communities to
reach their highest potential with pride and dignity.
Successes:
Tens of thousands of African leaders in all walks of
life are graduates of schools established by the Missionaries
of Africa. In most of the countries where they have
worked they established and managed the formal educational
system of universities and colleges, secondary and vocational
schools for boys and girls, as well as innumerable grade
schools and kintergardens.
But even outside the formal educational system they
have created a massive non-formal educational process
for men and women, girls and boys. They have encouraged
literacy, established radio stations and media centers,
newspapers and magazines, taught agriculture and animal
husbandry, established nutritional programs, have spearheaded
AIDS education programs.
School in Mathare Slums
It's hard for children to think about the future when
most of the people they know are dying from diseases
such as AIDS and malaria. But that's the challenge of
missionary work - bringing light to those surrounded
by darkness . . . giving hope to those suffering in
the depths of despair.
Kenya is a place of incredible natural beauty - but
in the midst of this, millions of people are dying from
disease. School aged children saw their lives and their
future crumbling before them. They wondered aloud if
there was any reason to think about life beyond today.
But when the Missionaries of Africa funded the Mathare
School in rural Kenya in East Africa, hope was born
for children who had struggled to see beyond the moment.
As their school was rebuilt, they began to believe again
- to believe that someone cares - that they are not
alone. They have begun to see that the world is theirs
. . . and that life is worth living!
The Water Tanks
When the Missionaries of Africa were founded in 1868,
one of the key tenets was that its members are to help
the African people build a better future. Sometimes
"building a better future" can be a philosophy - other
times it can be building with bricks and mortar, metal
and wood.
With a grant of $5,000 to
the Rural Livestock Improvement Program, our missionaries
working in Uganda were able to help some of East Africa's
most impoverished people build the water tanks they
desperately needed for care of their livestock and for
crop irrigation. Sounds simple. But to the men, women
and children of the Arua region, this simple act has
given them food and water for years to come. "When I
was hungry, you gave me to eat. When I was thirsty,
you gave me to drink."
Related Projects
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