Church initiatives

DomTansania Initiative Schwerin (The Cathedral Initiative Schwerin)
The church in Mecklenburg has had partnerships with the Lutheran-Protestant church in the Pare Diocese in Tanzania for forty years. This contact was intensified after 1990. A delegation from our church in Mecklenburg travelled to Kilimanjaro to the 100th anniversary celebration of the Lutheran church in Tanzania in 1993. Since then there have been regular visits to and fro.
Regular contact is also kept through Gerlinde Haker who visits women’s groups in the Maasai steppes every other year. She is joined by interested women from both the cathedral parish and the city.

www.dom-schwerin.de

Protestant-Lutheran Parish Güstrow
Members of the Tanzanian Circle in Güstrow and their partner parish in Mti visit each other regularly. During these visits common projects are planned, visits to projects are made: the Rainbow nursery for children, the school, goat and water projects. There are also conversations, suggestions, ideas and the exchange of presents. This year the Mti-Güstrow partnership celebrates its 10th anniversary.

dom-guestrow.de

Protestant-Lutheran Parish Grabow
A small group from the parish was in Romania in October. This visit was to the town of Sacele with its 26,000 inhabitants that is a suburb of Brasov/Kronstadt in the heart of Transylvania. Istvan Barcsa is the vicar of the Protestant-Lutheran parish that has around 760 members; a parish of a Hungarian- speaking minority. The Grabow group was part of an official ‘Nordkirche’ (North Church) delegation. Apart from meetings in the Bishop’s office in Klausenburg/ Cluj Napoca, the group also visited the numerous projects which have been carried out over the past four years with financial support from Mecklenburg and the North Church.

www.kirche-grabow.de

Protestant-Lutheran Parish Kühlungsborn
To support our parish in a sustainable way. How do we use our funds for our partner parish in Makanya? These are issues that were discussed in the last meeting of the Tanzania Circle. For the members it is important to put emphasis on the support of professional training or sustainable projects. For example, school fees are paid for or the costs of internet access for the parish for a year, for the ‘chama’ (association) which assists women with mini-credits or for a German course.

www.kirche-kuehlungsborn.de

Protestant-Lutheran Parish Mirow
(Tanzania)

Protestant-Lutheran Parish Penzlin
(Romania)

Protestant-Lutheran Parish Pinnow
The partnership between Pinnow and Vuchama (Tanzania) has existed since 2006. The main focus is on exchanges regarding happenings within both parishes as well as a joint chicken farm project. This was initiated by a group of widows in Vuchama and could be supported financially by Pinnow. The exchange visits keep the partnership alive.

partnerschaften-weltweit.de/arbeitskreis-tansania

Protestant-Lutheran Parish Schönberg
(Tanzania)

Protestant-Lutheran Parish Wismar St. Nikolai/ Heiligen Geist
(Romania)

Ev.-luth. Kirchenkreis Mecklenburg (Protestant-Lutheran Mecklenburg church district (Tanzania, Romania, Kazakhstan)
Even in GDR times, the church in Mecklenburg had connections with churches in the Netherlands, Kazakhstan, Tanzania, England and the USA. Following the opening up of the border, these contacts have been deepened and have developed further. Contact to Romania was added to the list. Today all of them are partners with the North Church but the main focus of these connections, however, is still the Mecklenburg church district.
Tanzania
The partnership with the Protestant-Lutheran church in the Pare Diocese, Tanzania (ELCT) has existed since the early 1980s. Apart from parish partnerships there have been contacts between schools and individual initiatives. Young people from both places have been involved in voluntary service. The Tanzania friends in Mecklenburg meet annually at the Tanzania Day.
Romania
The partnership with the little Lutheran Church for the Hungarian minority in Romania is the most recent of the Mecklenburg partnerships. It was initiated after 1990. Nowadays there are several parish partnerships and others are in the process of being set up.
https://www.kirche-mv.de/Internationale-Partnerschaften.1826.0.html

Protestant-Lutheran Parish St. Marien/St. Georgen
(Romania)

Protestant-Lutheran Parish Versöhnungsgemeinde (Reconciliation) Lankow)
(Romania)

Gustav-Adolf-Werk, Main Group, Mecklenburg
Fifteen years ago the Lutheran church bought a two-storey building for the parish of Kostanai (Romania) which has been used as a parish and prayer room since then. The parish itself has regularly superficially repaired the building but in the meantime extensive repair work has become necessary. Additionally, the parish wants to re-roof and plaster the vicarage in Jeica, Romania; and it also supports a children’s home in Venezuela. This needs better sanitary and kitchen facilities as well as support with the renewing the electrics.

mecklenburg.gustav-adolf-werk.de

Donor and Helper Circle for Kazakhstan
The focus of this partnership is on working with children and young people, social projects such as a soup kitchen for the needy, help for the homeless, the training and in-service training of preachers, vicars and Sunday school teachers as well as financial support of parish work and for its financial household. Exchange visits and youth meetings strengthen the relationship to the Protestant Lutheran Church in the Republic of Kazakhstan/Astana

partnerschaften-weltweit.de/helfer-und-spenderkreis-kasachstan

Parish Gehlsorf
The Protestant church parish St Michael’s in Gehlsdorf has had a stable partnership with the welfare centre ‘SANDORA’ (Lithuanian -COMMUNITY) of the Protestant church in Šilutė which used to be called Heydekrug in the Memel Territory of Lithuania.
Sandora has ten volunteers who look after the needs of children and families in the town and the administrative area of Šilutė. Regardless of belief and ethnicity, people are helped exclusively according to their needs as far as the material resources allow. The Gehlsdorf group have transported more than 50 lorry loads of clothing, furniture, household articles, school equipment, equipment for invalids as well as food and hospital requirements to Šilutė since 1992.

www.kirchgemeinde-gehlsdorf.de

Parish of Wittenburg
(Tanzania)

Pommeranian Protestant Church District
(South Africa, Romania)

Tanzania Circle Rostock
The Tanzania working group was founded in 2008. The members of both sexes come from different parishes in Rostock and have created a lively partnership with the parish in Mhero in the Pare Diocese of Tanzania.
One main focus of the partnership is the Lutheran Vocational Training Centre (VTC), one of the training centres supported by the Mhero parish in which there are carpentry and dressmaking classes. This training centre is supported by aid through a training fund which is offers the most needy a subsidy of 60 Euros on the annual fees. Currently plans for building a dormitory for VTC are being discussed.
Apart from this concrete work in the Mhero partnership, the working group encourages the exchange of information regarding church activities and networking in the Tanzania Group as well as in Mecklenburg’s church District.

partnerschaften-weltweit.de/arbeitskreis-tansania-rostock