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PRAYER FOCUS

December 2004/January 2005 (January below)

(From the U.S. Virgin Islands Daily News)

Adlyn Hamilton was no different from the other youths she grew up with on St. Kitts. Every year at one of the evangelistic meetings at her church, she would go to the altar and make a commitment to follow Christ. Then, she would go back to her old ways. I loved to dance, and so the sweet music of the steel pan would always be the cause of my backsliding as it were,  she said. At age 16, however, she made a serious commitment. I recognized that it was not my effort but Christ living in me.

Today, after a faith journey that kept her in Tanzania for 17 years, the Rev. Binta Adlyn Mgonela, 49, is pastor of Chaguanas and Memorial Moravian Churches on Trinidad. She will be a guest preacher at 7 pm Monday through Friday at New Herrnhut Moravian Church on St. Thomas. On one of the evenings, she will talk about her life in Tanzania.

Mgonela said she had a call to the pastoral ministry at age 17, and make numerous applications to the church without success. Her pastor then advised her that as a woman, her best option at that time was to train as a missionary nurse. In 1976, she left St.. Kitts and traveled to England to study nursing. After becoming a registered nurse and certified midwife, Mgonela left England in 1980 and went to Georgia, where she studied psychiatric nursing for six months. She then traveled to Tanzania on her FAITH (Forsaking All I Trust Him ) journey. In abandoning all reliance on one’s effort to obtain salvation, the attitude of complete trust in Christ and relying on Him alone for all salvation is what my faith means to me, Mgonela said. It is total submittance to the guidance and control with strong conviction of the reality of God’s truth revealed in Scripture.

Tanzania is in East Africa bordering the Indian Ocean between Kenya and Mozambique. Other countries that border Tanzania are Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia. According to Mgonela, Tanzania has more than 130 ethnic groups, each with its own language, but Ki-Swahili is the national language. Needless to say, one of the first things Mgonela did when she arrived in Tanzania was to attend language school. She speaks Swahili, Kiunyammwezi and Kisukuma.

Mgonela remembers vividly the day she arrived in Tanzania - Feb. 20, 1981.No one met me at the airport. Mgonela said. Br. Ted Hartman, the chairman of the Board of World Mission of the Moravian Church in America told me that in case no one was there to meet me I should take a taxi to the Luther House, a Lutheran guesthouse. Mgonela said she stayed at the Luther House, but was unable to get any information from anyone about her arrival. She said she attended the Sunday service of the Lutheran Church and spoke to an elder who gave her the telephone number for the Moravian Church Office inn Tabora, a town with a population of 926,000. She was instructed to get on the plane that was leaving for Tabora Monday morning. When she arrived in Tabora, she was told that her assignement was in Sikonge, but that her house was not ready so she would have to stay in Tabora for a while. When Mgonela finally arrived in Sikonge, her house still was not ready so she stayed in the Moravian Hostel for about month. She lived alone in Sikonge until she was married in 1984. Mgonela was assigned to the Maternity Department of the Moravian Hospital in Sikonge. From January 1982 she was nursing officer in charge of Maternal and Child Health Services, the Maternity Department, including the pre and post natal wards, labor ward and special care baby unit.

She met her husband, Katema, at the hospital were he was a medical assistant. The union produced four children. Two girls, Ayeola, which means rainbow, and Namayombo, which means something powerful in the heavens, were the first children and the only two to survive. The first boy died after 10 hours and the other, Kulab’va Katema, at three months old.

That tore my world away but by the grace of God, I held on to my faith that has always guided my life, Mgonela said.  Kulab’va developed jaundice and succumbed in a matter of days. If I were nearer to proper medical care in Tanzania, I believe he would have lived, Mgonela said.

In spite of her deep ties to Tanzania, in 1998 Mgonela left to answer God’s call on her life to pastoral ministy – the call she received at age 17. The call never left me and over the year I sought the guidance of God through deep prayer while I maintained an active life in the church. This served to strengthen my faith and belief that I should go into pastoral ministry. From 1998 to 2002, Mgonela attended the United Theological College of the West Indies and the University of the West Indies, both in Jamaica. She obtained a diploma in ministerial studies from United Theological College and a bachelor’s degree in theology from the University of the West Indies. In July 2002 she was ordained at Bethesda Moravian Church on St. Kitts.

