While saying his farewells to the Canadian delegation, the health director for the Presbyterian Church in northern Malawi reserved some time to praise Rick Fee.
Sangster Nkhandwe, of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian’s Synod of Livingstonia, remembered particularly the early 2000s when there was a severe drought in his country. He was then the director of the synod’s development team.
Rev. Dr. Rick Fee, now the general secretary of the Life and Mission Agency, was then the director of Presbyterian World Service and Development.
Fee led a project that involved his own agency through the Presbyterian Church, several ecumenical partners, the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, the Canadian International Development Agency and the government of Canada. Millions of dollars of relief foodstuffs were shipped from Canada, with Fee keeping a watchful eye, to Durban, South Africa.
This is where Nkhandwe took over, busing the shipment over 2,500 kilometres to Malawi. The food then had to be stored, lest it go bad, and then shipped to the myriad needy corners of the countryside.
Nkhandwe referred to Fee as an old friend, and to the Canadian Presbyterian Church as an old friend to the church in Malawi.
The PCC is known fondly as a partner in Malawi. And for many that partnership is rooted in Fee. During a whirlwind visit in the northern synod Fee was referred to as an old friend several times by different speakers. He once joked in response that they were in fact referring to his white hair.
Fee has worked in Africa on behalf of the PCC since the 1970s. He has been involved in numerous ecumenical alliances and organizations, heading or chairing many of them over the years. He has carried the PCC with him across the planet many times.
