A drop in the bucket! A spit in the ocean! One grain of sand on the beach! The news from Africa is so bleak that thinking about doing anything to help seems like an exercise in frustration, if not futility. But United Church folks from coast to coast made a statement of hope and not despair when they resoundingly supported the Beads of Hope campaign.

Our church is making our own little contribution to the declaration of hope for Africa. Dr. Elizabeth Hynd has established the New Hope Centre in Swaziland. The Centre has been built as a home for 60 AIDS orphans, Dr. Hynd's children, who are all given the surname "Abraham". For these are indeed the children of Abraham, children rescued to be given a hope and a future… and a home. According the United Nations, 25 percent of the present adult population of Swaziland will have died by 2010. The adult population: the mothers and fathers, the nurses and merchants, the police officers and dentists, the schoolteachers and bus drivers.

Dr. Hynd is rescuing a remnant, children who are given a home, a family, schooling and health care and who then, in return, will be a blessing to their homeland and its people. She has a lifelong commitment to Swaziland and its people as the daughter of medical missionaries; now in his eighties, her father is the only physician serving a large population at the mission clinic.

The New Hope Centre was built to accommodate 60 children. Currently, two of the bedrooms are being used as classrooms. And that's where Pelham Community Church, a United church congregation in the Niagara Peninsula, comes in. We have committed to raising the funds to build a preschool and a primary school, and that will free up the room in the house that is needed for the family to grow. The children are brought into the home in groups of five or six, giving them time to settle in and be at home. But bringing in more kids gets stalled when the Big Boys room has been staked out as a classroom for 25 preschoolers and the Big Girls room is at capacity as a one room primary schoolhouse. That's one of the most appealing things about this project: by building two schools we simultaneously create a space for 24 more children to find a permanent, loving home. And it is only going to cost one hundred thousand dollars.

Only one hundred thousand dollars! At times it seems like an enormous, if not impossible, sum of money for one fairly small congregation to take on as a project. But put it in perspective. Think of those 24 kids, call it 25 and divide that into a hundred thousand. Now, we see the cost of a permanent loving home for a child is $4,000: what many families spend on vacations in a year. A hundred thousand dollars buys, they tell me, one-only one-luxury automobile.

It certainly is a significant sum. But not a terrifying one! We are approaching other community partners and individuals. And our experience in raising funds for other mission projects gives us courage. In February we sent a team of men to Guatemala with a local Niagara mission agency called "Wells of Hope." Drilling wells, roofing a school, building school furnishings: what the guys accomplished gives us all a huge sense of thanksgiving for what can be done by ordinary folks.

Our congregation was, until 1968, part of the Evangelical United Brethren Church, and that heritage continues to have a profound impact on our life as a community of faith. The EUB motto was "As much for others as for ourselves." This latest endeavour, to raise the funds to build the schools and then to send a team over to help with the work, is part of our goodly, and godly, heritage.

If you would like more information about the project, contact us and we will keep you posted. And could we ask you to pray for us: for with God, all things are possible. .

Rev. Dr. Diane Walker is minister of Pelham Community Church and Senior Editor of Fellowship Magazine.