Fullah children admitted to Ebola treatment center

Freetown, Sierra Leone, Amazing Grace Church of the Nazarene, Ogoo Farm
Pastor James and Mrs. Isatu Fullah

FREETOWN, SIERRA LEONE - The Nazarene community is grieving the loss of Mrs. Isatu Fullah in Sierra Leone and continuing to pray for her family. Mrs. Fullah died in mid-February after contracting the Ebola virus. Her husband, Pastor James Fullah, and their five children (ages 4-16) were placed in quarantine the week of Feb. 12, along with seven adult relatives.

 

The 16-year-old and 6-year-old daughters are showing symptoms of the virus and have been taken to an Ebola treatment center, Sierra Leone District Superintendent Vidal Cole said on 25 February. 

 

Sister Fullah was known as a courageous and dynamic women, Rev. Cole said. She was deeply involved and dearly loved at the Fullahs' church, the Amazing Grace Church of the Nazarene in Ogoo Farm outside Freetown.

 

"She had a very strong love and passion for God and for the people she worked with in the church," Cole said.  

 

Miss Isatu Sesay was born and raised in northern Sierra Leone's Tonkolili District. She married James Fullah in 1993.  

 

The Fullah family at Pastor James' graduation.

"Mrs. Fullah was a petty trader and a strong pillar of support both to her family and the church," Cole said. Her work helped support James while he studied to become a primary school teacher and later when he attended the Nazarene Theological Institute in Freetown, where he currently teaches.

 

"She (was) extremely delighted when her husband graduated," Cole said, "and she and her entire family graced the occasion with their cheerful presence."

 

When Pastor Fullah severely injured his eye in recent years, Mrs. Fullah provided for the entire family. "She was very industrious, and she did make her husband proud," Cole said.

 

Please continue to pray for the Fullah family and the Amazing Grace Church, which has been closed down by the authorities until the quarantine period is over.

 

Photos courtesy of Rev. Vidal Cole and missionary Sharon Martin. 
Living Hope School aims to empower students

By Holly Beech, news@africanazarene.org  

Students study at the newly opened Living Hope School,
a Nazarene Compassionate Ministries project in Madagascar.

 

At the Nazarene district center in Madagascar's capital of Antananarivo, rooms that used to sit vacant are now alive with activity as students learn English, study the Bible and gain computer skills.

 

The new learning center, called Living Hope School, opened 13 January through Nazarene Compassionate Ministries, Inc.  

 

Madagascar missionaries Rev. Ronald and Shelly Miller saw the school as a way to support the district financially - students pay a monthly fee equal to about $5 to $10 - while also equipping community members with job skills.

 

"It's all about empowerment," Ronald said. "We're trying to help them get jobs and be competitive.

 

The Millers expected an inaugural class of about five students. Instead, 18 students enrolled, ranging in age from about 15 to 40 years old. Some of the students are school-aged but not attending a regular school, Shelly said. That's not uncommon in Madagascar, where schools are too crowded to accommodate all of the children and there is a lack of money to pay teachers, according to Unicef, which also reports that only about 60 percent of children in Madagascar who enter the first grade finish primary school.

  

Living Hope School's inaugural class, seen at the Barbara Ann Boyd Center (Madagascar's Nazarene district center). Photos courtesy of Ronald and Shelly Miller.
"Here in Madagascar, education in general is very, very low," Shelly said. "There are not enough schools in the country to accompany all the children. So there are a lot of kids who never get to finish high school."

 

The Living Hope School is a place where anyone, with a high school diploma or not, can come and learn, she said.  

 

The Millers expect enrollment to double next semester. Their goal is to get the school accredited and expand class offerings. Currently, there are five teachers, including Ronald, who teaches Bible, Shelly, who teaches English, NCM's Pastor Patrice Georges and Mrs. Vola Harisoa, who both teach English, and a professional web designer who teaches computer basics. 

 

Many people worked together over the past year to make Living Hope a reality, including Madagascar District Superintendent Rev. Richard Ravelomanantsoa and his wife, Rev. Therese Ravelomanantsoa (director of NCM's local street kids center), along with Pastor Georges and Mrs. Harisoa. Two Work & Witness teams helped get the building ready, and one team donated 20 computers. Because of the volunteer work and donations, the school's start-up cost for NCM was less than $500, Ronald said.   

