He Who Has Ears

I changed the name of this blog.  I'll explain about that in the next entry because I feel that it's an important message in itself.  Here's the current post for now:

Sometimes we just need to shut up and listen.

Pasteur Ilunga, pastor of the mother church of
Pasteur Ezechiel's church, telling the good
news about Jesus at Pasteur Job's funeral.

Pastor Job was a well-loved upright professor at one of the Bible schools in Lubumbashi.  Unfortunately, after a lengthy struggle with cancer, he passed away.  We attended his funeral service.  After a moving address and poignant message about the need to repent of wrongdoing and trust in Jesus’ payment for our forgiveness, the hearse took off to a cemetery on the outskirts of the other side of town.  Once we arrived we had to wait our turn to enter the graveyard and have the burial conducted. 

As we waited with our Congolese friends outside the gate amidst the rural Katangan landscape, I noticed our Congolese friends’ foreboding tension.  Something about this was not normal. 

An unbelievably rapid series of events fulfilled that apprehension.  Gate opens.  Crowd moves to pavilion.  Hearse backs in.  Workers in construction clothes haul out coffin.  Minister orates short prayer and biography.  Workers carry coffin to gravesite.  Family and guests follow.  Family grieves as coffin is lowered.  Attendants hurry wailing family away.  Long line of guests quickly passes grave.  Group exits cemetery.

I took a complete guess off a faint memory
of the name of this cemetery and found its
website! It's called Rivière des Anges (River
of Angels). Here a group is entering the gate to
the cemetery. That van is the hearse. The speakers
on top are for blaring Christian worship music
through the streets during the procession.

Just before we left, we saw a white man who I assumed to be the funeral director.  Bill went over to talk to him, and what I overheard from their conversation shook the way I listened to others. 

The director said he was all about dignity and respect and he wanted to build gravesites that provided that.  Our Congolese friends interpreted his efforts much differently, though.  Pasteur Ezechiel rode with us on the way home and fumed about how he felt everything opposite of dignity and respect during the funeral.  The phrase he hammered over and over was “That’s now how the Congolese bury people.” 

Congolese customs and values that this European director trampled on surfaced many times during his diatribe.  Pasteur Ezechiel ranted about everything from the concreted-over grave parcels and the over-structured business-feel to the event, but what bothered him most was how the attendants flew through the service and even pulled away the mourning family from the grave to speed the line along for the next funeral.  He said that normally the Congolese cry for hours at burial ceremonies, but these guys hardly gave Pastor Job’s family 5 minutes to bemoan his interment.

Workers moving a casket from the pavilion

to a grave site.

I saw a spectacle that highlighted the contrast in cultural customs while walking home from the Ruashi church one day.  I looked up from gazing at the walkway to avoid tripping over a rock sticking out of the ground or stepping in a stream of water trickling out of an alley and noticed a tarp stretched across the avenue a ways down.  Many people were standing around and even a few cars were parked in the path.  Curious, I cautiously approached and soon recognized what was going on.  Whenever someone dies, usually family and friends will visit the bereaveds’ house during the days following.  After finding out that it was indeed a funeral, and I gave my consolations and continued home.

This is the area Pasteur Job was laid to rest in.

For six continuous days later there were still visitors mourning with the family.

Although the director may have had business reasons for running the whole procession in less than 30 minutes, there wasn’t much about it that communicated dignity and respect to Pasteur Ezekiel.  It didn’t matter what the director’s intentions were because his actions ignorant of Congolese traditions resulted in frustration. 

I thought about how Pasteur Ezechiel didn't
like how they concreted-over the graves and
wondered if they did that practically to prevent
graverobbing. Then I realized that the
Congolese already have their own system
to prevent that. These metal enclosures are
common in gravesites in Africa, but apparantly
this funeral director missed that.

Lesson for people seeking to serve others cross-culturally:  When interacting with those from other cultures, it’s important to be knowledgeable about their customs.  Understand that both yours and theirs are good and valid, but since you are there to serve them, you need to serve them on their terms.  So ask them.  Talk to them.  Humble yourself and adapt your preferences to theirs.

Lesson for anyone else:  Listen to others.  It’s so easy, especially in our American individualistic “speak my mind” culture, to blab first and not even consider listening to the other’s experiences later.  I’m sure guilty of it.  If that’s your confession too, it’s a good thing that the Holy Spirit develops in us the patience, compassion, and humility necessary to listen first.  Even though we may have constructive intentions, our ignorance of others’ situations greatly increases the chances of miscommunication and irritation.

“You cannot listen to the word another is speaking if you are preoccupied with your appearance or with impressing the other, or are trying to decide what you are going to say when the other stops talking, or are debating about whether what is being said is true or relevant or agreeable. Such matters have their place, but only after listening to the word as the word is being uttered.”
     --William Stringfield

Re-telling Africa

First, here’s a quick update on a past post.  A couple entries back I shared about a friend I met, Gael, who struggled with the hold of witchcraft on his life and family yet made a decision to trust Christ’s deliverance.  Anxious to see if he was still following the Lord, I asked my friend Jeancy if he saw him recently at the Ruashi church.  Jeancy told me that he was there regularly!  Even though darkness tried to reclaim Gael, praise God that nobody can snatch those who belong to Jesus from his hands!

