Newsletter South Africa no 39 – May 2014

Interview with David Evans (Part 1)

Dr. Evans  describes himself as growing up in fragmented settings that led to attending Baptist, Roman Catholic, and Lutheran churches. As a teenager lost in various destructive circumstances, he drew strength from biblical teaching he remembered hearing as a boy in a revivalist camp. He then moved into new life as he cried out to Jesus, “Help me.”. He has worked in various ministry contexts. While living in Washington, DC, David was the Junior/Senior High Director of an out-of-school time program on Capitol Hill. Later he served as Community Development Resource coordinator with MCC East Coast. Most recently he was co-pastor of Boonton United Methodist Church in New Jersey. Professor Evans is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the History of Christianity at The Drew Theological School. He has academic degrees from Spring Arbor College in Michigan, Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., and Drew University in New Jersey. Professor Evans is interested in how white Protestant American forms of Christianity have been perceived through the eyes/experiences of people who live in the national, religious, and racial margins of the United States. He is currently working on a project exploring Methodist missionaries’ perception of Italian immigrants in early twentieth-century America as racial others. He currently is a faculty in Mission, Intercultural and Interfaith Studies at Eastern Mennonite Seminary.

Interview with Amy Potter Czajkowski

Amy Potter Czajkowski works for the Women’s Peacebuilding Leadership Program coordinating monitoring and evaluation and curriculum development. Amy is an adjunct instructor teaching in the areas of program evaluation and peacebuilding practice. She was the Program Director of Coming to the Table, an initiative that addresses the legacies and aftermaths of the US institution of slavery and has also served as Associate Director of the Practice and Training Institute and Coordinator of University Accord, a campus-wide program at EMU that provides mediation, facilitation and restorative justice services. Her areas of interests include reconciliation, historical trauma, trauma healing, process design and facilitation, evaluation and program development. Before coming to CJP, she worked at the Iowa Peace Institute conducting mediation, peer mediation, and conflict resolution trainings as well as intervening in interpersonal and organizational conflicts. She holds a B.A. from Principia College and an MA in conflict transformation from Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. Amy is married with two sons, a stepdaughter and stepson.

Interview with Ray Motsi

Ray Motsi, Ph.D. was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. He left Zimbabwe at the age of 19 and attended college in England. After he graduated, he learned that there had been a massacre in Zimbabwe. This massacre was part of Robert Mugabe’s Gukurahundi Conflict. He knew it was time to take a stand and make a change. He has dedicated his life to combatting the conflict in Zimbabwe through peace-building and non-violence. President of the Theological College of Zimbabwe (TCZ) since January 1991. Dr. Motsi previously has served as a Baptist pastor in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe for more than 20 years and, in 2002, he founded Grace to Heal, a faith-based organization focusing on community peacemaking and conflict transformation. He graduated from TCZ with a B.A. in Practical Theology in 1990 and then later from the University of Pretoria in South Africa where he earned his M.A. in Old Testament and Hebrew in 2001, and his Ph.D. in Peacebuidling, Conflict Resolution, and Trauma Healing in 2009. 

Confreres of Mozambique – Missionários de África – Padres Brancos 2014

Missionários de África – Padres Brancos 2014
Centro Nazaré, Inhamizua, Moçambique.