Majestas: April 1999

In this issue

The Wild World of Linton
Prima Vox
Animal Rites, by Andrew Linzey
News
Concert
Christian Perspective
Using Animals
Animal Symbolism
Gabbra and the Gospels
Diary
Who's Who
Publication
- Submissions for the next editions of Majestas

A visitor to Linton Zoo near Cambridge will find a wide variety of animals in comfortable, clean conditions in the sixteen acres. There are also birds to see, including an impressive collection of owls, noisy trumpeter hornbills and the attractive lilac-breasted rollers from Africa. The zoo was started by the Simmons family in 1972 when they moved from their pet shop in Bishop's Stortford to Linton to breed wildlife.

Many of the animals are endangered species, such as snow leopards, Siberian tigers, Grevy's zebras, Brazilian tapirs, Sumatran tigers, golden lion tamarin and Marabou storks (which look just like hunched, begowned dons walking along!). Kim Simmons, the dynamic Zoo Director, explained: "The breeding programme for endangered species is very complicated and each species is co-ordinated by one person - the studbook keeper - who will co-ordinate them on a national basis or a European level or internationally, depending on how endangered it is. For instance, the golden lion tamarin is co-ordinated by a man called Jonathan Baloo at Washington Zoo."

There are four golden lion tamarin in the zoo, including a female born on 28th August last year. This species was close to extinction when there were only fifty left in the wild because its natural habitat in the rainforests of Brazil had been reduced by 98%. With the co-operation of the Brazilian government some of the remaining rainforest has been protected and this made possible the release of tamarins into the wild from zoos around the world. Kim said: "The animals for release are very special individuals and are specially selected and have to go through a process of rehabilitation." Before release, the cause of the animals becoming endangered has to be discovered and corrected, and this includes educating the local people to care for the animals and not abuse them.

The purpose of zoos is conservation, education and research and Kim feels strongly about this: "Zoos in the past have been places where animals have been stuck in little cages for people to look at, with no real consideration for the animals' needs, but we're a different generation. We care more about the environment and about the animals we share the world with. I feel quite bitter towards previous generations that have wiped out certain species. For us as a family, it gives us a great sense of achievement and personal satisfaction to be able to do something very, very constructive to save things for the future."

Linton Zoo is open daily (except Christmas Day) from 10am-6pm.

Prima Vox

Justin White is an ordinand at Westcott House and is on placement at Great St Mary's for the academic year.

And I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered

[Revelation 5:6]

Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage feast of the Lamb has come

[Revelation 19:7]

Van Eyck's Ghent altarpiece, The Adoration of the Lamb, is one famous depiction of this Apocalyptic vision. On the altar stands the Lamb, blood spurting from his breast into a chalice, with on the altar frontal the communion words, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world."

Here the stress is on Salvation emanating from the Lamb who is Christ, but the symbol of the lamb occurs throughout Scripture and with it come rich layers of meaning. The Evangelist attributes the expression "Lamb of God" [John 1:29-36] to John the Baptist at the moment he recognises Jesus. On one level, there is a propitiatory meaning in the expression; the Lamb is a sin offering "who takes away the sin of the world". On another there are resonances with the sacrifice of Isaac; "Where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" asks Isaac, to which Abraham replies, "My son, God will provide for himself a lamb." ([Genesis 22:7-8]. Equally, Christ's sacrifice has become a type of the unblemished, male Paschal lamb, ordained by Moses for the Passover meal.

But who is the Bride of the Lamb to which St John refers in his vision? None other than the New Jerusalem; the cloud of saints and witnesses of Jesus and the whole Church. Yet, the Lamb to whose wedding feast we are invited is the same Lamb who went on his way to the cross. It is this Christ whom we meet if we respond to his invitation.

"Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb!"

Animal Rites, by Andrew Linzey

Sheila Cameron reviews a new volume of liturgies

Andrew Linzey, Animal Rites: Liturgies of Animal Care

SCM Press, 1999. Ł9.95

Animal Rites is a collection of liturgies written in response to practical pastoral needs: to provide resources for the celebration of animal life as God's creation, expressions of sorrow for human cruelty and insensitivity, and spiritual resources for the healing of animals and to meet the needs of individuals to consecrate their relationships with companion animals. The collection includes an animal burial service.

