Imagine No Malaria

On Friday night, we partnered with a local church, St. Mark's UMC, to hold a benefit dinner for Imagine No Malaria. Imagine No Malaria is a project through which the United Methodist Church seeks to end deaths from malaria. By clicking the link in the first sentence, you can read more about the project and its goals.

The dinner was called, "An Evening in Africa" and featured African dishes, speakers, videos, and music. The food was absolutely delicious, and I was happy to be able to share a table with four Congolese youth, two asylum seekers (from Egypt and Burundi) and a man originally from England. After we got our food, the Congolese youth waited a little bit before they started eating. The girl sitting next to me explained that they don't use silverware at home. It felt awkward to them to use silverware to eat African food, but they also felt awkward not using silverware since everyone else was using it. Eventually they decided to use the silverware to eat.

The father of the Congolese youth shared a short message about malaria and his own experience with it. He is the pastor of a local African congregation called Bethesda (which means pool of mercy). The young man from Burundi played piano beautifully through the beginning of the program and then sang a song about malaria that he had composed for this event. He then shared about his own experience with malaria.

The whole evening was very meaningful and touching. I think it was valuable for this group of Americans to be able to understand the effect that malaria actually has and to hear stories of people who have experienced it firsthand. I think it helped everyone to realize what an important campaign this is.

Whenever we come together to share stories we are engaging in something incredibly valuable, because these events give us the chance to recognize that everyone's story is important. I think being asked to share our stories reminds us that we are worth something and that our lives are not meaningless.

I also thought this event was a wonderful example of how the UMC is a global church. I think it is important for us to be able to contribute to something greater than ourselves, and it is so neat to be able to come from Michigan and hear about churches planning Imagine No Malaria events there, and then be able to attend Imagine No Malaria events here in Tucson, as well.

If you would like to contribute to the effort to Imagine No Malaria, click here and then select the red "Give Now" icon on the right side of the screen.