 

Another vision for Living Hope is that it will provide a place for youth who graduate out of the AMI-4 Street Kids Center in Antananarivo, run by NCM. The growing street kids center provides 420 children under the age of 18 with meals, education and caring support.

 

"We find that many kids after they finish, they just go back onto the streets," Ronald said. "So we're trying to create a continuation."

 

The school will also provide local pastors with computer training and is raising money to sponsor college students.

 

LIVING HOPE PROJECT  

 

The Living Hope School is just one aspect of the newly launched Living Hope Project in Madagascar. Another branch of the project is the Living Hope Evangelism Team, which is organizing a Work & Witness trip from Madagascar to South Africa later this year.  

 

With Madagascar being one of the poorest countries in the world, Ronald said he's been asked, "Shouldn't we be sending Work & Witness teams to you?" But part of the goal of the trip is to inspire other Africans to also get involved in missions.

 

"We want to impact Madagascar, but we want to really awaken more districts to also become mission-minded," he said.

 

 
Flood victims seek to regain footing after deadly disaster

By Holly Beech, news@africanazarene.org 

 

Catherine Ndala, a farmer and mother of five from Malawi's Phalombe District, stands by what's left of her home and after the flood. (Photos: Holly Beech)
 

Pastor Henry Langison is among the thousands of people struggling to rebuild their lives after severe flooding in Malawi, Mozambique and Madagascar. 

 

More than half of his 80-member congregation at the Dwanya Church of the Nazarene in southern Malawi lost their homes. But the pastor and his wife lost something irreplaceable: their 2-year-old son.

 

Pastor Henry Langison and church members wait in line on 17 February during an NCM distribution. 

It was late at night when water began to rush through their home. Langison and his wife and five children fled toward higher ground, but they weren't able to save the 2-year-old boy from the strong current. The water was up to Langison's chest, he said.

 

More than a month later and still no sign of their son, the family believes they may never find his body. 

 

Communities are reeling not only from the loss of homes and loved ones, but also from the loss of crops. Many residents in Malawi live off the land, which in some areas now look more like swamps than farms.

 

Esther Chitsulo, a farmer in the town of Chiringa in the Phalombe District of Malawi, grows rice and corn to provide for her family of nine. She usually harvests 20 bags of corn each season, she said. This year, she anticipates only five bags. It's too late in the season to replant corn. 

 

This year's depleted harvest means relief efforts will need to be long-term, said Pastor Alex Mkandawire, the Malawi country coordinator for Nazarene Compassionate Ministries.

 

Last month, NCM's local team and the Lower Shire district superintendent distributed food and blankets to 500 Nazarene families (an estimated 3,000 people) who were identified by local pastors as being the most severely affected by the flood. NCM is planning another distribution trip for an additional 500 families. 

 

 

 

On 17 February, the Malawi NCM team and Lower Shire District Superintendent Rev. Gershom Kwerakwera (not pictured) took flour, fish, blankets and cooking oil to Nazarene families in the Nsanje and Chikwawa districts.

 

Because the bags of flour and bowl of dried fish won't last the families long, Mkandawire said he would like to do a second round of distributions if the funding is available.

 

The families live in rural towns that are difficult to reach because the flood destroyed bridges and carved muddy, deep ravines into the dirt roads. For the first 500 families, the cost to buy the supplies and transport them to the rural areas was $11,000 U.S. dollars, Mkandawire said.

 

Some of the remote communities reached by NCM had yet to receive aid from the government or non-governmental organizations, residents said. In some towns, NCM's team was greeted by songs of joy and hope. (Watch videos of the songs here and here.)     

 

"The people are very excited because this (the distribution) is something they didn't expect to happen," Pastor Langison, speaking Chichewa, said through a translator.

 

When asked what would help them the most, several flood victims said they would like supplies such as seeds, fishing gear and farm tools so they can continue working.

Top photo: Children from Nazarene churches in the Phalombe District greet the NCM team on 18 February.
Above:  A boy fishes where a bridge has collapsed.

 

Some who are living in the displacement

camps said their hope for the future is to buy property on higher ground and build a new home. Life is hard in the camp, said flood victim Mr. Yohane Acick Mello, and people are getting sick because they are staying in such close proximity to each other. Several families stay in one tent. Husbands no longer sleep by their wives, as men and women are in separate tents. 