Although most definitely on the side of the animals, I must say I found parts of this book rather puzzling. It seems to me that companion animals belonging to Christians are most probably already enjoying the blessings of the good life administered by loving hands, and that it's the wild ones or those whose keepers never set foot in church which are most probably at risk, so that the whole idea of Christians bringing their animals into church for a blessing seems to me a bit unnecessary. Nevertheless, 'A service for animal welfare' (chapter 1), originally written for the RSPCA, has been used in hundreds of churches and evidently meets a human need. Chapter 4, entitled 'Covenanting with Animals', adopts the idea of covenant in imitation of God's covenant with humankind, which seems to raise the question of whether such a relationship could exist between ourselves and creatures who cannot be expected to understand the concept.

There is a great deal of human contrition in this collection. The liturgies for healing and animal protection, a vigil for all suffering creatures and forms for the blessing of animals lay before God our own need for forgiveness. As Linzey puts it at the beginning of chapter 6, 'Litanies for animal protection': "Our prayer ... should be that God's suffering creatures will be healed, that we will turn away from our wanton exploitation of animals, and that we will repent of our arrogance and spiritual blindness. It will be seen ... that I think our prayer should equally be for our - as well as the animals' - liberation."

Despite some misgivings, I found this a very moving collection. Linzey reminds us that flesh and blood are at the heart of our faith, and that the crucified Christ is the paradigm of all suffering, human and animal. The church has lost interest in animals, but the book notes that animal-friendly spirituality has not always been alien to Christianity. There is the prayer of St Basil, written in the fourth century: "Enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things, our brothers the animals to whom you gave the earth as their home in common with us.... May we realise that they live not for us alone but for themselves and for you, and that they love the sweetness of life."

News

Pop Music

Tom Biddle, former chorister and server, now at Queens', reviews a recent record release.

Christian pop music is big business. A wide range of styles is now found on the shelves. Gone are the days when modern Christian music was regarded with suspicion by the music industry. This is mainly due to the quality of some of the bands writing Christian songs in Britain and in the U.S. One band whose appeal spans the Christian and non-Christian audiences is 'dcTalk'.

The American rock trio has just released a new album, 'Supernatural' (Virgin), which is set to emulate the success of its predecessor, 'Jesus Freak', which sold 1.5 million copies. There is a vibrancy and passion in their songs which is immediately ear-catching. The music is well constructed and tight and the lyrics are powerful. Occasional over-production on some of the songs takes very little away from the overall impression of a band singing about a faith that is all-consuming. The lyrics are at times devotional, at times confessional, but always full of emotion. There is a challenge to take faith seriously within many songs that belies the band's statement that they simply aim to appeal to music fans "whether they are Christian, Buddhist or non-believers".

There is a strong sense, though, that they are not driven by an evangelical mission. They present themselves as a band singing about whatever is most important to the and that is probably the secret of their particular appeal outside the Christian music scene. That approach to song-writing is perhaps more familiar to the average non-Christian music fan than the more evangelical approach of many British-based bands. They appreciate being known as a rock band worthy of the Grammy music awards they have collected. They are quoted as saying: "Our lyrics express a faith which is a very big part of our lives. If someone connects with that, if they share our faith, so be it. If they don't, it's O.K. We're not here to preach." Maybe so, but there is no doubting the power of the songs.

Camel Walk

The Church Missionary Society was founded in 1799. Between 22nd and 27th June, a group of sponsored walkers will start from the University Church in Oxford and walk to Great St Mary's to celebrate the Society's 200th anniversary, as well as to raise funds for primary schools in northern Kenya in memory of Bishop Andrew Adano. Bishop Andrew, from the Gabbra tribe, was the first nomadic bishop from northern Kenya and he helped to develop schools there. He died tragically in a helicopter accident in 1996.

The Revd Joseph Galgalo, also from the Gabbra tribe and now studying in Cambridge, will join in the walk. He was a primary school teacher in northern Kenya before being ordained, and he undertook a sponsored walk of four hundred miles to Nairobi to raise money for his school.

The walk will end with Evensong at Great St Mary's on Sunday 17th June: make a note to come and welcome the camel and the walkers.

The camel walk has its own web pages, at http://www.etransfer.com/camelwalk.

Easter Thank-Offering

Ethiopia will again be the focus of our Easter Thank-Offering this year. During the Vicar's visit to St Luke's, Gambella, in January, it became clear that the Ł1,600 which Great St Mary's collected last Easter had been used to run the church for the seven months following Easter. In 1998 we helped to give to a new venture in Gambella and it is hoped that, by funding a special project at St Luke's, we will strengthen the work of this new church, many of whose parishioners are refugees from Southern Sudan.

