It's here!! Just in time for the Holidays :)
Reach out to me at mhession6040@gmail.com if you'd like to purchase one! Include your name, email, quantity desired, and address if you'd like it shipped.
Sunday, December 9, 2018
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
A Picture of the Church on this Trip
Early on, I contacted Experience Mission with some questions about denominational interaction within their Africa programs with specific interest in Namibia. My lovely point of contact at the time passed my questions along to the EM Africa director Hein Van Wyk, and here are some of the things I learned.
I asked about partnerships with AIC or "Africa Initiated Churches." These are denominations such as the Zionist Christian Church in South Africa. They are traditional African churches established and organized by Africans, and I learned that Immersion does not currently partner with them because they tend towards syncretism. "However," Wyk shared, "some of the partners we are working with are part of ecumenical initiatives in their respective communities where they might engage and/or interact with some of these churches."
Immersion's Namibia partners are the Dutch Reformed Church Okahandja and the Walvis Bay Community Church. Walvis Bay is a port town in the middle of the coast of Namibia and Okahandja is a city in the center of the country, 70km north of the capital of Namibia, Windhoek. Both of these churches are part of ecumenical initiatives. Wyk shared with me the following:
According to census, 92% of people in
Namibia considered themselves to be Christian. 50% of
these belong to the 3 Lutheran denominations, ELCIN
(Northern Namibia), ELCRN (Southern Namibia) and GELK
(German). This makes Namibia the only country in Africa
with a Lutheran majority.
This last bit of information was, of course, part of what drew me to spend time in this country in the first place.
The Dutch Reformed Church in Okahandja is part of the Namibia synod of the DRC of South Africa. The DRC in Namibia is part of an ecumenical alliance called the Council of Churches in Namibia. One of this council's founding members from 1975 is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia, which actively participates in ecumenical work through organizations such as the Lutheran World Federation and the World Council of Churches, both of which the ELC in America participate in.
The DRC in Namibia's relationship with the other synods in South Africa is interesting, and I have posted some articles on how that relationship has played out within certain issues on my page "In the News."
Walvis Bay Community Church is a non-denominational church. It was a new church plant intiated by Christians of several different denominations. They have ties to the Willow Creek Association in the US, which is focused on building up leaders. Click on the picture below if you'd like to check out more pictures of one of the places I'll be!
I asked about partnerships with AIC or "Africa Initiated Churches." These are denominations such as the Zionist Christian Church in South Africa. They are traditional African churches established and organized by Africans, and I learned that Immersion does not currently partner with them because they tend towards syncretism. "However," Wyk shared, "some of the partners we are working with are part of ecumenical initiatives in their respective communities where they might engage and/or interact with some of these churches."
Immersion's Namibia partners are the Dutch Reformed Church Okahandja and the Walvis Bay Community Church. Walvis Bay is a port town in the middle of the coast of Namibia and Okahandja is a city in the center of the country, 70km north of the capital of Namibia, Windhoek. Both of these churches are part of ecumenical initiatives. Wyk shared with me the following:
According to census, 92% of people in
Namibia considered themselves to be Christian. 50% of
these belong to the 3 Lutheran denominations, ELCIN
(Northern Namibia), ELCRN (Southern Namibia) and GELK
(German). This makes Namibia the only country in Africa
with a Lutheran majority.
This last bit of information was, of course, part of what drew me to spend time in this country in the first place.
 |
| Dutch Reformed Church; Okahandja, Namibia |
The DRC in Namibia's relationship with the other synods in South Africa is interesting, and I have posted some articles on how that relationship has played out within certain issues on my page "In the News."
Walvis Bay Community Church is a non-denominational church. It was a new church plant intiated by Christians of several different denominations. They have ties to the Willow Creek Association in the US, which is focused on building up leaders. Click on the picture below if you'd like to check out more pictures of one of the places I'll be!
Thursday, November 15, 2018
I'm Cooking!!
Wednesday, November 7, 2018
Chevy's Fundraising Night!!
Go to our Annapolis Chevy's any time on December 13th and 15% of your order will be donated to my mission trip!!! Make sure you show them the attached flier! You can have it printed or just show them on your phone. TELL YOUR FRIENDS AND SHARE THE FLIER :D I'll be there around 6 if you wanna eat some tacos with me!!! Click the image below for the flier!!
