The Beyond Yeovil Group - BYG
The BYG are a group of Christians focusing on issues outside of the parish and have fostered various missionary links with Christians in other parts of the world. Through prayer, newsletters and fundraising they support the work of these missionaries.
The Lenton Family from Buenos Aires visited the parish for the weekend of 23rd September
Over the years, our churches have supported both financially and prayerfully, the link set up with the Street Kids Project in Kitwe, Zambia. Throughout those years, children on the streets have been loved, fed, had school fees paid for and in recent times, after successful searches, placed back with members of their extended families. The work continues, the farmland bought produces extra food and many children are taught skills to enable them to cope as they reach adulthood. It continues to be a project that is helped both locally and further afield.
During the last six months, the Rev Charley Thomas, now Dean of Lusaka Cathedral and formally Director of TEEZ ( Theological Training by Extension in Zambia ) at Mindola, Kitwe and son of the late Rev Thomas Thomas who set up the Street Kids Project, has discussed a new project he would like us to support. A former Street Kids student, Muyunda Simangolwa, was helped through schooling and worked as a gardener for Charley before becoming a permanent worker at TEEZ. He is also a student of Theology at the Centre for Christian Mission, Mindola , where he is in his second year and hopes to go up to the degree of Theology, finishing in 2010, allowing him to be ordained as a priest.
As Muyunda states in his letter to me:
‘My calling to God in his church has been in me since 1996 when I used to
congregate at Buchi Anglican Church. Since
then, there is no other job that I want to do but to serve God.’
After full discussion with the BYG Group and James, it has been decided that our link with Zambia will be with ordinand training, especially focussing on Muyunda. Through the link we will travel alongside him and his fellow students as they come to serve God. Prayer requests on both sides of the link will be set up, as will a notice board in the back of both churches containing Muyunda’s letters, pictures of himself, his family and his day to day life, along with up to date information about the college.
I do hope that this wonderful opportunity to have a personal link, in helping to train a much needed priest and build up a picture of life in Zambia, will give as much joy to us as a congregation, as it will to Muyunda.
Flic Streatfeild