This year, Rev Ken Hewitt, now aged 87, attended his last MANNA trustees meeting and retired after 50 years involvement & commitment to MANNA and the work of the Anglican churches in Mozambique & Angola. MANNA is incredibly grateful to him for his service and unswerving desire to be an advocate for the churches and communities in Mozambique and latterly Angola.
Ken tells us that he first read the ‘Lebombo Leaves’ (the MANNA magazine that Joan Antcliff was producing) in 1967 whilst he was working in a parish in 1967 and he started to attend AGM’s. Soon after that Ken met Dinis Sengulane whilst he was training for ordination. Ken continued to be involved and in 1986, he was elected as Chairman of MANNA (then the Lebombo Association). His first visit in 1989 to Lebombo was when the civil war was still going on. He has been involved with MANNA through so much change; the end of the war, the creation of the Dioceses of Niassa & Angola and the phenomenal growth of the churches. Finally in 2006, he celebrated the centenary of MANNA and brought all 3 Bishops to London for the celebrations. Ken remembers Rowan Williams calling him and asking him to bring Bishops over to Lambeth Palace to meet him.
MANNA asked him to write some of his thoughts and memories down from over the years, as gratitude for his long service but he very simply said; “I don’t really know what I have done.”
Thank you Ken.
