Conference Planning Season

The Mission Banquet focusing on Imagine No Malaria at
Rocky Mountain Annual Conference 2013

It's still winter outside, but annual conference planning season is well underway. You have probably already heard that this year's session for Rocky Mountain Conference will take place in Pueblo, part of our effort to rotate among the districts every few years. Many clergy and lay members have to travel long distances every year because the Metro area is hundreds of miles from where they live and serve, so once in a while it's only fair that the Metro (and other Front Range Colorado) members travel to see other parts of our region as well.

When choosing a site for annual conference, the staff and other conference leaders take into account travel options, meeting space, hotel availability, and other logistics. But in Mozambique, it turns out they have to take malaria into account as well. Jill Wondel, one of the Field Coordinators for Imagine No Malaria in the Missouri Annual Conference, shares a story that puts things into perspective:

When I was sharing my story with our district superintendent, Kendall Waller, he told me his own story about malaria. He recently visited Mozambique, I think it was this spring, and was with one of the leaders of the church there.

They were visiting the northern part of the country and the man mentioned to Kendall that when they were planning for their annual meetings, their Annual Conference, they originally thought about holding the meeting in that area.

But because the prevalence of malaria is greater in the north, they decided to move the conference further south. They determined that if they held the conference in the north for one week that they would lose 70 people to malaria.

70 people.

They had to decide where to hold their conference not based on available hotels or the size of the conference center, but on how many people they thought would die in the week they were there.

Malaria is a powerful enemy. But we have an opportunity to change that.

What are you going to do with that opportunity?