The Wider Concerns Committee hopes that you will respond generously this Easter.

Michaelhouse

At the launch of the Michaelhouse Appeal on 14th March, Lady Broers, President of the Appeal (right) said: "It is appropriate that the ancient church should enter a new period of its history and take its rightful place in the lives of Cambridge people."

Russian Orthodox Church Music

A small choir of professional singers from St Petersburg will be giving a concert of traditional Russian Orthodox Church Music on Tuesday 4th May at 7.45pm in the Wesley Methodist Church, Christ's Pieces. Admission is free and there will be a retiring collection.

Oxfam Walk

This annual sponsored walk will be held on Sunday 16th May. It is hoped that a party from Great St Mary's will walk the seven miles through Hadstock and Linton to raise funds for Oxfam and to have a day out together.

Ecclesiastical Embroidery

An exhibition of ecclesiastical embroidery will be held at Wimpole Hall from 4th April until the end of September. The embroidery is by Jacqui Binns who draws her inspiration from the Bible, particularly St John's Gospel. It is open from 1 to 5 pm and admission is free.

Concert

The Cambridge Chorale will be giving a concert in Great St Mary's on Saturday 24th April at 7.30pm. The main item will be the Düruflé Requiem and there will be works by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Herbert Howells. The organist will be Julian Wilkins. Tickets (Ł10 or Ł7.50 concessions) are available from Patrick Hall, 6 The Elms, Great Chesterford, Saffron Walden CB10 1QD (01799 530564). Cheques payable to Cambridge Chorale; please enclose S.A.E.; Great St Mary's will benefit from tickets sold directly.

Christian Perspective

Michael Reiss looks at animal ethics from a Christian viewpoint

Michael J. Reiss is Reader in Education & Bioethics, Homerton College, Cambridge, and Priest-in-Charge of Boxworth, Elsworth and Knapwell.

Humans have used animals for hundreds of thousands of years but what is the right way for us to use them? And is there a distinctively Christian view on the subject?

The traditional Christian understanding has been that humans have a right to use animals because we have been given dominion over them and indeed over the whole of creation (Genesis 1: 26-28). Provided, the reasoning goes, we don't cause animals unwarranted suffering we can therefore do with them pretty well what we will. We can eat them, farm them, selectively breed them, keep them as pets, use them as beasts of burden and kill them if we don't want them, for example if they carry disease or eat our crops.

In recent decades, though, a number of scientific and theological arguments have arisen which have served to reduce, as it were, the distance between animals and ourselves.

For a start, the Darwinian understanding of life is that humans are part of the animal kingdom. The overwhelming majority of biologists who accept the theory of evolution believe that humans are related to the other species with which we share this planet. Some five million years ago, we and today's chimpanzees shared a common ancestor. That is why chimpanzees and humans have some 98.5% of their DNA in common.

Strictly, nothing of any ethical consequence can be deduced from this fact. However, the genetic similarity between humans and the great apes (chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans) has a psychological effect. It makes it more difficult for us to draw a strict dividing line between 'them' and 'us'.

The blurring of the division between the great apes and ourselves becomes even more apparent when they are watched in the wild. As most of us know, the work of Jane Goodall and others has given us tremendous insight into the lives of chimpanzees. These insights are reinforced by the success of programmes such as Chimpanzee Diary where we can watch, week by week, intricate social relationships unfolding in ways that make Eastenders and Brookside appear unconvincing and shallow. Will Flo succeed in bringing up yet another offspring? Will Freud with his understanding of chimpanzee nature succeed in regaining his position as alpha male from the stronger but less subtle Frodo?

Nor is it just chimpanzees that need to be looked at anew. Pigs, for example, are highly intelligent creatures able to feel physical pain and pleasure much as we are. I often think that if fish could scream, most of us would think very differently about keeping them in overcrowded aquaria or fishing them for our pleasure.

Theology too has played its part in helping us to see animals in a new light. For a start "Who is my neighbour?" The parable of the good Samaritan was told to answer this question. But is it only humans who are our neighbours? Let me tell a personal anecdote. When I was an undergraduate, I got into the good habit of making sure I gave at least a certain percentage of my money to charities including the Church. But after a while I started to wonder whether I should indude such things as donations I gave to the Woodland Trust and an organisation that campaigned against bull-fighting as part of my Christian giving.

