By Michael Wacht

MALANGE, Angola — The United Methodist Church has played an important role in the history of the Central African nation of Angola. Bishop JosÈ Quipungo of the Eastern Angola Annual Conference is working hard to make sure the United Methodist Church also plays a vital role in his country’s future. The Florida Conference has committed to be a part of that effort.

A three-person team from the Florida Conference traveled to Angola Jan. 28-Feb. 11 on a fact-finding and relationship-building visit sponsored by the Florida Conference’s task force on the Council of Bishop’s Initiative on Children and Poverty (BICAP) and Hope for the Children of Africa. The team consisted of Melba Whitaker, wife of Bishop Timothy W. Whitaker, the Rev. Dr. Geraldine McClellan, superintendent of the Gainesville District, and Michael Wacht, the conference’s director of communications.

The Council of Bishops has asked the Florida Conference to shift its attention to the Eastern Angola Conference now that Florida has completed fund-raising for the Bishop Cornelius L. and Dorothye Henderson Secondary School in Mozambique.

The team visited churches, schools, hospitals and villages in the Malange District and spent time talking with Quipungo and Eastern Angola’s district superintendents and conference staff to begin building relationships with the people there and discover the needs and priorities in the conference.

Methodism arrived in Angola in 1885 when the nation was still a Portuguese colony. Methodist missionaries started ministries and schools in several locations, including the capitol, Luanda, and a hilltop outside the city of Malange in the central part of the country called QuÈssua. A hospital was built at the QuÈssua mission outpost by 1923.

Over the next 50 years QuÈssua grew into the spiritual and educational center of the Methodist (and later United Methodist) Church in Angola. The complex included a church, elementary schools for boys and girls, a college, a school of domestic sciences and a theological seminary. The nation’s government also built an agricultural training center there.

Angola won its independence from Portugal in 1975 after a 14-year struggle, and United Methodism’s impact on the new nation was immediate. The nation’s first president, Dr. AntÛnio Agostinho Neto, was a United Methodist. Many representatives to the country’s National Assembly were children of United Methodist pastors or “sons of QuÈssua,” meaning they had been educated at QuÈssua.

During Angola’s 27-year civil war, which began after its independence in 1975 and ended last year with the death of rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, the United Methodist church suffered considerably. Because of the strong presence of United Methodists in the government, the rebels targeted the denomination’s establishments, including QuÈssua, bombing and destroying church buildings, parsonages and schools.

Today, Quipungo’s conference has 35 churches in five districts, most of which are led by local pastors. Many church members fled to the western part of the country or hid in the bush during the war, but are now returning to their lands to begin the process of rebuilding.

Quipungo is aware of the church’s impact on his country and has a vision to make the church an integral part of Angola’s future. A primary focus of that vision is to rebuild the infrastructure that was destroyed during the decades of war.

Quipungo presided over a Feb. 7 ceremony marking the opening of the Angolan school year. The ceremony took place at the first building of the Escola: EsperanÁa de Africa (Hope of Africa School). The elementary school was funded by BICAP and is for children outside the normal education system, including many orphans, according to Quipungo.

The four-room building will educate as many as 350 first- through fourth-grade students. Two additional buildings will allow students to complete their education through the eighth grade.

Quipungo and many other leaders of the Eastern Angola Conference are also working on plans to restore and improve the complex at QuÈssua, including building a modern hospital and renovating the complex’s bombed-out college, dormitories, church and theological seminary. Leaders are also in the process of planning curricula for the schools and recruiting teachers.

Additionally, the leaders and pastors of the Eastern Angola Conference are focused on rebuilding the primary ministry of the church, making disciples of Jesus Christ.

Malange’s Central United Methodist Church is reaching out to orphans and displaced persons at the city’s Catepa Camp through a class meeting called Eden, which meets for Bible study in people’s homes. The class is working to rebuild a chapel that was destroyed during the war. Once the building is complete, the class will charter as Catepa United Methodist Church.

The conference is also opening new frontiers in the provinces of BiÈ and Cuando Cubango in the southern part of the country. Missionary pastors have been sent there to reintroduce the United Methodist Church to the people there.

Quipungo is also focusing on meeting the two greatest needs in eastern 

Angola—education and health care. His goal is to see each church include a school and a medical clinic.

Photo by Michael Wacht   Melba Whitaker, wife of Florida Conference Bishop Timothy W. Whitaker, teaches children at the orphanage at Malange's Central United Methodist Church how to play the game Twister, which she brought with her from the United States.

Three-quarters of the BICAP offering at the 2003 Florida Annual Conference Event May 27-31 in Lakeland will also be used to support the vision of the Eastern Angola Annual Conference.