News, Friday May 13

Opening Worship

Go Make Disciples

The Rev. Pastor Jimmy Hao, Presiding Minister, gathered the Northwest Washington Synod Assembly, held in Lynnwood, WA, for the Holy Communion Friday morning worship service. Music ministers, Sounds of Grace, from First Lutheran Church of Richmond Beach led the Assembly in traditional hymns as well as an African American spiritual and a Honduran Alleluia.

Bishop Wm Chris Boerger set the tone for the Assembly with his sermon which focused on risk-taking and how to share our faith with those in our world who are dying physically, socially or spiritually. Just as the woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages and who risked touching the cloak of Jesus as an act of faith (Matthew 9:20), we too need to speak and act on the Easter truth of resurrection. Jesus sends us out to help those who are unclean and in our present society that includes those with HIV/AIDS and Malaria. There are 33.2 million people living with HIV/AIDS worldwide, and malaria is the second leading cause of death.

“Our usual way of doing things doesn’t apply”, said Bishop Boerger. If we continue on our present course we, as a church, are in risk of dying. What should we do? Jesus says, “Go, make disciples,” and in our churches we need to do this by taking risks and reaching out to people we have traditionally not reached out to. Let us be resurrection people, called by God, to speak the message of Easter into a dying world.

The Assembly joined together in the communion meal to taste and see that the Lord is good. The Rev. Jan Nesse dismissed the assembly stating, “Christ is with you.” The Assembly was then declared open, to begin the work of welcoming others into the family of God.

Plenary 1

Recognition

60th Anniversary of Ordination

50th Anniversary of Ordination

35th Anniversary of Ordination

25th Anniversary of Ordination

25th Anniversary of Commissioning

Congregation Anniversaries

• Holy Cross, Bellevue, 50 Years
• Our Savior, Issaquah, 50 Years
• First, Bothell 125 Years

Plenary 2

Churchwide Representative, Twila Schock
Global Mission Support and Missionary Sponsorship Team

Twila Schock’s ministry is to support the church’s global mission by working in global mission advancement. She told the story of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Zambia, its pastor Alfred Chana, and ELCA missionary, Arden Strasser.

She described the Zambia Church, with 2300 members (as opposed to our 4.5 million), with buildings built of mud brick pillars and thatched roofs, with no electricity, running water, or internet. But this is the church, Strasser said, that has shown him “the love of Christ and freed me to love in new ways.” Pr. Stasser has helped the Zambian church establish a micro-credit project with ELCA World Hunger support.

One thousand adults received training and $40 each--a large sum of money in Zambia—to develop projects to strengthen the stewardship of their church. Successful farms started by these community members have allowed the community to build new church buildings and parsonages and to build upon the church’s HIV/AIDS ministry—a center to serve the needs of children orphaned because their parents have died of AIDS.

After we viewed an engaging video which brought greetings from Bishop Hanson, we were thanked by Shock for our generous mission support that has made ministries like this possible. Our synod has done some amazing things, she said. Last year this synod raised $178,375.24 for World Hunger; four domestic hunger grants were used for ministry; 12 new mission starts were begun--all a powerful statement of how we in this synod are freed by Christ to serve.

Report of the Bishop, presentation 1360 KB

Plenary 3

Keynote Speaker, Dr. Ruanne V. Barnabas, introduced by Dr. Jeff Probtsfield, Professor of Medicine - University of Washington

Advances in Prevention of HIV

The Assembly welcomed Ruanne V. Barnabas, MBChB D.Phil from the University of Washington as the keynote speaker who spoke on the advances in prevention of HIV. There are now 33.3 million adults and children living with HIV, two-thirds of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa. There are over 7,000 new HIV infections every day. About 97% are in low- and middle-income countries and about 1,000 are in children under 15 years of age.

Dr. Barnabas feels that the future is exciting with landmark success in a new microbicide gel and an oral drug. The new anti-retroviral therapy (ART) is reducing HIV transmission by greater than 90% and is also reducing other diseases while treating HIV. Uganda just started the first year of a pilot home-based counseling and testing program. The steps in this program include community sensitization, household consent, individual pre-test counseling and finally an HIV test. There are very few exclusions in this program. They have found that if the family or partner of an HIV patient is supportive of this program, the HIV patient is more likely to take his/her medications. This program estimates that 96% of those taking the gel or drug are less infectious.

We were reminded that this disease affects the generalized population and that 1 in 5 adults are infected with HIV in South Africa. The cost of the program is far outweighed by the economical savings and by the number of human lives saved. Dr. Barnabas commended us for our social actions in this endeavor.

Keynote presentation - HIV: Advances in Prevention 3179 KB

Malaria 101 – Dianne Johnson

Malaria is not the flu, although both involve chills, fever and fatigue. With Malaria one has many episodes in one year unlike the flu which affects a person once a year, perhaps every 5 to 10 years. There is no Malaria vaccine. With the flu complications are from secondary infections and deaths occur in primarily older and chronically ill patients. With Malaria complications are from a parasitic infection and deaths are primarily among children younger than 5 years old and pregnant women.

In 2008 half of the world’s population was at risk for Malaria. There were 247 million cases and 881 thousand deaths. 90% of deaths occur in Africa mostly among children younger than 5 years of age. 40% of public health dollars are spent on Malaria. $12 billion were lost in African financial productivity.

Malaria continues to effect people where the parasite, mosquitoes, and humans live together. The female anopheles mosquito needs blood in order to breed. If she bites a human with active Malaria she becomes infected. After about 10 days the mosquito has enough of the Malaria parasite in her saliva to infect humans she bites. Those bitten will show signs of Malaria in 9-14 days.

There are two low cost, high impact strategies being used to prevent Malaria—bed nets (mosquitoes can’t get to an infected person and uninfected persons are protected from a mosquito carrying the parasite) and indoor spraying (which kills the mosquito before it can infect others). Even with bed nets and spraying some will still contract Malaria.

In 2006 Zanzibar had a trial to implement bed nets, indoor spraying, education and better access to medical resources for the entire island. Success of this trial showed how these measures can successfully prevent and treat Malaria.

Why address the problem of Malaria? We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God gave us to do. Today we have the opportunity to be part of the movement to eradicate Malaria from the world. Curing Malaria will free up resources for education, clean water projects and medical care for other diseases.

You can make a difference in the fight against Malaria. There are a lot of resources to help us, such as the video we viewed on Malaria produced by Lutheran World Relief. Pray, learn (research online, Lutheran Malaria Initiative, ELCA World Hunger), advocate (Presidents Malaria Initiative, Global Health Fund), give generously and share the story.