I decided that I should, on the grounds that the whole of creation is God's and therefore God wants a world in which there are elephants and tigers and trees and wilderness and less animal suffering just as God wants a world with less human suffering and more human fulfilment.

Indeed, theologians have increasingly argued that while it may be humans alone that are made in the image of God, something of God is to be found in all of creation. When we damage any part of creation, we therefore hurt God.

So two suggestions as to how we should use animals. First, we should do all we can to reduce the animal suffering that results from human actions. That is why we should continue to press for farm animals in all countries to be kept in better conditions and why we should welcome campaigns like the RSPCA's Freedom Food labelling scheme. It also means that we should ensure that new technologies such as genetic engineering do not result in farm animals suffering in new ways. It further means that we should press for alternative ways of testing medicines so as to reduce the need for animals to be used for this. Indeed, there has been an encouraging fall in the number of animals used in medical and other research in the UK over the last twenty years. Long may it continue.

Secondly, we should see something of God in all animals. That is true of the majesty of a wild lion, the beauty of a grass snake, the intricacy of a long-tailed tit's nest, the wonder of a termite colony. We need to think through what having dominion over the animals around us means in terms of our responsibilities to them. Solomon was able to see God in the natural world. Too many people today have lost that ability.

Using Animals

Don Broom reports on progress in animal welfare

Don Broom is Professor of Animal Welfare in the Department of Clinical Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge.

If we use animals in some way, whether as companions, for food, or for some other human benefit, we have obligations to those animals to ensure that their welfare is good, or at least to minimise the extent of any poor welfare. The notion that other species are just here for our benefit is archaic and if humans have dominion over animals, that dominion involves responsibility rather than just opportunity to exploit.

Most veterinary research has the objective of understanding and improving the welfare of animals, via improvements in health. Disease conditions investigated in Cambridge include tumours, neurological disorders, reproductive disorders, orthopaedic problems, viral infections and bacterial infections. Disease-related projects in the Animal Welfare and Human-Animal Interactions Group in Cambridge Veterinary School include the causes of lameness and mastitis in cattle, the transmission of bovine tuberculosis and the effects of sheep scab on the welfare of sheep on farms.

A major part of our work has been the development and refinement of the concept of animal welfare and of behavioural, physiological, immunological, pathological and neurological methods of welfare assessment. Welfare is the state of an individual as regards its attempts to cope with its environment. It varies from very good to very poor, can be assessed scientifically and includes feelings, health, and the consequences of stress. As a result of the development of the scientific study of animal welfare, governments and other organisations consult welfare scientists before producing relevant laws or codes of practice.

In one study of the effects of housing systems, we found that calves kept in crates too small for them to turn around showed stereotypies, which are repeated functionless behaviours, had difficulties in walking and were completely abnormal in their social behaviour. This and other evidence was used in an E.U. report which we helped to prepare. The consequent 1996 Directive banned narrow crates and required that calves be fed sufficient iron and roughage and be kept in groups after eight weeks of age. Hence the welfare of about six million calves per year will be substantially improved.

In our studies of the welfare of pregnant sows, those kept in narrow stalls spent 40% of the day showing stereotypies or were excessively inactive and unresponsive, but group-housed sows did not. Most stall-housed sows were very aggressive to their neighbours whilst well managed group-housed sows showed no damaging aggression. Confined sows had smaller muscles and weaker bones than sows which could exercise. Such work led to the banning of sow stalls and tethers in the U.K. and should soon result in new E.U. legislation. At present, this proposal is delayed by discussion amongst E.U. agriculture ministers about the banning of small cages for laying hens. Here also we have provided key evidence for we demonstrated that lack of exercise in battery cages results in a 46% reduction in wing bone strength.

Our many studies monitoring pigs and sheep during road and sea transport have shown that previous housing, social mixing, poor handling or loading procedures and substantial accelerations in any of three planes during journeys can result in poorer welfare. The results have affected the formulation of farm animal transport directives. Recent studies have shown that pigs are subject to motion sickness during journeys with the same kind of movements as those which cause motion sickness in humans.

