First Presbyterian Church of Gainesville, GA

800 South Enota Drive    Gainesville, GA  30501
 

Twenty-three years ago Ben Mathes traveled down the Sankuru River searching for a certain chieftain. The Sankuru is a major river in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, sometimes called Zaire, the largest country on the African continent. Mathes, a resident of Dawsonville, looked after Presbyterian mission hospitals for 15 years and was 30 years old at the time of the Sankuru trip. Ten years later, he wanted to find a way to expand his Christian service. Recalling how travel along the Sankuru had reached isolated peoples, Mathes founded Rivers of the World (ROW). The year was 1995.

ROW projects are now in 9 countries: Congo, Dominican Republic, Belize, Brazil, Jamaica, Kenya, Vietnam and Cambodia. Last year, 475 Presbyterian volunteers traveled from the U.S. to help in ROW projects, Mathes said. Last year, our church’s World Mission Conference sent $5,000 to ROW and the B.A.S.I.C Sunday School class sent $1,900.

ROW provides human, physical and spiritual services in 12 countries and has boats on seven remote jungle rivers. “Or maybe it’s eight,” Mathes said. The boat on the Amazon River in Brazil is a floating hospital. Another ROW boat carries only supplies and the other boats carry people along with the supplies. Another hospital boat now is planned for Peru where 1.2 million Yagua Indians live along the Amazon, Napo, Nanay, Oroso, Galves, Yavari, Apayacu, and Anayacu rivers.

On arrival in a village, ROW staffers and volunteers ask residents to explain their most severe problems. Together they find answers and together they attempt to overcome the challenges. According to the ROW mission statement, “It is their country, their village, their culture, but our problem.”

River blindness and malaria are two of the major diseases most often mentioned. River blindness is caused by a worm and spread by a black fly which breeds in the high oxygen waters of the fast flowing rivers. On Feb. 17, the time of this interview, ROW staff and volunteers in Kenya had been inundated with refugees. Killing began shortly after the vote on Dec. 27 when Mwai Kibaki was re-elected as president and the election was considered rigged. At that time, 1,000 Kenyans had been killed and 300,000 had
been displaced. “We now have 14,000 people in the football stadium and fairground.” Forty-nine thousand people have gone to the
ROW staff in Nakuru, Kenya, for help, and the “United Nations has put up a bunch of tents and is helping to move the people to safer areas,” Mathes said.

ROW works in many different ways. Services last year included new churches dedicated to the Lord in Vietnam, Brazil, and Belize; more than 2,000 Megavoice solar powered digital Bibles distributed in 9 countries and 6 languages; expanded radio audiences across the South, in Kenya and Finland; distribution of thousands of education packets, blankets and baby caps; launching of a new boat, The Maman Mickie, in Congo; orphanages in 3 countries added to the ROW care list; building of three wells funded in Vietnam, and much more.

ROWKIDS was established in 2005 to help children in dire poverty in developing and Third World countries. Monetary contributions
to ROWKIDS help support education projects in six countries across four continents. Volunteers who work with ROW pay their own costs, usually less than $2,000 a person, depending on air fare. A certified professional accountant can tell the ROW volunteer whether the cost of the trip is tax deductible. More information about Rivers of the World is available at http://www.row.org.

Copyright [2007] [First Presbyterian Church of Gainesville]. All rights reserved. 
770-532-0136    800 South Enota Gainesville, GA