God, AIDS, Africa & HOPE

Reflections / Gedanken

03/19/2010 • 2:48 pm Comments Off on 19.03.2010 HOPE Cape Town Trust

19.03.2010 HOPE Cape Town Trust

In two hours the board of trustees of the HOPE Cape Town trust will congregate again at the Mediterranean Villa to discuss arising matters. The trust is still in the beginning, but the interest of the trustees is visible to make this trust a back up for HOPE Cape Town Association and to provide the necessary funds on the long-term run. This will take time and many efforts are medium term or long-term efforts, trying to guarantee the financial back up on the long-term run.

I am quite happy about our trustees and I trust that our meeting today will be a successful one. We will discuss the latest development at HOPE Cape Town Association before turning our attention to the efforts of our fundraising lady and her report back. A possible golf day and other events like the Ball of HOPE in May are on the agenda. But also BB BEE deals involving HOPE Cape Town Trust as a shareholder.

But this day was also about office work. I had to plan and arrange for the next travels, which will bring me to Johannesburg in April to attend the constitution of a national working group of the Southern African – German Chamber of Commerce and Industry on renewable energy/energy efficiency. Then Thailand for a couple of holidays. In May I then will travel to the Vatican and Germany for talks and meetings. June holds Johannesburg and Brits in church matters, before I have to fly to Vienna to attend the World AIDS Conference. August will bring some talks in Germany and Austria. So far the planing and the bookings are almost all done. In October / November I will attend the HOPE Gala Dresden and the Berliner AIDS Gala as well as attend some meetings. In between I have committed to quite some services and church related functions. So the year is indeed planed – but I am looking forward to each and every of these encounters with other people. Traveling makes tired, but meeting people energizes again. So  there is the balance of Ying and Yang in this case and I am looking forward to the end of the year, where hopefully a lot of these talks, seminars, meetings have been beneficial to HOPE Cape Town – especially those, who we care for in the townships of Cape Town.

Filed under: HOPE Cape Town Association & Trust, Networking, , , , , , , ,

02/20/2010 • 10:17 pm Comments Off on 20.02.2010 Time is flying

20.02.2010 Time is flying

Saturday again – time is indeed flying and who says, that time is passing quicker when one gets older: that is correct. The time, I have felt in the earlier time for days, are now easy covering a months.
Yesterday I had my first meeting with the new Archbishop of Cape Town and we discussed some matters, amongst others the initiative of pastoral work for HIV positive priests and religious in our church. I hope to see in the next three weeks the chairperson of the Southern African Bishops Conference on this issue to move forward and to be able to report back in May, when I am in Rome.
HOPE Cape Town needed this week also some attention, sometimes there are times of multiple decision-making processes at the same time which binds all energies and needs lots of focus. At the same time I had to finalize the first planing of my next travels, which will bring me to Gauteng end of the month for two weeks, then in May to Italy and Germany and in July to Austria and Germany. In between a short break in SE Asia.

And when I thought that I don’t have to work during Holy week and on Easter – since Thursday I know that I will be busy and helping out on all those holy days. That will be the first time to celebrate all these mysteries in English; well as long as I don’t have to sing in English, I will survive. 🙂

It was a busy week and today I digged me into reading the white paper of renewal energy of the Western Cape to get a grip also on this topic. All the acronyms are a bit strange to me, but the material itself is not that difficult as I thought. Tomorrow then 2 church services which I will now prepare.

Filed under: General, HOPE Cape Town Association & Trust, Reflection, , , , , , , , , , , ,

01/18/2010 • 7:24 pm Comments Off on 18.01.2010 Back to work…

18.01.2010 Back to work…

Who does not know the feeling at the end of a holiday to be thorn between liking to stay a bit longer but also the curiosity to get home and back to the daily routine of working, eating, sleeping and dreaming of the next holidays.
And I think I have enough to be excited about when coming home: HOPE Cape Town will get new offices under the wings of pharmacology and I will have my office there, much better than working from home. “Going to work” has its merit – coming home as well – combining both one sometimes does not know when one is at work or at leisure.

