Jubilee Walk for AIDS in Africa

The Alewife Deanery Jubilee Walk is this weekend! I hope it’s not too late to convince you to come and walk with me and my family in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Africa who are afflicted by AIDS. We meet at Christ Church at 9:30 to carpool to Bedford. If your kids are skeptical about walking four miles, they can ride their bikes.

I’ve written in this space before about the efforts of this diocese to work on behalf of those with AIDS (for my post about the Jubilee Walk last year, look at the e crier blog at www.ecrier.blogspot.com) For the Jubilee Walk and Worship, churches from around the diocese participate to walk the Minuteman trail that goes from Cambridge to Bedford. Some begin at Bedford Train Depot (that’s us) and others begin walking from Alewife, and we meet in the middle for a worship service with Bishop Shaw and lunch at the Church of the Redeemer in Lexington.

In partnership with African provinces and dioceses, we support programs in Africa for training home-based care workers, supporting orphan feeding and education, assisting Anglican hospitals and clinics to deliver basic medical care to orphans and afflicted families and to pregnant women, providing testing and aftercare, and preventing transmission. Our diocese supports ministries in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. Last fall, Bishop Masereka preached here at Christ Church to talk about the efforts of his foundation. This fall, three Jubilee graduates will go to college in Uganda with scholarships form the Bishop Masereka Christian Foundation (http://www.bmcf.org).

In Kenya, the Mother’s Union Orphan Feeding program provides a nutritious meal to local children each Saturday The ministry is supported by our diocese, and is held at 15 parishes. From January to March of this year, the program served 57,492 meals—that’s almost 5000 children per week! In addition to supplying funds to support local efforts, the diocese has also commissioned Dianne Smith as missioner in Kenya to work with the hospital and mobile care programs. You can visit Dianne’s blog at http://www.heart-to-god.blogspot.com.

I think it’s especially important for a smaller church like Christ Church to know about and support these global programs. It’s easy to think that because we are just 70 or 80 people gathered on a Sunday, we can’t do anything to help with the world’s problems. But connected with our diocese, and connected with the global Anglican Communion, there is a lot that we can do—a lot that we are already doing. Walking a few miles one Saturday a year doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s a start. I hope you’ll join me. If you’d just like to make a donation, write your check to Christ Church with “Jubilee Ministries” in the memo line. For more on the diocesan ministries, visit www.diomass.org/mission/AIDS_in_Africa. Working closer to home, the National Episcopal AIDS Coalition seeks to raise awareness and help ministries with people with AIDS herein the US. They’re at http://neac.org/.