Welfare assessment methods have been used to show what kennel design is good for dog welfare, how severe are the effects of quarantine on cats and how to improve the welfare of rats in cages. We have also investigated the causes of aggression and other abnormal behaviour in dogs, the ability of dogs to distinguish individual humans including twins by their odour and how to use acoustic devices to reduce the entanglement of porpoises and dolphins in fishing gear. In a range of studies of the effects of pets on their owners, pet ownership was shown to make people more sympathetic to animals and healthier, the latter effect being present for cats and dogs but greater where the pet was a dog which was taken for walks.

Animal Symbolism

Aidan Nichols considers animal images in Christian writing

Fr Aidan Nichols, O.P. is Prior of Blackfriars, Cambridge.

The story of Scripture runs from Genesis to Apocalypse, from the beginnings of the cosmos to its final transfiguration in the new heavens and new earth of the End. The narrative of salvation is set within a cosmic framework, and the cosmos - the ordered beauty of the inhabited world in its stellar setting - would hardly be itself without beasts. The subdivisions of the physical creation are, in the words of perhaps the oldest of radio panel games, 'animal, vegetable, mineral'. And here, like the contestants and panellists of those far-off days of wireless, we need to take the term 'animal' as embracing birds and fish likewise - an animal, philosophically speaking, is any self-moving living thing.

The authors of Scripture cannot and should not be presented as forerunners of the modern ideology of 'animal rights'. Yet they manifest a concern for the animals at important junctures in the Bible: the Creation itself, Adam's Naming of the beasts, the Covenant with Noah, and the prophecy of the coming Peaceable Kingdom in chapter 11 of the Book of Isaiah. In the New Testament, St Mark depicts the Saviour, after his successful repulse of Satan's temptations, not alone in his desert sojourning but "with the wild beasts" [Mark 1:13]. That betokens, surely, the restoration of Adam's communion with the animals in the Second Adam, Jesus Christ. In the monastic tradition especially, more advanced disciples renew this intimacy - as portrayed in Helen Waddell's delightful Beasts and Saints. All these tableaux constantly recur in the Church's art.

But whether or no some biblical writers, or their Christian successors, show an interest in animals for their own sake, there can be no doubt that the animals constitute an integral and essential part of the imaginative world of the Judaeo-Christian revelation. The visionary message of Scripture; the sacramental life in the Church; the struggle between evil, angelic or human, and the representatives of the divine Good; the combat of the vices and virtues in personal living; the renewed peace of all creation at the cosmic End: treating all these themes, Christian iconographers have drawn on the animals as key aspects of the artist's repertoire of symbols.

In part, it is true, the creatures that crop up in Christian art are there, naturalistically, for our sheer delight.How else to explain why the mosaicist in the early martyrium of San Vitale, Ravenna, has enthroned the evangelists amid river scenery that abounds with herons, ducks and moorhens; why the illuminator of the Book of Kells covered his gospel pages with beasts wild and tame, farmyard fowls and insects, and interlaced the anagram of Christ with genre scenes - an otter catching fish, mice playing around bemused or complacent cats. Yet such creatures already speak of the playful wisdom of the Creator. It is a wisdom that also has terrible depths: the animals are not always helpful, protective, friendly, they can be dreaded dangers as well.

But in a world where nature is charged with the task of symbolising the supernatural, the beasts, whether kindly or hostile to man, play more than a pragmatic part. In the art of the catacombs, by the Roman mosaicists and their Byzantine successors, the Good Shepherd appears as the New Orpheus, surrounded by good beasts, charming the whole creation by the music of his Resurrection triumph or leading it into the Garden of Paradise where the blessed lift up their hands in prayer among fruit trees laden with birds. As to the fearful animals, they are well placed to symbolise evil vanquished, as when, on the Bewcastle and Ruthwell crosses, the Saviour stands triumphant on the heads of beasts, or in the church at Jevington (Sussex) thrusts his cross-staff into the mouth of a Viking dragon. The land- and sea-monsters of the Book of Job - Behemoth and Leviathan - like the 'deep' of the chaos waters in Genesis and the 'serpent' in its story of the Fall, take their negative connotations from their Babylonian background, where they symbolise the evil forces loose in the creation, while the 'unclean' birds and beasts of Deuteronomy and the Apocalypse borrow theirs from too close an association with the deities of paganism whose sacred animals they originally were. All those sources are relevant to the zoologically monstrous in Christian art.

