Cogges Parish newsletter October 2000

From the newsletter ...

Good Deeds

The crested crane is an African bird with beautifully coloured feathers and a very elegant walk. One day a crested crane with her beautiful crown raised, met a toad wandering along, looking for its lunch. They started to talk to each other. The crested crane began: "Have you noted my elegant beauty, poor toad, and how I have been made with such sublime perfections?" The toad looked at the crested crane with pity and replied, "But what about your heart?"

Many people do good deeds hoping to be well thought of by whoever sees them. But if we want to be appreciated by God, we have to be careful of our motives. Indeed good deeds can make the person who does them feel good, but in many cases other people do not even notice them. In his powerful Sermon on the Mount Jesus puts it strongly:

Be careful not to do your "acts of righteousness" before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. (Matthew 6:1)

Do we consider our motives before acting? Are they subjective or objective? Remember that the kind of friend Jesus showed was not the neighbour nor the sibling. The parable of the good Samaritan is what it is all about. A Burundian proverb says, "If you scare the baby birds from your crops, your child starves". Christian fellowship needs to focus on Christian love, the unconditional love which always trusts. Christian fellowship needs to aim only at heavenly realms. Be aware once again that giving brings more blessings than receiving. No one can give what he has not got. But Christian love pushes us to understand that we have received freely by the grace of our Lord and that we ought to give freely.

Pascal Bigirimana

Focus on our African Links...

As a parish we have two rather different links with Africa, one in Burundi and one in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DCR)

Link one

Pascal Bigirimana studied for two years at Wycliffe Hall in Oxford and did part of his training on our parish. Pascal lives in Bujumbura, Burundi's capial, with his wife and three daughters. He is the Provincial secretary of the Episcopal church in Burundi, working directly for the Archbishop of Burundi, and divides his time between administrative work, and ministry in a new church in a new suburb of Bujumbura alongside three lay workers.

Burundi, which borders on Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and the DCR, is a very poor country which has recently been racked by intermittent civil war and suffering under economic sanctions for much of the last forty years. The people long for a lasting peace, and hope that the agreement that was signed in Arusha on 28 August this year will provide the way forward.

Link two

The Democratic Republic of Congo has also had much internal conflict over the last five years. Our links are with the Ngbaka people in the north west of the country. Primary schools there are in a pathetic state with almost nothing to write with (imagine learning to write in the sand) and few books even for the teachers.

One of the school children with his new ruler

Through the "alternative" parties on the 31 October, children in the parish and at Blake School have collected pencils, pens, rulers etc. to send out to the Ngbaka children and have also sent money to buy exercise books and literacy books. This is developing into a link with the primary school in Bogbaguma.

Bogbaguma is a small town of about 5000 people. The school has about twelve classes, and there may be anything from 20 to 110 children in a class, even though the official limit is 55! The parents have to pay (maybe in farm produce) because no teacher has received any salary from the government for the last four years. Some teachers continued with lessons in the jungle when people fled their homes 18 months ago. That war is over now but the Ngbaka people are still rebuilding their homes and their lives.

Harvest Help - this year the parish will be sending money out to buy simple farm tools - spades, forks, hoes etc. which are desperately needed. On 31 October, the children will be collecting seeds to send out, so that hopefully each family represented at Bogbaguma school will receive a packet of seed.

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