TITLE: University Shows Methodist Labors
Release # 41 {2905} April 24, 1996
DENVER (UMNS) -- Seven years ago, Africa University was a dream and a vacant field.
Today, the first United Methodist university in southern Africa is 300 students strong. Among its first graduates is a United Nations nutrition staffer, a teacher in a rural girl's school and a pastor who has doubled the size of her congregation -- from 800 to 1,600 -- in just two years.
A celebration of Africa University -- including a performance by members of the university's choir -- capped the afternoon session of the 1996 General Conference April 23. In later sessions, the 998 delegates will decide on whether to approve the $20 million funding package for the university.
As with the two previous quadrennial assemblies, officials of the university are asking to receive $10 million in local-church apportionments and $10 million in "second-mile" giving over the next four years.
In hailing the growth of Africa University, assistant vice- chancellor James Salley, noted that the school has grown from a handful of students to nearly 300 in four colleges: theology, business, education and agriculture.
He praised various annual conferences and other groups for their financial support of the university, and introduced Korean Methodist Bishop Sun-Doh Kim. Kwan-Lin Methodist Church, in Seoul, reportedly among the largest Methodist congregations in the world, recently donated $1 million for the construction of a chapel on the Africa University campus.
Two university graduates also offered thanks to the General Conference for United Methodism' support of the school. Paulo Filipe Bunga of Angola, now with the United Nations food development office in Mozambique, said his education by the church-related college helped him understand the importance of helping people find "food for the body as well as the soul."
The Rev. Tsitsi Moyo, also a 1994 graduate, now pastor of St. Andrew's United Methodist Church in Harare, Zimbabwe, recounted her own journey from a girl denied the prospect of a formal education, to a trained pastor serving a fast-growing, urban church. "At Africa University I learned to flex my spiritual muscles," she said. "For that, and for my ministry, I am
grateful."The United Methodist Church is related to more than 120 schools, colleges and universities in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Africa.
--M. Garlinda Burton
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