Among the many dread beasts of the surrea1 world of the Book of Revelation one animal symbol stands out above the rest as not only different but positively antithetical. And that is the Lamb that was slain of chapter 5, the Lamb who will stand triumphant on Mount Zion in chapter 14. Around the crucified and glorified Lord four creatures, in chapter 4, do homage: one like a lion, one like a calf, one like a man, one like an eagle. Angelic ('winged') and vast as the Starry sky (they are 'full of eyes', = stars), these imaginary creatures sum up the cosmos of, not least, birds, beasts, humans. Depicted by Spanish miniaturists of the tenth and eleventh centuries in colours of haunting intensity, it is rather a comedown to find them identified by St Jerome with the four evangelists!

But the message of the illustrated Apocalypse is really no different from that of the animals in the Last Judgment scene on Romanesque porches, or the spiritual lore of the later medieval bestiaries, or the crib-scenes, complete with ox and ass, made popular by the followers of St Francis. The message speaks of the re-ordering of all creation, animal as well as human, by the Christ who is not only its Alpha, the uncreated Word of the beginning, but also its Omega, its End.

Gabbra and the Gospels

Joseph Galgalo describes his homeland

The Rev. Joseph D. Galgalo is currently studying in Cambridge and is based at Selwyn College.

Kenya is a country of both physical and cultural diversity. It rises from the shores of the Indian Ocean to the East and touches the great lake Victoria to the west. The central highlands boast of a rare geographical mystery with the snow capped mount Kenya right on the equator! The Great Rift valley transverses the central highlands which descends to semi-arid, low lying regions in the North. This latter is mainly homeland to a number of different nomadic pastoralists, among them the Gabbra herdsmen.

The Gabbra of Northern Kenya largely occupy the North Horr and Maikona divisions of Marsabit District. The greater part of their population practise nomadic pastoralism characteristically rearing mixed herds of cattle, camels, goats and sheep. The cattle population is comparatively low as they are less adaptable to the harsh conditions, especially unlike the camels which can survive without water for a considerable period of time. They follow a well established traditional grazing pattern, always on the move in search of better pasture and water for their livestock. The scarcity of water, excessive heat, scorching sun and unreliable rainfall make the Gabbra country one of the most hostile environments for regular human occupation in the world. As the fragile arid environment slowly deteriorates under the ever increasing human and livestock numbers, more and more people are settling down and, sadly enough, often at a loss for a viable alternative way of life. The aridity of land places out of reach any hope of sedentary farming and those pushed out of the traditional herding lifestyle always struggle for bare survival with little or no knowledge of other trades to eke a comfortable living.

The Gospel first came to the Gabbra land as late as the 1930's. The Bible Churchmen Missionary Society (BCMS), presently called the 'Crosslink', first arrived in Marsabit in January 1931. They settled among the few sedentary people in the mountainous area of the district with hope to reach out to the different nomadic communities who also converge on the mountain from time to time. True to their vision the missionaries made attempts to make contact with the people who roamed the vast arid zones around the mountain. Several 'outreach tours' in an effort to evangelise these nomads bore no lasting fruit, possibly due to their inconsistent visits, lack of permanent presence, and follow up. The people were generally not receptive to the Gospel and notably gave their ears but not their hearts. In the words of one of those early missionaries, "every where the people were friendly, agreeing that the news was 'good, very good' but they showed little inclination to act upon it."

Sixty years on, little has changed as regards the Gabbra and the Gospel. The environmental challenge is more acute and the number of people settling down is greater than ever before. The picture of the quality of human life seems to ever glow dimmer due to lack of a sustainable economic way of life as suitable supplement or replacement of the traditional livestock-based economy. A few churches have now been established in some parts of the Gabbra country but the challenges to the Gospel are still indomitable. The very nature of the nomadic way of life, environmental hardships, lack of infrastructure and difficult accessibility, other faiths and not least, their culture are among numerous challenges that beset the ministry. In many ways, there is still a virgin missionary field out there.

The few churches are barely struggling to keep their presence, make meaningful impact, and enliven the hope to reach to all parts of the region. Despite the aforesaid difficulties, there are men and women of God toiling for the cause of the Gospel among the Gabbra and other nomadic groups in similar situations. They are a pitifully small band and often ill-equipped to face the challenges. Both human resources and other support are needed. Simply put, there are people out there who are thirsty for the word of God and in dire need of the good news of God's love, forgiveness and salvation. There are people out there who despite harsh and exacting pressures in life, are desperate to be touched with the love of God. Is there anyone out there willing to lend a hand? Would you consider it?