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Spain and Paraguay Join Forces to Help African Children

ALLADA, Benin — Cristina López from Paraguay is helping to care for children in a home begun here several years ago by a Mennonite church in Burgos, Spain. How did collaborating on an international mission in Africa by church communities thousands of miles apart happen?

“About 1996 our church community was going through difficulties which led us to feel that God was calling us to a change of focus. Instead of centering on our problems, we began to look into needs outside of our country and to consider whether there was something we could do about them,” reported Pastor Agustín Melgizo Alda, of Burgos, Spain.

In 1997 a delegation from Spain attended the Mennonite World Conference Assembly 13 in Calcutta and in 1998 another group visited Benin and the Ivory Coast, invited by Mennonite Mission Network (MMN). These experiences deepened what they already sensed. A new group visiting several African countries in 1999 arrived at the conviction that Benin was where they could start helping others who were already working there and later begin their own activity.

Francisco and Annette Castillo who had experience as mission workers in Africa were ready to cooperate, so in the summer of 2000 the Spanish church rented a house in Cotonou, Benin and opened a shelter for displaced children.

This house soon became too small. Today La Casa Grande, a new home in Allada, houses 25 children. In 2004, the church bought almost two hectares of land where they are building an educational and residential complex.

Francisco and Annette have returned to Spain, leaving a consolidated team of Africans in charge, managing the home and coordinating activities. During the summer more that 100 children from around the country attend a week-long camp. La Casa Grande offers Saturday afternoon club activities for children of the Allomey Fadjy neighborhood and a school program for some children without resources who attend the club.

Short term volunteers from the Burgos congregation as well as others from the Mennonite world including Canadians, Swiss and Germans, have come to lend a hand, said Agustín.

The Burgos Mennonite community has had a long relationship with Mennonite Mission Network in the US, which from the beginning supported the work of La Casa Grande in Benin. It was through MMN that the church came to know of Cristina López, a young woman from the Mennonite Church in Paraguay which offered to collaborate on the project for one year.

“Something curious happened at a Hispanic pastors’ meeting I attended in Canada last summer,” recalls Agustín. “There I met Pastor Alvin Neufeld of Paraguay. We discovered we were partners in a project through Cristina. He was unaware of my relationship to the work in Benin and I was ignorant of his relationship with Cristina. This was an interesting and congenial surprise, indeed.”

The Canadian event, branded IMPaCT (International Mennonite Pastors Coming Together), was designed to bring six international pastors to Canada to spend two weeks with six Canadian pastors to reflect together in practical ways from their different contexts rather than from academic or theological perspectives.

Recently, Alvin Neufeld, President of the Convención Evangélica Menonita del Paraguay (Evangelical Mennonite Conference of Paraguay), wrote that more than one year ago they started preparing Cristina López to go to Africa as a missionary. “Amazingly the doors opened to get in touch with the Mennonite church in Burgos, Spain and through them to get involved with La Casa Grande orphanage in Benin. YAMEN, a joint Mennonite World Conference and Mennonite Central Committee program for young adults, made it possible to send Cristina to serve in Benin for one year.

“In January 2007 she met the Burgos congregation, obtained a visa and proceeded to Benin. The Paraguayan Convención and Cristina’s congregation, Shalom, in Coronel Oviedo, are happy to be part of this international mission partnership. It brought us to think that we should continue preparing youth for God’s mission in the world,” said Neufeld.

In February Cristina López wrote home: “I am landing in my new world. Life is not easy here but neither is it very complicated. The heat is tolerable and there are not as many mosquitoes as I expected.

Most women here wear wigs, so children run after me to tug my hair and they want to know how I fix my “wig.” They call me yobu (European or white). I am sorry for the women and would like to help them find a more comfortable way to cover their heads than with those strange wigs.

“My difficulty with the language makes me feel strange: I have to find a teacher here.

“During the current month I get up at 8:00 a.m. and go to bed around midnight. I need to give an insulin shot four times a day to a diabetic girl, the last shot at 12:00 o’clock. I am not complaining, but I am seldom able to sleep well. Children and other monitors are quite noisy.

“Benin is one of the poorest countries I have known. We don’t have yogurt, milk, beef and the kind of food you have in Paraguay. You should value and thank God for milk products, fruits and meat that you don’t have any problems to get.”

— Milka Rindzinski with files from Agustín Melgizo Alda, Burgos, Spain, and Alvin Neufeld, Paraguay

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Photo available on request: Cristina López carries Abigail to a medical center in Allada. Abi, whose mother died a few weeks ago, now lives at La Casa Grande.