FARMINGTON – The Mission at the Eastward-South Africa Partnership is sponsoring a benefit showing of the Oscar-nominated film, “Hotel Rwanda,” on Sunday, March 20, at Narrow Gauge Cinema. Show times are 1 and 4 p.m. and the cost for tickets is $5.

“Hotel Rwanda” is the story of real-life hero Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager in the Rwandan capitol of Kigali who, in 1994, saved 1,200 Rwandan “guests” from death during the genocidal clash between tribal Hutus, who slaughtered a million victims, and the Tutsis, who found safe haven or died.

The showing will benefit the outreach program to HIV/AIDs patients and an agricultural initiative.

Mission at the Eastward is a cooperative parish of nine Presbyterian churches, including Fairbanks Union Church.

Since September 2000, Mission at the Eastward has built a sister-church relationship with members of the Macfarlan Presbyterian Church in Alice, South Africa. Their joint efforts include a Heifer Project poultry and goat rearing initiative, an outreach to persons ill and dying with HIV/AIDS and their caregivers, visits from a four-person Macfarlan delegation to Maine last summer, taking a group of 16 volunteers in mission to help roof a church in 2002, and an innovative youth exchange between South African youth and their own the past two summers.

For more information, call 778-4654.

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