Some of you may know that I, as a long-term member of New England YM, have been traveling in East Africa for decades, with a travel minute written by Weare Monthly Meeting and endorsed by Dover Quarter and the Permanent Board. At Sessions this year, many of you began to ask what actually I am doing there.
My ministry is constantly growing and changing way beyond my initial calling to encourage fellow women. A group of over 20 Friends women pastors are now traveling in ministry to other tribes and nearby nations, helping women to find their own ways to change traditions that hold them down (e.g., having to always bow before men).
After finding many children (often 40 to 100) attending local meetings where there was nothing for them children, the ministry expanded to finding some women who could teach others to teach Sunday school in Uganda and Tanzania.
Beth Collea (Dover, NH, Friends Meeting) and Melinda Bradley (Philadelphia YM) visited Kenya in 2019 to teach Faith and Play/Godly Play methods. After sharing stories about early Friends in England and the U.S., we asked which African Friends should have their stories told. They responded by appointing two women to lead the Quaker Religious Education Collaborative (QREC) Africa.
One of their major projects is collecting oral histories of early African Friends, and they started the Africa Quaker Archives, in collaboration with Friends Theological College, in Kaimosi, Kenya. Due to my many years of experience and vibrant networking with diverse Friends in East Africa, I was asked to help conduct interviews and train others how to record history stories using simple smartphones.
If any of you have would like to receive the biweekly email messages (with photos) that I send while I am traveling, email me at [email protected].
There is much to learn from African Friends. If we are open to God and go with the motion of Love (as John Woolman went to the Native Americans in Pennsylvania), the majority of Friends in the world will benefit (as the majority of Quakers in the world are in Kenya).