1 Florida United Methodist Review Online

Floridians make connection in Africa

Photo by the Rev. Larry Rankin

"It was amazing to look into someone's eyes and see Christ, then realize this person is African," said Willy Blanco, a member of the Florida Conference team that recently went to Muxungue, Mozambique, Africa, to see the future site of the Bishop Cornelius L. and Dorothye Henderson Secondary School.

Florida United Methodists travel to Africa to visit the site of the Henderson secondary school and connect with United Methodists there.

By Michael Wacht
    LAKELAND - Three members of the Florida Conference traveled to Muxungue, Mozambique, Africa, last month. After a worship service celebrating their visit, team member Willy Blanco said goodbye and shook hands with the Mozambicans.
    "I walked over to this short old man and put my arms around him," Blanco said. "I could tell he was hesitant, so I said in English, 'I love you, brother.' He glanced up at me and just for a moment, his eyes shone brilliantly with the Holy Spirit. I felt as if I was hugging my father. It was amazing to look into someone's eyes and see Christ, then realize this person is African."
    Blanco is a professional videographer and youth director at Miami Lakes United Methodist Church in Miami. He traveled to Mozambique April 16-22 with the Revs. Larry Rankin, director of the Florida Conference Council on Ministries' Missions office, and Anne Burkholder, superintendent of the Melbourne District.
    Rankin and Burkholder made the trip to visit the future site of the Bishop Cornelius L. and Dorothye Henderson Secondary School. They also went to investigate the possibility of forming a partnership relationship with the Mozambique Conference of the United Methodist Church on behalf of the Florida Conference's efforts with the Council of Bishops' Initiative on Children and Poverty and Hope for the Children of Africa.
    Blanco made the trip to document the visit. He said he has traveled around the world as a professional videographer, but was surprised by the connection he felt with the African Christians. "I'm accustomed to being out someplace for ABC-TV to gather enough video for a one-minute, 10-second piece," he said. "This is the first time I've been on a trip as a professional videographer that I felt connected more than through the lens of a camera."
    Rankin says that kind of connection is the goal of a partnership with the African conference. He said the southern African word Ubuntu, which means I am because we are, exemplifies the relationship the two conferences hope to achieve.
    "Ubuntu is the African understanding of community and relationship," Rankin said. "It's like Paul saying that when one suffers, we all suffer."
    Despite the large number of children left without parents through 30 years of war and deadly diseases, including malaria and AIDS, the Mozambicans have no word in their language for orphan.
    "When a child is left without parents, a village member, whether a relative of the child or not, takes up responsibility for that child," Rankin said. "There are too many orphans, so the village has to extend to Florida to address the tremendous need there."
    The Henderson school is a strategic way in which the Florida Conference can help the Mozambique Conference raise its children, Rankin said. The school will be built in "a pioneer area for the church and the country," Rankin said.
    Much of the Christian population in Mozambique is concentrated in the southern part of the country. The area north of the Save River is "a new area for harvest, for the church to expand into," Rankin said.
    A new United Methodist mission recently began on the land next to the Henderson school site and already has 60 members. A training center for lay evangelists and local pastors is also planned for the area.
    The Henderson school will provide secondary education to area children and work in partnership with the mission and training center to evangelize and train Mozambicans to spread Christianity into northern Mozambique.
    Rankin said he hopes the relationship between Florida and Mozambique will extend beyond building a school. "We want to enter in a partnership…," he said. "We want to be able to share resources, especially with the school…and receive enthusiasm in mission, evangelism and growth and learn more about how they plant new churches and missions."
    Blanco hopes more people from the Florida Conference have the opportunity to share the acceptance and love he experienced in Africa.
    "There was this one particular scene when I saw the stakes that marked the land mines," he said. "I was filming it…and I knew I might not be in the safest place in the world, but I knew I was in the most loving place in the world."