ST PETER’S CHURCH, FULHAM AND MOZAMBIQUE - AN UPDATE

AUTUMN 2006

The first recorded contact between St Peter’s Church, Fulham and Mozambique is from old parish magazines. We learn that on Whit Sunday evening in 1915 “the Lord Bishop of Lebombo came and preached at Evensong”. The Lebombos are the mountains that run between South Africa and Mozambique. The first Diocese in Mozambique was named after them.

The parish formed a Lebombo Guild to raise money for the work of the Church in Mozambique. In the 1960’s this was discontinued and support was switched to the University Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) which worked in the north of Mozambique in what was to become the second Diocese of Mozambique, that of Niassa. (In time the UMCA merged into USPG. Some members of the congregation still support the work of the Reverend Stephen Taylor, former Area Dean of Hammersmith and Fulham, who now works as a USPG Missionary in Brazil).

The link between St Peter’s and Mozambique seemed to have stopped. In the meantime the Church in Mozambique grew strongly and started itself to support the new Anglican Church in Angola. A new member of the congregation, though, was Treasurer of a national charity that supports the Anglican Church in both Mozambique and Angola. In 1998 he arranged for Andre Soares, then Archdeacon of Angola, to visit St Peter’s. Andre Soares has now become the first Anglican Bishop of the new Diocese of Angola.

In the same year the Dioceses of London, Angola, Lebombos and Niassa set up a formal Covenant called ALMA, the Portuguese word for “soul”. One objective of ALMA was for people in all three countries to be able to understand each other better through the creation of linked parishes.  www.london.anglican.org/ALMA

In 2001 the previous Archdeacon of Middlesex, Malcolm Colmer, visited the Diocese of Niassa. One of his stops was the city of Nampula, the third largest in Mozambique. On his return it was decided that St Peter’s, Fulham would link up with the parish of St John, Apostle and Evangelist, Nampula.

The Anglican Church started in Nampula in 1968. It was founded by people of the Nyanja tribe who had moved from their rural areas near Lake Niassa/Malawi to the “big city” in a different tribal area, that of the Makua. For the first 21 years they met at other churches in the same way that other churches use St Peter’s on Sunday afternoon. In 1989 they built their own church building, also used as a school, and a house for their priest.

Parishes in Mozambique are enormous. This one measures 50 miles in one direction and 140 in the other. When the link was set up the congregation was 2,450. Now it is several times larger as new daughter congregations have been created. When the link was first set up the priest spent a lot of time travelling by bus and hitchhiking. With the financial help that St Peter’s has sent he now has a motorbike. He is paid £40 a month.

In 2003 a member of the congregation made a special donation to help build a new church in memory of her parents.

The Bishop of Niassa, Bishop Mark van Koevering, decided to use this donation to rebuild the daughter church of the Holy Cross in the town of Murrupula, 50 miles to the north of Nampula. This town is dirt poor, even by the standards of Mozambique. The congregation here was not from people of other tribes who had come from elsewhere; it was of local Makua people who had converted from a mixture of African religions and Islam. They had built a small thatched church from mud bricks which had to be rebuilt after each rainy season.

In September 2004 another member of the congregation visited Niassa, and went to both Nampula and Murrupula. In Nampula he was assured that they pray for St Peter’s, Fulham in their prayer groups every Wednesday evening. In Murrupula he saw the old church, and visited the brick fields and saw bricks which the congregation had made themselves for their new church. The overwhelming impression from the town was of grinding poverty counter balancing the hope of what their new church could be used for.

The new church is now finished. It serves as church, school, and social centre. The grounds around are used as a garden to grow vegetables for AIDS orphans. The Anglican Church locally has experienced strong growth. The daughter church of Murrupula now has itself 30 daughter congregations of its own. The Bishop has decided to appoint a new priest for this whole area, as the priest in Nampula could not possibly cope with this extra work. The major donor from St Peter’s has made a further donation in memory of her parents, and this will be used to build a vicarage and to buy an extra plot of land to grow more food for AIDS orphans.

St Peter’s continues to give £500 each year as a regular contribution to help all of these parishes. If you would like to contribute in anyway or if you would like to build a new church in Mozambique then please contact Robert Ashdown via the church wardens.  For more info please see http://www.newportchurches.com/Manna.html

In the meantime, please continue to pray for our link parishes of St John’s, Nampula and Holy Cross, Murrupula.