Travel to the 2nd ecumenical church days in Munich, Rome, several invitations to talks, working meetings with Joachim Franz and his team (www.wae.de), the Ball of HOPE, the HOPE Gala Dresden, the “Berliner AIDS Gala”, Blankenese and the Walzertal, the World AIDS Conference and not to forget the Soccer World Cup in South Africa are waiting – for latter I applied to be a volunteer and will have an interview coming week. Exciting times – and of course some holidays in between.
The 10th anniversary of the Southern African – German Chamber of Commerce in February is not forgotten on this list – as well as all the promised visits to each and every township clinic to visit all our HOPE Community Health Workers at their working place. Developing new projects and continuing the already running work of HOPE Cape Town has also its merits on the scale of excitement.

So yes, it is time to come home and to get going again and to see, how I can live in my new role as “present of faith”.
A new bishop in Cape Town, the work with POZ, the working group dealing with HIV positive clergy – also on this side is a lot to come. And I already agreed to supply in quite some parishes which means to get more insight and learn more about life in the different societies of Greater Cape Town.

Well, what can I say: Cape Town, I am coming..:-))

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01/12/2010 • 2:54 pm Comments Off on 12.01.2010 Installation of a new bishop

12.01.2010 Installation of a new bishop

Today, the invitation arrived via email to attend the installation of the new Archbishop of Cape Town, Stephen Brislin.  As always in the life of the church, a new bishop awaits a huge amount of different expectations and hopes. And these expectations and hopes are most times so far away from each other, that it seems to be a mission impossible to be a bishop in our days.  On the other hand: Within the church, a bishop has power and according to the CIC he is the head of the community of the faithful with many far-reaching rights. Especially when it comes to the lives of the priests – so much of their well-being hangs in balance with a good bishop’s rule. Humility and the knowledge, that we are all remain humans, even in the service of the church, are essential for such a service. And this is indeed the core of his vocation: To be a servant for the people of in this case Cape Town, to assist in the well-being of the people of God, to encourage and go with and lead those seeking to come closer to God.

And obviously, he does it not alone, but in communion with the other bishops and the bishop of Rome. In our days, it seems that this communion is rather centralized – word coming from Rome and filtering down to the different dioceses’.  From outside it looks and from inside it feels often as a one-way-road. It would be great if the communion and the collegium of the bishops will play a bigger role in the life of the universal church, so that also we from Cape Town, we from Africa can contribute more to the development of this universal church. It would also support the message of the African Synod which puts lots of responsibility on the church of Africa.

Filed under: Reflection, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

11/04/2009 • 9:30 pm Comments Off on 04.11.2009 Farewell thoughts

04.11.2009 Farewell thoughts

Sitting at Frankfurt airport I can feel the how tired I am and how much I am looking forward to sleep while flying back to Cape Town. I will be happy to be back home again.

For 16 days I toured through Germany with a detour to Rome, I have had meetings, planing workshop, planing meeting, one2one meetings, telephone meetings, talks – I saw round about a 1000 people in those days – statistics can be interesting. Plans are made until 2013 – I feel the manager syndrome arriving on my doorsteps, but I guess many people are telling me that since years. The Ecumenical church day, the world aids conference, the Bundespositivenkonferenz, the world awareness campaign part two, the exhibition at the Charite Museum, a film project, quite some invitations, amongst them to speak also about economy and ethics as well as how to achieve a value system for one’s own life, motivational talks – the visit of bishops to bring the idea of the pastoral care for positive clergy via bishops conferences to Rome – I am this evening indeed sure that there will be no dull moment in my life for the next years to come. And I thought it will take time to find enough work in my new working environment

HOPE Cape Town will be re-structured a bit – new offices, partly changed job descriptions – the Catholic Aids Networks registration as a NPO and PBO and I guess also there is some restructuring necessary – I still have to write a contribution to a book published by the University of Trier – writing down for me all the “still have to do” list is frightening and challenging at the same time. But I am in a good spirit that all can be done, seeing all the marvellous colleagues giving a hand and taking a lead with me.

Next week we will have our management and planing meeting from HOPE Cape Town and then I will report back in detail and we will plan for the new year ahead. Despite my tiredness I can feel the dynamics of networking – the possibilities lying ahead and I once again don’t understand the stand of many NGO’s which are so protective of their work and see most others as competition rather than a completion to their own work. This year I have seen some naughty incidents were other NGO’s were not afraid to try to lure away sponsors on our very own events. There are still so many feathers to earn in South Africa – and there are also so many willing sponsors if you have a good programme – there is no need to fight each other for anything.

 

Filed under: General, HOPE Cape Town Association & Trust, Networking, Reflection, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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