Walking with
God
Seminary friends help Congolese orphan get prosthetic legs
Essay by Christina Cavener, Special Contributor
“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn.”
(Isaiah 61:1-2) Could this passage be any richer with liberation? It is chock-
full of ways in which the Spirit of God calls us to release, to bind up, to liberate, and to proclaim good news! We are to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor: Jubilee. Jubilee, the biblical concept of total freedom and rest, is a
culmination of the Sabbath. Jubilee is justice: it moves all of cre- ation from debt to equal living, from sickness to health, from captivity to freedom, and from hunger to fulfillment. There is no greater calling on humanity than to bring forth this vision of healing.
This calling to enact the vision of Isaiah always comes from
the communities we are connected to: namely the body of Christ. My involvement at the Denton Wesley Foundation in Denton, Texas, led me to Cameroon in 2006. There, we hosted a camp honoring youth leaders for the United Methodist Church in that country. It was this experience that forced me to evaluate my future in a new way. God was calling me to breach my com- fort zone and to venture beyond the world I had created for my- self. At the time, I was not sure what this would entail, but two years later my new home became the city of Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of Congo. My participation in the body of Christ moved me from one side of the world to another. From August 2008 until May 2009, I served as an English
teacher at The English Speaking School of Lubumbashi and as a volunteer at the Jamaa Letu Orphanage under the United Methodist Church. My responsibility was to teach from Monday to Thursday and simply to spend time at the orphanage from Friday to Sunday. The more I did, the more awareness I gained about the chil-
Playing with the children at the Jamaa Letu orphanage has been a joyful part of Christina Cavener’s time there. 4 B | NOVEMBER 4, 2011 | UNITED MET HODI S T REPORTER
dren’s needs. There were no mosquito nets, school supplies, or decent shoes, and their clothing was full of holes. The list of needs seemed endless. Brittany Burrows and I began to email churches and contacts we knew from the UMC’s North Texas Conference. In no time, money came pouring in. We were able to provide mattresses, clothing, shoes, school books and supplies, mosquito nets, malaria medication, and more. Our original pur-
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