MWC vice-president pleads for help for Zimbabwe

“The challenges facing our nation do not seem to want to go away,” Danisa Ndlovu, bishop of the Brethren in Christ Church in Zimbabwe, told Mennonite World Conference officers and executive staff at a California meeting in January. “Each day seems to bring more hardships.”

Ndlovu is asking the MWC global family to continue to pray for his country and his church and to make solidarity visits to Zimbabwe.

MWC officers at the California meeting agreed to send a “Koinonia Delegation” to visit Zimbabwe this year to build communion and fellowship with its members there who continue to endure distress. The team is a response to general secretary Larry Miller’s promise to Zimbabweans at the close of Assembly 14 in Bulawayo in 2003: “We will not forget you.”

A larger “Global Anabaptist Deacons” plan is also being formed that will see international delegations going to one region per year to stand in solidarity with churches living in difficult circumstances. The concept is still being shaped.

Ndlovu, vice-president and president-elect of MWC, described increasingly devastating political, economic, and social conditions in Zimbabwe. The country has spun into sharp decline under President Robert Mugabe’s leadership. Professional people continue to leave. The economic situation fuels corruption, unemployment is still at 80 percent, inflation continues at 1,200 percent, the highest in the world, and life expectancy is now about 38 years.

“We are praying that this cup of suffering will go away,” Ndlovu said.

—from reports by Ferne Burkhardt, MWC