 

Twenty-one-year-old Sakaika Turuwa, a Nazarene Sunday school teacher, said it's hard to make plans for the future when all he can think about is what he will eat and where he will stay. He works as a bicycle repairman, but since the flood hit, work has been slow. In his tight-knit community, even turning to a neighbor for help is difficult, he said, because everyone has been hit by the same disaster.

 

"My major concern - and I believe it's the same for everyone here - we need the basic necessities. We need shelter, we need food, we need clothes, we need medicine," Turuwa said through a translator. "And we also need to be equipped so we can stand on our own after the disaster."

 

 

IN PICTURES: Examples of the flood damage in Southern Malawi, taken 17-18 of February. Residents say this was the worst flooding they had ever seen. 

 

 

Damaged homes like this one are scattered throughout southern Malawi.

 
Commuting by bicycle and car has become a big challenge in rural areas.

 

 

Many farms are still covered by water.

Several bridges have collapsed.

 

 


Only part of the Thuthuwa Church of the Nazarene in Malawi's Phalombe District still stands.

 

At the site of a collapsed bridge near Bangula, Nsanje District, locals have set up boats and charge a fee to take people across the river.

Floods damaged 49,200 hectares (121,576 acres) of crops in Malawi and 65,080 hectares (160,816 acres) in Mozambique, according to UNOCHA.  





 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RELIEF EFFORTS

The floods in Malawi killed an estimated 176 people and displaced 200,000 others, according to the Malawi government. Scores of people are still missing. Two members of the Nazarene Church in the Phalombe District died.  

 

In neighboring Mozambique, a total of 158 people died, and more than 160,000 people were affected.  

 

Several church members in central Madagascar also lost their homes after heavy rainfall in late February caused major flooding, according to Nazarene missionary Rev. Ronald Miller. The Nazarene Church in Madagascar quickly responded by distributing rice and malaria tablets and helping victims fix their roofs, Miller said.  

  

Al Jazeera reports that Madagascar's capital of Antananarivo received almost half the amount of rainfall in one day that it normally sees in all of February. Fourteen people were killed and 24,000 displaced in the flooding.  

 

NCM is one of the many non-profit organizations working to bring relief to the thousands of victims. Click on the button below to support these efforts. 

 
IN YOUR WORDS: NEWS FROM THE REGION

Small groups gain momentum throughout Africa

-Submitted by Dr. David and Kathy Slamp

 

Dr. David Slamp with Pastor Hofisi Mutatu at a training in Zimbabwe.
Dr. David and Kathy Slamp have held trainings for pastors and lay leaders on how to develop discipleship small groups, known as CareRings.

The next training is from the 9th to 11th of March at the Africa Regional Conference for Discipleship Small Group Coordinators and/or Sunday School & Discipleship Ministries International (SDMI) leaders.

The Slamps said they praise the Lord to see district leaders pass on the values and spiritual power of CareRing Small Groups. To date, 690 leaders have been trained in seven countries in Africa. One district in Zambia trained 95 new leaders. In South Africa, Pastor Dawie de Kurk reports 25 groups at Agape Church in Rustenburg; Divine Hope in Pretoria has 14 Torch Groups (small groups); and dozens of new groups have formed in Soweto.

 

Missionaries lead training in Angola

-Submitted by Paula Troutman

   

Pastors and laymen from 10 local churches gathered in Huambo, Angola, in late February for an "Introduction to the Bible" course. Dr. Philip Troutman taught the course to the group of attentive and interested students. Times of praise and worship were encouraging and inspiring, especially learning and singing "Holiness Unto the Lord."

On the last day of class, missionary Paula Troutman presented a seminar on Sunday School. The JESUS film was shown that evening to close the week.

 

 

What's happening in your community?
Send news and photos to news@africanazarene.org.
 
 
PRAYER REQUESTS
  • Pray for the Fullah family in Sierra Leone.
  • Pray for the thousands of flood victims in Malawi, Mozambique and Madagascar who need food and shelter and have a higher risk of disease. Praise God for the Church and the many relief organizations working to reach those in need.
  • Praise God for the new Living Hope School in Madagascar. Pray for the Lord's blessing over Madagascar's Work & Witness trip to South Africa later this year. 
  • Pray for the persecuted Church.
  • Continue to pray for the eradication of Ebola and for those left in its painful path.
     
ABOUT THE REGION About 
The Nazarene Church is in 42 countries in Africa, with more than 600,000 members in six fields. 

What would you like to see in Out of Africa?

Holly Beech, editor