Some time ago I was thinking about the way that I’ve shared stories about my stay, and it bothered me.  I want to share some changes I’m making in the way I tell those tales. 

My Swahili tutor, Papa Esaie.  I'm still
keeping up with my French thanks to Le
Phantom de l'Opera and French translation 
of a collection of Billy Graham's 
questions and answers from 1960.

We Americans hear and see much about deplorable conditions in Africa.  War, violence, refugees.  Rampant disease.  Poverty and lack of essential resources.  Images of huts and hunters with loincloths. 

I wonder if we’ve understood Africa in a way that it’s developed a generalization as the needy continent, the poor land, the lesser terrain, while much of the rich, valiant and generous side goes untold. 

Let me explain a little more.  An interesting thing I noticed in Congo was that my Congolese friends knew that.  They were aware that the rest of the world figured they did things in a less-developed way and were fairly self-conscious about it too.

Here's the pilipili bowl with
pilipili inside.  I was sad
when I was leaving because
I thought the pilipili peppers
were only found in Africa,
but when I came home
I found out what they were
otherwise called--habanero!
Hot stuff.

For example, one day I bought a small bowl that they use to grind pilipili (a kind of pepper) in.  It was cheap—about 50 cents—and looked it.  I didn’t really care though because I just needed the bowl for the meal David and I were making for our friends from the Ruashi church.  During the dinner, I brought the pilipili bowl in and enthusiastically told our guests that I was going to bring it back to the States so I could make pilipili there too.  They didn’t share my excitement.  “Oh…” my friend Jean said, noting the “decorative” markings on the side that looked like a five-year-old haphazardly scorched it with a hot rod.  His despondent tone and countenance said it all--“They’ll look at this cheap thing and think that we’re just some kind of low, uncultured people.”

“Nah.”  I recognized what he meant.  “I’ll just tell them it came from Zambia.”  They all laughed!

That’s why I want to re-tell Africa.  I want to re-tell Africa for them.  My Congolese, African friends.  They deserve a truer depiction.  Let me start with a story I’ve told frequently about a little encounter I had with malaria…

                                                                                           

The after-dinner photoshoot with the
guys from the Ruashi church.

I usually mention the poorly-designed bathroom, who the heck taught these nurses to stick IV’s, and other not-so-great things.  But really, why?  What picture would the majority of my listeners have already had of that hospital?  Not a pristine, state-of-the-art one.  Maybe they would have even been surprised to hear that it had concrete floors and looked like a normal building.  But amidst the mishaps and conditions shone the true generosity and hospitality of the Congolese that I must highlight.  This time I’ll tell it differently.

One Sunday near the end of the morning service I started feeling light-headed and dehydrated.  I stepped out and downed some of Maman Sonia’s water.  Some of the church members and Maman Sonia came out to check on me.  Back at the house later on I was only feeling worse and started having digestive issues.  Bill decided to take me to the hospital that one of our church’s pastor’s wife worked at the following morning.

David, Rachel and I at our friend Bridgette's
wedding. The Congolese sure do
their weddings big!

At the hospital, Maman Jackie, the nurse we knew, sped us through what seemed to be a long line of sick people trailing outside the clinic.  I felt bad for cutting ahead of everyone else who was probably suffering just as much as I was, but was equally thankful for her gesture—and looking forward to getting closer to a bathroom!  After some blood tests which confirmed the malaria, she pointed us to a nice private room with an adjacent bathroom.  The staff quickly put me on an IV with quinine and hydrating fluids.  Three nights and three days later, after four rounds of the diluted drug, I was symptom-free.

There wasn’t any interior food service at this hospital.  Friends or family of patients had to bring food for their loved ones.  Maman Mimi brought me a meal that could feed about 4 people not just once, but on two different occasions.  Maman Jackie made me a fairly pricey breakfast with sausages and eggs on my last morning there as well.

Victory after malaria.  That's the
hospital in the back. Although
the staff there took good care
of me, I must say that the healing
process was definitely quickened
by the the prayers of my
friends and family to the Lord.
Thank you again!

I was astounded by the people who came to visit me.  Not only were there many of them, but even people I had only met once or twice came to sit with me!

On two different occasions, I started shaking uncontrollably.  That was pretty scary, even for Bill, who’s had much experience with this illness.  The same nurse was watching me both times and after whatever she did, I was fine.

Oh, and my fee for three nights and four days stay and medication was $0.  Maman Jackie covered my expenses completely.

Normally we don’t get the opportunity to observe how people from other nations live and go about their relationship with God and church life.  Oftentimes we only hear about negative happenings or events they appreciate but we don’t understand.  As a result, we tend to get pretty prideful.  That pride doesn’t match reality though.  God has blessed every culture with honorable character traits and he is working all over the world.  We must seek to gain a balanced picture of our global brothers and sisters.  That starts with listening for the good that God is doing even amongst negative or hard-to-understand situations.  That starts with re-telling Africa.