Sunday, November 4, 2018
Love
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness. The fruit of the Spirit is faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
If you've ever been taught about the fruit of the Spirit from me, you might have read that to a melody that is stuck in your head. If you've really made this teacher's heart sing, then you were doing some sign language along with it.
I think that the fruit of the Spirit are the most useful words to know and learn about from the New Testament. The Bible doesn't deal with all the issues that we deal with today, apart from application of the fruit of the Spirit. I mean that we cannot always take our contemporary social and personal problems to scripture and count on Paul, or even Jesus himself, to tell us what is wrong and what is right. We can, however, read scripture and learn what it looks like when the Holy Spirit is involved. It looks like more love, more patience, more peace, joy, and self-control. . .
This is why I will be using the fruit of the Spirit as a structure to contemplate how the Spirit is involved in my pursuit of this trip to Namibia. For this post, I begin with love; I begin with my favorite passage about love, from the first letter of John, chapter 4: verses 7-18.
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and His love is perfect in us.
By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent His Son as the Savior of the world. God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.
God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. . .Anything that we learn about love is something we are learning about the character of our Creator, and the character of the creation made in God's image. Made in the image of God, we are the only creature with the ability to love creation the way God loves creation. I intend to let this love transform me. I am not set in stone; this I am counting on.
What I am most looking forward to about this trip is being part of the global Church. I want to meet my brothers and sisters in Christ, my family who, though we are distant and different, we share a deep bond and trust in the same hope that keeps us persevering for a better standard of life for everyone. This connection boggles me sometimes, that I feel so deeply connected to these communities I will be visiting, thanks only to God's love. This love empowers me, and I feel no fear setting out to know my Church.
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
THANK YOU!
This year, I applied with Experience Mission to be part of one of their trips abroad, not yet certain where I wanted to go... simply knowing that I wanted to be a world traveller going into my endeavor to become a pastor with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. During a couple of phone and video-chat interviews, I was able to learn more about their programs and arrive at the decision to apply for their 3-month Namibia trip in the summer of 2019. I was officially invited to be a member of their team on Wednesday, September 26th. I accepted my place on this team on Monday, October 8th, 2018.
I want to spend this coming summer in Namibia for two reasons. One is that I want to experience Christianity in the global South because I think that the center of Christianity is shifting from the West to the South. If I want to be a leader in the Church of the 21st century, I think that I need to know more about that. The second reason is that Namibia is the only country outside of Europe with a Lutheran majority, and I plan to go to seminary to become a pastor with the ELCA. Thank you for reading this blog and supporting me while I seek to be shaped into the world-citizen kind of pastor I hope to one day become.
On October 29th around 3pm, I began my first fundraising campaign for the first deposit of $500 that I needed to secure my place on the team. By noon on October 30th, less than 24 hours later, that goal was passed at $670.00. I cannot express how overwhelmed I have been this afternoon as I immediately set out to compose this blog and write these words, inviting my friends and family to be part of this journey with me. Thank you everyone who immediately jumped in and supported me. Cliché alert: I'm really quite humbled. Thank you, dear reader, for sharing this moment with me.
I hope to keep everyone posted here on fun events and other creative activities into which I will be delving to prepare for this trip. On the right, you can subscribe to get updates via email, but I will be exploring other ways to be social media savvy about this. There is also a contact form, if you have questions for me about where I'm going and why. Finally, if you wish to donate funds towards my mission, you can click the link "OFFER YOUR SUPPORT" just below my picture.
God bless.
With love,
Melody
On October 29th around 3pm, I began my first fundraising campaign for the first deposit of $500 that I needed to secure my place on the team. By noon on October 30th, less than 24 hours later, that goal was passed at $670.00. I cannot express how overwhelmed I have been this afternoon as I immediately set out to compose this blog and write these words, inviting my friends and family to be part of this journey with me. Thank you everyone who immediately jumped in and supported me. Cliché alert: I'm really quite humbled. Thank you, dear reader, for sharing this moment with me.
I hope to keep everyone posted here on fun events and other creative activities into which I will be delving to prepare for this trip. On the right, you can subscribe to get updates via email, but I will be exploring other ways to be social media savvy about this. There is also a contact form, if you have questions for me about where I'm going and why. Finally, if you wish to donate funds towards my mission, you can click the link "OFFER YOUR SUPPORT" just below my picture.
God bless.
With love,
Melody
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