Connections&  
August 12 -- 19th Sunday of the Year

• The parable of the servants awaiting their master's return:  "For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be..."   "Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more."     Luke 12:32-48
  

Shooting Star
Few things are more satisfying than going back to the old neighborhood after you've done well and then giving something back to the people there.
     For Atlanta Hawks center Dikembe Mutombo, the "old neighborhood" is Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in central Africa.  What he's giving back is a $13.5 million, 300 bed hospital, the culmination of a dream that began after Mutombo watched too many of his people die.
     As a high school student, Dikembe dreamed of going to medical school in the United States and returning home to practice medicine.  He only learned to play basketball in his senior year.  Then Georgetown University heard about the seven-foot basketball star and offered Dikembe athletic and academic scholarships. After three years at Georgetown, he abandoned his plans for a medical career, realizing that he could do more for his people with a paycheck from the NBA - a paycheck that totals more than $11 million a year.
     In Dikembe's homeland, one out of five children die before their fifth birthday; one in 14 women do not survive childbirth.  Diseases like measles and polio -  diseases controlled and eradicated years ago in most countries - still kill and cripple thousands every year.  "Whatever you accomplish in your life," Dikembe says, "your heart stays here."
     In addition to building the hospital, his Dikembe Mutombo Foundation is recruiting and training medical staff to work in Africa, initiating a major effort to eradicate polio on the continent, building elementary and technical schools in the Congo, and sponsoring exchange programs for medical students and professionals.  In the off-season Dikembe travels around the world raising both money and awareness of his people's plight.
     Asked by 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley about his work, Dikembe Mutombo says simply:
     "We have an obligation to give something back to the place we come from& [My mother] gave me a strong faith to believe that God would help you no matter what you try to do.  God will give you strong courage to keep going forth.  She told me, "Do whatever you can do, as much as you can do and God will give you more."
     "I'm investing in my people so they can have a better life, because I have a better life already."
     [60 Minutes, CBS- TV, July 30, 2000.]
   CONNECTIONS cont'd on p. 6