ELCA Presiding Bishop Completes West African Church Visit

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 news@elca.org
http://www.elca.org/news