A Letter from Washington DC

Dear Diana, Monika and Uwe,

I hope you all are well and moving forward with your wonderful project in Masi. I wanted to write and let you know that our church, St. Peter’s, has officially agreed to work with your church on the Masi project and develop a mission program. I met with our Rector a week ago and then our missions Chair this week and they were both very enthusiastic. Today, we had our Service Opportunities Fair at church and I now have a committee of over 15 people to help out with our South Africa missions project. And on November 15th, I will do a presentation to the entire church on the Masi project and how we might be able to help. Also, the new Bishop of Viriginia is meeting with the Diocesan missions coordinator this week to discuss the Diocese involvement with Africa. I’ve been asked to draft a quick memo to brief him on the South African project and our church’s involvement.

I would love to get status updates on how the project is moving forward and what you need help with, now and on a recurring basis as time allows you to provide them. It would also be great to get websites for your church, the Trust, and any Tax ID information you have the shows the non-profit status of the Trust.

In the meantime, I hope to work on various fundraisers through the committee. We will try and see what amount we can send you in the short run from our missions budget (it will be small) and then work out a plan for fundraising over the next year. In addition, several people have mentioned accessing grants (Uwe!!) through the Episcopal church and so we hope to work on preparing applications for those grants here on the US side. Because we are in Washington, we have several people familiar with the grant-making process who can help us navigate that on your behalf.

We have targeted summer (August) 2011 as possible date for a team of St. Peter’s parishioners to visit South Africa. There seems to be a lot of interest and enthusiasm for working with all of you. And of course, the Higgs family is dearly remembered at St. Peters and their participation was quite instrumental in getting this off the ground! Bettie Joy even suggested doing a Maundy Thursday African pancake breakfast as a fundraiser, so I will need to get your recipe Diana for African pancakes. Apparently they were delicious!

Friends, it will be such a blessing to work with you all. Looking forward to it and please let us know in big ways and small how we can help and encourage you in this wonderful project you are undertaking on behalf of these children.

All the best, Anna

Anna Fernau
www.blackandwhitecandids.com