Now I am stationed in Trinidad, a place with many challenges but a joy to work in, Mgonela said. I know that even as one of my congregations embark on a building project that it is faith and complete trust in God that will see us through. When asked about returning to Tanzania, Mgonela said, Going back to Tanzania would mean a lot to me even if for a visit as I left with the intention of returning. Therefore, there is need for closure. I feel very strongly that God wants me to serve him in the Caribbean right now

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January 2005

WHO’S THAT SLEEPING ON THE ALTAR?
By Leslie Palma-Simoncek

(Staten Island Advance) Two things are different about the new pastor of Great Kills Moravian Church: He says “about” funny, and he refers to the robe he wears on Communion Sundays as a “floppy white dress.” Oh, and then there’s the mini-laptop he has on the pulpit with him, and the guide dog sleeping at his feet. Rev. Ian Edwards, who took over the congregation this summer, is a native of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.  That explains the “about” sound. And the down-to-earth pastor, just ordained in May, seems like the type who’s more comfortable in khakis than vestments, hence the dress comment – although he did get married in a kilt. The laptop and the dog, Leroy, are the result of a progressive retinal degeneration that began 20 years ago when Rev. Edwards was just 12. He was 15 when he found out that his rapidly deteriorating sight would never be restored. One of his biggest regrets was that he would never be able to drive. “At the time it wasn’t the end of the world,” he said. “It was, let’s deal with this. I’m still a valid person.” He now has only about 5 percent of the vision of a normally sighted person. Any hope for future restoration of his sight is tied up in the controversial issue of stem cell research.

HEADED FOR MINISTRY

Rev. Edwards grew up in the United Church of Canada, which he described as a Methodist-Presbyterian mix. He became part of the Moravian Church when he was 14. He graduated from Concordia University College of Alberta in Edmonton with a degree in psychology in 1999 and worked for a few years at a software company but always knew “I wanted to have some connection to the church.” He enrolled at Moravian Theological Seminary in Bethlehem, PA and began looking for a church after graduating in May.

The Moravian call system for pastors “all happens behind the scenes” between denomination officials and board members of the local congregation. “Then the district president comes to your house with an envelope,” Rev. Edwards said. “It’s essentially a job offer, and then you come out and do the interview.”

Great Kills Moravian was in the market for a new pastor following the retirement of the Rev. Dr. Reed Acheson, so the envelope Rev. Edwards received sent him in the direction of Staten Island. “I thought I would end up in Wisconsin,” he said, but he and his wife, they met in seminary, were happy to come to New York because they both have family in the East. “Now we’re really central and everybody comes through here,” he said.

NEW CHALLENGES

The first-time pastor describes his new job as ”scary and exciting,” and believes the congregation “cuts me a little slack.” This past Sunday, a communion Sunday, he explained that though it’s Moravian tradition for the pastor to come to the people to distribute the bread and wine, he thought it would be better for the congregation to come to him at the altar instead.

“The pastor with the vision impairment stumbling around might not make you feel like you’re in worship,” he joked. With the help of Claudia McGloin, a church elder, the service went off without a hitch.  Leroy was snoring quietly by the pulpit. Congregation members are not at all bothered by the change, said Mrs. McGloin. “Our church is growing because of him,” she said. “We’re very lucky.”

During the Children’s Message, when a dozen or so young members of the church crowded around the pastor, Rev. Edwards asked a question and then reminded the children, “I can’t see your hands up so just shout it right out. Remember this isn’t like regular school.” Rev. Edwards uses a mini-laptop to help him on the altar. An electronic voice transmitted into an earpiece connected to the computer feeds him his lines and enable him to deliver his sermon without the benefit of notes. “I do a complete manuscript of the service,” he said.

In some areas, the pastor said he’s got it easier than his sighted colleagues. “In preaching class, they taught us how to make eye contact, but I’m always looking up,” he laughed. “I’m like those Disney animatronics. I focus on where the noise is coming from” May Schreiber, secretary of Great Kills Moravian but a member of New Dorp Moravian, described the new pastor as “really gifted. We’re having a good time,” she said after service on Sunday.

Rev. Edwards has had Leroy, a yellow Labrador retriever who came from Guide Dogs for the Blind in Oregon, since just before he started seminary. Although the dog wore a cap and gown at graduation, “he slept through all the classes,” the pastor noted. As both Leroy and the pastor learn their way around the church and a new house, they’re finding their biggest challenges outdoors. “For both of us, the hardest thing is the crooked intersections in the neighborhood. We can’t really go anywhere on our own yet.”