The Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain conferences, under the leadership of Bishop Warner H. Brown, helped to create an agricultural program at Quéssua (Advance #3022272). Kutela Katembo, a Global Ministries missionary with a degree in agriculture from Africa University, is in charge of the program. He was commissioned at the 2015 Yellowstone Annual Conference, and Mountain Sky remains his main support along with some help from a covenant relationship with the Florida Conference.
Katembo oversees the 20-hectare (about 50 acres) farm on the mission grounds, growing crops as well as raising chickens, pigs, goats, cattle and tilapia. East Angola is a food-insecure area, and much of the harvest is used to sustain the community, be it through providing food, feed for animals or seedlings for villagers to grow their own crops. Katembo also helps educate them on farming techniques and the right types of crops to grow for their conditions.
“Quéssua is surrounded by villages with people who can’t afford to eat three times a day,” Katembo said. “Whenever we have something from the farm, we use it to support the kids.”
Sally McConnell, former missions coordinator for the Yellowstone Conference, said the growth of the farm has been remarkable, considering that it started from literally nothing. The entire area had been cleared out during the war.
“When I was there, there was nothing because they were still cleaning land mines from the property that was to become the farm,” she said.
Katembo said that everything on the farm had been stolen or destroyed and he had to rebuild from scratch.
“Prior to the war, Quéssua was the food basket for the community, but there was just bush when I got here,” he said. “With the support of our partners, we were able to rehabilitate structures and add orchards, fish and animal production.”
Being in sparsely populated rural areas themselves, Mountain Sky churches can relate to the concerns of their brothers and sisters in East Angola.
“Farming and that rural sense of need to feed people connected our area to theirs. There are natural connections of taking care of the land, growing your own food, caring for community,” said the Rev. Jared Stine, pastor of Columbia Falls United Methodist Church in Columbia Falls, Montana, and a member of the team that visited in July 2023.
But the similarities don’t stop there, said King.
“Pastors in our conference also serve in a context where our churches can’t support a full-time pastor, and we have transportation challenges like they do,” she said, noting that she drives 194 miles every Sunday to the three churches she pastors in North Central Montana.
Knowing those challenges, it made sense that raising funds to buy trucks for both Katembo and Koome was a priority.
Both the conference and its churches have found creative ways to fundraise; raising a combined total of $9,200 to help reestablish seed supplies, starting a tilapia farm and more.
With talk of schism and disaffiliations dominating church news the past several years, Stine holds this partnership up as a welcome positive story to tell.
“In the midst of such division in the denomination, it’s amazing to see mission dollars at work, to remind us why being United Methodist is so special,” he said. “We can do things better together.”
excerpt from a story by Joey Butler, multimedia producer/editor for United Methodist News
This story represents how United Methodist local churches through their Annual Conferences are living as Vital Congregations. A vital congregation is the body of Christ making and engaging disciples for the transformation of the world. Vital congregations are shaped by and witnessed through four focus areas: calling and shaping principled Christian leaders; creating and sustaining new places for new people; ministries with poor people and communities; and abundant health for all.
