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By Barbara Dunlap-Berg*
2:30 P.M. EST March 11, 2010 | NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UMNS)
Mozart Adevu (right), a missionary with the United Methodist Board of
Global Ministries, is presented with honey by beekeepers at the Ganta
mission
station in Liberia in July 2008. A UMNS photo courtesy of
June Kim.
View in Photo Gallery
No United Methodists are assigned to Pakistan, but the March 10
murder of charity workers there points to the need for constant
vigilance regarding the safety of missionaries, church officials said.
Six Pakistani employees of the U.S.-based Christian charity World
Vision were killed and seven others were wounded in an attack on the aid
group’s offices in a remote village in northern Pakistan, according to
news reports.
The United Methodist Board of Global Ministries has not had
missionaries in Pakistan for at least 20 years, said Lois M. Dauway, the
interim top executive for mission and evangelism. “We do relate as a
mission partner with the United Church of Pakistan, but the arrangement
does not involve personnel.”
In any mission posting, however, safety is a primary concern, Dauway
said.
“We carefully investigate political, social, economic and religious
realities in each country where United Methodist missionaries work. Our
staff is constantly alert, as are our local partners, to security
issues,” Dauway said.
The board does all missionary placements “in collaboration with
indigenous mission partners,” she explained. “Questions of security
figure in our dialogues on continuations and new placements.”
In volatile areas, the board has procedures for preparedness, and
missionaries have been withdrawn or moved to safe locales within
countries where conflicts occur.
“As a matter of precaution,” Dauway said, “missionaries scattered in
Kenya were called into Nairobi for safety reasons just a few years back.
We also moved missionaries from one place to another during civil
disruptions in West Africa and a few places in Asia in recent years. The
same was true earlier in the Democratic Republic of Congo.”
In places with reputations for danger, the board is “constantly in a
state of preparedness. To be prepared is part of what it means to assign
and support missionaries.”
Dauway reported that in 1977, Glenn Eschtruth, who served in a
mission hospital in Kinshasa, Zaire, was killed in warfare. According to
her records, that was the only such instance of a missionary dying
violently.
“Safety and security are thoroughly included in missionary training
and covered in our missionary handbook,” she said.
Missionaries and the staff members who relate to them, Dauway said,
are “well-informed on the nature of armed conflict and other threats;
they are vigilant, agile and capable in confronting such challenges.”
*Dunlap-Berg is internal content editor for United Methodist
Communications.
News media contact: Barbara Dunlap-Berg, Nashville, Tenn., (615)
742-5489 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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