History
The foundation traces its roots to 1754 when two tailors were sent to Suriname as unsupported missionaries. To earn a living they practiced their craft, using their free time for their missionary work.
The business activities of C. Kersten & Co prospered and became one of Surinam's largest commercial enterprises, generating employment and profits.
The profits were used to establish other Moravian Church businesses in the Caribbean and Europe. All the businesses were eventually transferred to the Moravian Church Foundation and are now used to finance church work and social and community projects on several continents.
Read more about this topic: Moravian Church Foundation
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“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Don’t you realize that this is a new empire? Why, folks, there’s never been anything like this since creation. Creation, huh, that took six days, this was done in one. History made in an hour. Why it’s a miracle out of the Old Testament!”
—Howard Estabrook (1884–1978)