Daniela and Valentin will be visiting us at St Mary Magdalene, Belmont, Durham on 3rd May. As a ‘link’ church, we are committed to supporting Daniela and Valentin with prayer, encouragement and support: or, as the CMS website puts it: ‘we ask that your church or group provide support for your Link partner through prayer, giving and building a relationship with them. By working together, we can increase passion for mission among people and share in the burdens and blessings of mission work.’

The Kozhuharovs’ mission work involves them working with the Department of Religious Education in the Russian Orthodox Church and are based in Moscow. Their particular focus is Religious Education in schools and the re-establishment of Sunday schools for adults and children in parishes – all this, of course, would have been impossible only twenty years ago under the former Communist regime.

Over the past six months, their jobs have involved travelling over 14,000 kilometres (nearly 9000 miles) mainly by train and car as they attended conferences on Religious Education  and Missiology (yes, there is a branch of study looking at the hows and whys of mission) – they visited their home country of Bulgaria, where they organised a Christian Summer Camp. They also saw their daughter Zornista settled into her music studies in London – their son, Martin, is studying in Germany. Amongst all this Daniela has written a book on Church History (no doubt she can say more about this when they visit Durham in May)

Please do pray for Daniela and Valentin and for your link missionaries – if you don’t have a link missionary, why not explore the option with your minister and PCC? Such support for people is always welcome – as the Kozhuharovs say, ‘your support for our mission is your mission, and that your churches are missionary churches through your links with CMS and with us…’.

(For more information on link missionaries see: www.cms-uk.org)

‘I have been really blessed to have had some friends staying with me over the past few days. While they are at home [in the UK] for the moment, they are hoping to go back to Afghanistan, and loved visiting Southall and seeing the colours and the Asian atmosphere of our high street. We also ate at the Kabul restaurant, which serves traditional Afghan cuisine, and we reminisced about the food we have eaten!

‘This was all particularly poignant for me, as I will be leaving CMS in the autumn after 10 years. So I won’t be returning overseas to live, although I do hope to visit Afghanistan once again to see my former work colleagues and friends.’

Having been a ‘traditional missionary’, then a not-so-traditional one, does this mean that Sian has stopped caring about the Third World and wants to concentrate on life here?

‘Rubbish!’ is the robust response: ‘I still care passionately about what happens in the third world, and I’d like to focus on peace building activities. [Since working in London, Sian has been completing an MA in Peace and Reconciliation Studies at Coventry University] Violent conflict within states has increased since the fall of the iron curtain, and this is in great part a legacy of first world intervention. I may choose to live in the first world, but I want to continue to work in a way that has a positive impact on the developing world as well.’

So, Sian, there are no plans to stop being a missionary, then?

‘The Anglican church has 5 marks of mission: one is about proclaiming the Good news, one is about discipling believers, two are about helping people and society more generally, and one is about caring for creation. Mission is –always has been – much more than “preaching to the heathen,” it involves expressing the incarnational love of Jesus wherever and to whomever we meet. I’ll still be part of this great mission wherever I live.’

As Sian moves on – and uses her new learning – we pray for her; and for CMS as they seek to find the right person to continue the work on Southall.

If you want to know more about the work of CMS (and A Rocha, who also work in Southall) see www.cms-uk.org and www.arocha.org.uk

Sian has been a ‘traditional’ missionary (see photo): for six years, she worked cross-culturally in Asia, seeking to help those whose lives had been blighted by disasters; whether natural or man-made. However, when she came home eighteen months ago, the Church Mission Society offered her this posting. But how could she be a mission partner in Britain’s capital city? ‘Very easily’ she says, ‘Southall is 90% BME.’ In other words, by far the majority of the people who now live there come from the Black and Minority Ethic communities: so their faith and culture are often very different from what most of us might recognise as ‘British’. Often Sian deals with women who have had to flee hardship and persecution, but whose problems aren’t over as they find it hard living here. As she says: ‘The women have different English abilities, but I have been really excited to be able to help the Afghan ladies in particular cope with some of the bureaucracy of life in the UK, and it has been heartening to see their language ability improve.’

But as park keeper? Actually, Sian is the director of the A Rocha ‘Living Waterways’ Project. A Rocha is a Christian Organisation that believes the Bible tells us we have a God-given responsibility to care for the earth He created. Sian and her team help run a local park with nature conservation, hedgerow planting and the like. They also go into schools teaching pupils about the environment and doing assemblies.

One question Sian is asked is ‘how does this become mission?’ Her answer is simple: ‘Mission isn’t just Bible-bashing, it never has been, but it is about reaching the whole person. A Rocha is a holistic organisation, and in such a cross-cultural place as Southall, we have wonderful opportunities to reach members of the Sikh, Muslim and Hindu populations with talk of how we see care for our world as part of our Christian concern for them and their world.’

If you want to know more about the work of CMS and A Rocha, see www.cms-uk.org and www.arocha.org.uk