ELCA NEWS SERVICE

March 1, 2005

ELCA Presiding Bishop Completes West African Church Visit
05-032-JB

     CHICAGO (ELCA) -- Saying he is "grateful, hopeful and amazed at the
resiliency" of the people of West Africa, the Rev. Mark S. Hanson returned
to the United States following a Feb. 10-17 visit to Lutheran ministry
sites in Nigeria, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
     Hanson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America (ELCA), made the visit in his role as president of the Lutheran
World Federation (LWF). The LWF is a global communion of 138 Lutheran
churches in 77 countries, with 66 million members. It is based in Geneva,
Switzerland.
     Hanson was accompanied by his wife Ione, the Rev. Ishmael Noko, LWF
general secretary, and his wife Gladys.  The Rev. Musa Filibus, LWF Area
Secretary for Africa, was also on the trip.
     Hanson made the trip "to stand with people who experienced horrific
violence, civil war and strife in their countries," he said in an
interview with the ELCA News Service.  In addition, Hanson said he went to
listen and learn.  The people of West Africa experience poverty, disease
and violence, and many people in developed countries are not aware of
these great challenges, he said.
     In Nigeria the LWF delegation participated in a conference,
"Holistic Mission for the Healing of Africa," visited Lutheran
congregations, met with heads of churches and worshiped.  In Liberia the
delegation visited the reconstructed Phebe Hospital, Suakoko, visited
camps where people displaced by civil war live, met with church and local
government leaders and worshiped.  The final stop, Sierra Leone, included
visits with church leaders, Sierra Leone's president, Alhaji Dr. Ahmed
Tejan Kabbah, a settlement for amputees injured during war and worship.
     Hanson said he was there to "listen to the stories of what God is
doing, [and] to learn about the challenges the churches and people of
these countries face as they shape their future."  He also said he wanted
to know how the LWF and ELCA can deepen mutual relationships with the
people of West Africa.
     "Every place I turned there was evidence of partnerships," Hanson
said.  After a three-hour drive to Phebe Hospital, damaged more than once
by civil war, Hanson said he was greeted by U.S. volunteers working with
local people.
     "I got out of the car and was greeted by a woman from Livingston,
Montana, who was there for her fourth time in four years to [help]
reconstruct the hospital," Hanson said.  "I met a laborer from
Pennsylvania who works in construction who had given a month to be there
to put a new roof on the [hospital] building.  Those are very practical
relationships."
     In each of the countries he visited, ELCA synods share companion
relationships with the local Lutheran churches.  The ELCA Upper
Susquehanna Synod is a companion synod with the Lutheran Church in
Liberia, the Minneapolis Area Synod is a companion with the Lutheran
Church of Christ in Nigeria, and the Northern Texas-Northern Louisiana
Synod is a partner with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Sierra Leone.
Together the three African churches have 1.24 million members, according
to LWF.
     "In each of those contexts, the leaders and members of those churches
talked immediately about how significant the companion synod relationship
was to 'being church together' but also to providing an 'accompaniment
relationship' where each gives and receives," he said.
     The delegation visited refugee camps in Sierra Leone and Liberia,
each operated under the direction of the LWF Department for World Service.
Some 20,000 people live in the camps, created as a safe haven for refugees
fleeing civil war.  The camp in Sierra Leone, at which a number of
amputees live, is a joint project of LWF World Service and Norwegian
government, Hanson said.

A Call for Refugees to Return Home
     During the visit, Hanson and Noko expressed some serious concerns
about Liberian refugees and their ability to return to their homes.  There
are two types of refugees: those who are "internally displaced persons"
living in LWF-sponsored camps, and those who fled the country.
     "We met externally displaced persons -- Liberian refugees -- living
in a refugee camp in Sierra Leone," Hanson said.  "They want to return to
their villages.  They don't want a permanent life in temporary refugee
camps of 20,000 to 30,000 people."
     "But as of now, the United Nations (U.N.) is only offering (U.S.) $5
per household to relocate back to their home villages, which largely don't
exist because they were destroyed in the fighting.  That's an unrealistic
amount of dollars," Hanson said.
     In a meeting with Jacques Klein, the U.N. administrator overseeing
reconstruction in Liberia, Hanson said he asked why so little money is
available for refugees wanting to return home.  Some governments that
pledged reconstruction money through the U.N. for Liberia haven't
fulfilled their commitments, Klein told him.
     "The commitments are there, but the dollars haven't followed them,"
Hanson said.  "I left with the resolve that I will help to challenge those
countries to honor their commitments."
     Another concern that West Africans voiced during the LWF leaders'
visit was
whether or not people throughout the world will remember the needs in West
Africa in light of the tsunami tragedy in South Asia.
     "I think that was a legitimate question," Hanson said.  "In no way do
I diminish the horrific suffering that people have experienced in the wake
of the tsunami.  I think there are enough resources in this world that we
can sustain commitment in one part of the world [for] the process of
reconstruction after a civil war and respond to natural disasters in
another part of the world."

Lasting Impressions
     Women in Liberia representing an organization called the Women in
Peacebuilding Network (WIPNet) greeted the LWF delegation in several
locations as they traveled throughout the country, Hanson said.
     "They met us in joyful dance, they met us in prayer, and they met
with a clear, firm resolve that as far as they were concerned the Liberian
people will never again destroy each other and never again want to bury
their children as victims of war."
     In Sierra Leone, Hanson recalled, a women's development center was
opened at the offices of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Sierra Leone.
There women are taught skills and learn how to develop small businesses so
they can help support their families and the church.
     Hanson said the people of West Africa possess a "broadly and deeply
holistic understanding of mission."  Not only do they proclaim the
crucified and risen Christ in worship, but they take care of each other by
offering health care, construct schools for their children, work to
develop their communities economically, and seek peace and human rights
for all, he said.
     "Sometimes I think in the United States we don't quite see the
interrelatedness of all of those dimensions of mission," Hanson said.
"That all belongs to the 'cloth' of mission in the world."

Message to the ELCA: We Have Much to Receive
     What will Hanson tell ELCA members about his West African experience?
     "We who have wealth also have so much to receive in these global
relationships of companionship," Hanson said.  "I said in Nigeria, Liberia
and Sierra Leone, 'please come to the United States and teach us what it
means to be an evangelizing church.'  I hope that sense of absolute
commitment to and delight in sharing the story of Jesus with others will
become infectious in the ELCA."
     "I think in the ELCA there is a longing to be a global church.  I
think we've grown in that capacity through lots of relationships:
congregation to congregation, synod to synod, and church to church,"
Hanson added.

For information contact:
John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or [log in to unmask]
http://www.elca.org/news