United Action: 7.000 Euro from Papua

"Your hospitality and your gifts are challenging us", UEM General Secretary Dr Fidon Mwombeki said to the 10,000 people celebreating the 160th mission jubilee on the island of Mansinam, West Papua. The Evangelical Christian Church in Tanah Papua (GKI-TP) had hosted the Asian Regional Assembly of UEM and impressed the delegates of the UEM member churches by its generosity and hospiltality.

"The missionaries Ottow and Geisler were ordinary people who came from Germany to share the good news with the people in Papua", Dr Fidon Mwombeki said at the mission jubilee. "Today you are Ottow and Geisler, because you give and share your gifts as a church."

Donating for children in need

As the first hosting church of the Asia Reginal Assembly the GKI-TP had financed the assembly on its own. "Share the Good News – Faith and Grace in Action" was the title of the assembly, and the church turned words into action: At the closing ceremony the church district of Sorong promised to give 100 million Indonesian Rupiah for the UEM (about 7,000 Euro). Dr Fidon Mwombeki was stunned by this readiness to give and promised to use this amount for the campaign "United Action for children in need".

More financial contributions by Africa and Asia

The campaign United Action aims at increasing the financial contributions of the African and Asian churches to the budget of UEM.How to reach this goal was one topic of the discussions at the Regional Assembly. One idea was to give a certain percentage of what is sold by the churches to projects for children in need, another idea is to install "circles of friendship" to support those projects. These and other ideas were adopted by the assembly and will be forwarded to the UEM General Assembly in Africa 2016.

Elections

The assembly also elected two new members for the Asia Regional Board (Desri Sumbayak of the Indonesian Christian Church (HKI) and Vera Faleleobaja of the Protestant Christian Church in Mentawai (GKPM)) and four delegates to the General Assembly: Jennie Keliat (Karo Batak Protestant Church/GBKP) and Hermin Rumbrar (Evangelical Christian Church in Tanah Papua/GKI-TP) as women delegates and Chintani Abeysinghe (Methodist Church of Sri Lanka/MC-SL) and Pimpinan Sijabat (Indonesian Christian Church/HKI) as youth delegates.