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Editor’s note: Baltimore-Washington Conference Director of Communications, Melissa Lauber, is part of the 33-person delegation visiting Zimbabwe this month. Lauber is writing a regular blog “postcard,” which you can find here and on our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/BWCUMC.

Click here to view Day 1 & Day 2

Click here to view Day 5 & Day 6

Zimbabwe, Day 3

July 16, 2013

Imagine an assembly line, on a hillside in Africa, merged with a conga line made up of Methodists speaking English and Shona, as they handed bricks up a hill, from hand to hand, to build a church.

This was the scene at Gwese Sanctuary in Zimbabwe July 16 when a mission team from the Baltimore-Washington Conference went into the countryside for two days to work on building a sanctuary.

The new sanctuary, which will be home to the 300-member village church, was built, in part with $17,300 from the Hope Fund, raised by the people of the Baltimore-Washington Conference.

Construction has been underway for four years and church leaders expect to move into the building within the next few months."This new church will mean new life for our congregation," said Pastor Caleb Rubando. "It is a dream come true."

Gwese UMC is an important part of community life, explained Daniel Chitsiku, the Mutare District Superintendent who came out to welcome the BWC team. The congregation is very community minded. It supports and cares for 82 orphans and vulnerable children.

The church, which started in the 1930s, has a small grinding mill it uses to raise funds for this ministry.

"The lives of these orphans, who live with relatives and others in the community, is very difficult and very tricky. It is touching and painful to think about,” said Rubando. "We do all we can to help."

The pastor is convinced the new sanctuary will inspire members to expand this ministry even further. At the last charge conference, the youth group from the church pledged to increase their efforts in crushing rocks to make sand used for the plaster.

"This congregation works very hard," Rubando said. "They have zeal."

And with zeal, laughter and new bonds formed in Christ, the bricks went up the hill.

Zimbabwe, Day 4

July 16, 2013

Transformation can be an overused word in the church. But Africa University, a pan-African college started in Zimbabwe by The United Methodist Church 20 years ago, is transforming a continent.

With education, Christian principles and a belief in empowerment, Africa University has graduated more than 4,000 people. Each of these graduates has become a thread subtly woven into the fabric of Africa's future.

Africa University, in Mutare, was created by an act of General Conference and chartered in 1992. It started with 40 students meeting in old farm buildings and a vision to become a world-class university for leadership development in Africa.

Today, the school has 1,399 students from 25 countries and five schools of study. It has a 50/50 ratio of men and women, which is still a rarity in the often male-dominated cultures of Africa.  "For many years, girls were like second class citizens in their own homes," said Fanwell Tagwira, the school's Vice Chancellor. "Last year 51 percent of our students were female. You won't find another ratio like that, and our female students do very well."

Forty percent of the students come from outside of Zimbabwe. Within Africa today, economic and cultural boundaries are fading. In many subtle ways, the school, through its graduates, is playing a significant role in the integration of Africa. It is, in 4,000 small and significant ways, literally transforming a continent.

But the journey has not always been an easy one, said Tagwira, who remembers the times between 2007 and 2010 when hyperinflation made the country's money "meaningless."

You could go into the store and see something you liked, go back four hours later and the price of that item would have risen five times over. What a student paid $400 for one day would cost only $20 the next. "Planning was simply impossible," Tagwira said. "There was little to eat."

However, throughout the troubled years, Africa University managed to get by, sometimes paying its professors in food. "And throughout it all, our students never missed a day of learning,” Tagwira said.

At the end of July, Zimbabwe will hold its presidential election. Tagwira is hopeful about the future of the nation. "It's a new day for Zimbabwe," he said "God is in control. We're beginning to see peace."

He and other university leaders are excited about the role Africa University might play in creating this new day. Already, through the School of Leadership, Governance and Peace, students are working with child soldiers in Uganda and efforts for reconciliation in South Sudan. “We're doing missional healing in places throughout Africa," Tagwira said. "The time has come for peace."

Bishop Marcus Matthews is a vice chair of the Board of Trustees of Africa University. Throughout the trip, he has invited various people to help interpret the school to members of the 33-member BWC team now in Zimbabwe for missions and a pastors' school.

Members of the conference support Africa University by paying 100 percent of their apportionments. "The Baltimore-Washington Conference has been involved with Africa University from the beginning and you still are. That's a God-given gift to us," said Jim Salley, who interprets the ministry of the university to the denomination. "Thank you for being the church, not only in the U.S., but in the world."

Conference leaders who are on the trip have been moved by how "God is working wonders" at Africa University and are beginning a conversation about how the BWC might deepen its commitment to this unique ministry.

"Africa University is the ultimate connectional story," said Salley. "Africa University is the church at its best."

Click here to view Day 1 & Day 2