E-readers to a school in Zimbabwe

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Charlie Moore (left) and staff at the Methodist Mission School in Murewa, Zimbabwe, pose with the school's first e-reader. The Volunteer-in-Mission team from the Baltimore/Washington Conference is bringing 75 more e-readers to the school in March 2016.  Photo courtesy of Charlie Moore.

By Joey Butler*

The Rev. Faith Lewis didn’t know what to expect when she attended the first Game Changers Summit in 2014, but she definitely didn’t expect it to spawn a mission project.
Lewis heard a panel discussion that included Kristina Lee from Worldreader, an organization that puts digital books in the hands of students in developing nations.
Lewis’ church, Mt. Harmony/Lower Marlboro United Methodist Church in Owings, Maryland, had a long-standing relationship with Methodist Mission School in Murewa, Zimbabwe. They’d been sending teams there every two years since 1997.
“I’m sitting there with people who had been on Volunteers-in-Mission teams, and we thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could implement something like Worldreader at Murewa?’” she said.
Lewis started a conversation with Lee to learn more about Worldreader and tell her about her church’s mission projects in Zimbabwe. From that conversation, Lewis began to wonder if it might be possible to outfit the Murewa school with e-readers.
“When Faith came back from Game Changers with info about the e-reader initiative, we jumped on it pretty quickly,” said Charlie Moore, a member of Community United Methodist Church in Crofton, Maryland, who’s been leading VIM trips for over a decade.