United Methodist Church members from left Mrs Sarah Dibi, Mrs Patricia Mapani and Mrs Christina Mlambo pose for a picture during the World Assembly for Methodist Women’s Conference held in the US recently

MORE than 200 Zimbabwean women attended the 13th edition of the World Assembly for Methodists Women Conference in the United States of America from August 29 to September 3, 2016.

The conference ran under the theme ‘Chosen people called to proclaim’. The theme will run until 2021.

The Zimbabwean delegation comprised women from the United Methodist Church, Methodist Church in Zimbabwe and the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

The week-long conference, held in Houston, saw Methodist Church in Zimbabwe, Mrs Spiwe Chisvo and United Methodist, Mrs Patricia Mapani landing the president and vice president posts for the South-East Africa area respectively.

The World Federation of Methodist and uniting churches or World Assembly for Methodists women is a fellowship of officially recognised groups of Methodist women from across the world.

It is organised in units. In Zimbabwe, we have the United Methodist, Methodist Church in Zimbabwe and African Methodist Episcopal Church ( AME).

These units are in nine geographical areas — Europe, Asia, North America, South America and Africa, among others.

Africa has two areas — North and South-East Africa.

South- East Africa covers countries that include Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda Somalia, Burundi, Seychelles and Comoros, Botswana, Zambia, Lesotho, South Africa, Malawi, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Namibia, Mauritius, Swaziland, Madagascar and Zimbabwe.

The Sunday Mail Religion writer Desire Ncube caught up with Mrs Mapani and she highlighted the duties assigned to the duo that was inaugurated as the new leaders at the conference after being elected last year in their areas.

Mrs Mapani said that the previous executive couldn’t manage to reach out to all the countries in the region because of different reasons that included prevalence of wars and financial constraints.

“As the new executive, we are encouraged to go into each and every country mentioned above. We must go and identify Methodist women and bring them back into the fellowship.

“As the World Federation of United Methodist women, we have a seat at United Nations ( UN) and as a result we work with UN in trying to advance and achieve its resolutions.

“Previously, we were focusing more on the Millennium Development Goals ( MDGs). If you remember as Methodist women, we did a lot locally trying to achieve the Environmental Sustainability goal, we conducted workshops to come up with ways of keeping our environment clean, we advocated for clean water, waste management and waste disposal,” she said.

She said during the weeklong conference, they discussed way of knowing Christ.

“We will use worship, social actions and relationships as strategies to proclaim the goodness of the Lord. We shall use drama and children ministries so as to groom our children to work for God from tender ages.

“On social actions, we will be looking at healing sessions and identifying areas that we should come in as Methodist women. Nowadays, we see many people who are practicing and preaching healing in ways that we don’t understand.

“There is need to be clear on what we believe in as the church in as far as healing is concerned,” she said.

Mrs Mapani said the church also needs to come up with ways of ending human trafficking and promote environmental sustainability.

“As the negative effects of global warming are affecting everyone regardless of religious affiliations, how are we taking care of the resources that we have — water, trees — how are we disposing baby pampers? These issues need us to be addressed.” she said.

She also spoke about handling relationships in church with fellow members.

“That is when we talk about hospitality, are we hospitable enough as Methodist women? Are we visiting our elderly and the sick, are we talking to those who need help? It is not supposed to be just material, are we uplifting people spiritually?”