Here's the youth group at the Ruashi church.  If we can say 
that we definitely left an impact anywhere, it's here.  
David and I introduced games to get the energy level up.  
I'm fairly certain this is the one of the only youth groups
in the city of 2 million people that includes games
 in their youth groups.  Also, we partnered with Jean, 
the leader, to integrate studying books of the Bible 
all the way through into the teachings.  I think they've 
stopped the group for a time since they've been busy with 
Pentecost seminars and end-of-the year exams, but they 
should get going soon.  Oh, and excuse David's scowl--
usually he's a pretty jolly guy

Story Time: Unexpected Visitors

The walk from our house to the church wound through suburban Lubumbashi.  I zigzagged through residential alleyways, crossed a dusty soccer field, and passed the blaring music and gaudy decorations of the Facebook Number One Bar on an almost daily basis.  It was a pathway often filled with surprises.

One of those came in the form of an unexpected visitor close to home.  Just as I was about to cut through a taxibus repair stop, I heard a voice behind me shout in English, “Hey man! Hey!”  

His accent wasn’t quite African.  I wondered who this guy might be as I turned around yet ended up seeing your average Congolese guy. 

“You from Canada or somethin’?  Where ya from, man?” 

I stuttered a reply, taken aback at this Congolese man with an African-American voice. 

“Uh… Americ-“ 

“Oh man America?!  I’m from Oakland bro!”

I added a few photos of the Bible school we helped build
a while back.  Here it is, nearly completed on the outside.
Courses to train Congolese pastors about how
to equip their churches for ministry will begin soon!

He said his name was Shawn* and went on to tell a little about himself.  Shawn was born in Kinshasa, the capital city of the DRC on the other side of the country.  His father sent him to the States to grow up in Oakland, CA.  That explained his accent.  He lived there for a while but came back to Africa later on.  While working for a company in South Africa, problems came up against him, family issues blew up, and now he’s stuck in Congo looking to get back to South Africa. 

Pasteur Ilunga, the man in the pool at the left, is the pastor
of the church that planted Pasteur Ezechiel's church.
They gathered new believers together from both of their
churches and another church plant for a baptism service.
Praise God!

Some time later David met Shawn on the street and invited him to the Ruashi church.  He came on his own several times after that.  The guys at the church were really interested in him.  My friend Jean overheard a conversation between Shawn and I and later commented, “He really talks the English of the streets… he finishes everything with ‘man.’”  Haha.

It was great that he was coming to the church, but there was a little issue that bugged David and me.  After each service he would mention meeting up with us sometime to talk about some “real life stuff, ya know.”  David and I would look at each other warily and, considering his situation, guess what he was thinking—ask us for money.  After a while, he did that straight up—first for a passport, then money to get phone credits to call someone to ask for money.  I kept pushing his demands off with excuses about my broke college student state, but I knew I was in a dilemma.  I wanted Shawn to keep coming to church yet feared saying “no” would cut him off.  On the other hand I knew I couldn’t say “yes” and open up a relationship revolving around monetary demands.  I prayed to God for wisdom about handling this.

Boy did the Lord come through. 

A lot of people have asked us what we ate there.
This is what the women of the church cooked us for our 
goodbye meal.  Often there's community bowls of whole
grilled fish like at the bottom left and some sort of greens
like those about to be cooked at the top left.  They
also made a meat-like root cake called kikanda.  So good!

I called Shawn to meet me at church the next Sunday, promising I’d talk to him about giving him a little money for phone credit.  He came to the service and approached me after the shake-hands-with-Pasteur line exiting the church.  I said to myself that if he didn’t have a job, then I couldn’t just give him a few bucks without expecting him to fare well on his own.  So I thought I’d show him a nearby English center and see what he thought about helping there. 

The main starch they had was called fufu.  It's cooked all
over Africa, yet it's called different things and made
with different ingredients.  In Katanga
they made it with corn flour.  There's some in the
yellow bowl.  We grabbed a chunk, formed it into a
ball, and tore off a piece which we used to pinch some
fish or greens.  You can see the fufu ball in Frere Ritch
and Pasteur Ezechiel's hands.

Shawn confessed that a job there might be a little difficult since he didn’t know French too well, but he promised me he would look into it.  He went on to lament his family issues, which reminded me of the sermon we just heard.  The preacher talked about how we need to look at our family origins and cut off the bad practices of our relatives.  I brought that up again and he said that was knocking on his heart too.  I told him that when we believe in Jesus, we become born again into a new family.  I inquired how far he was in doing that.  It seemed from his response that he thought he could get to that point by his religious works—he said he could improve on his prayer life and stuff.  But that’s not the way it works!

Sometimes God just gives you really cool stuff to say.  I explained that God gives us new life not because of anything we do, but because of what He did.  “When we were naturally born, we didn’t do any work.  It was all the mom.  That’s why it’s called labor!  In the same way Jesus did all the work for us on the cross.  All we have to do is receive that and continue in relationship with him.”

We wrapped up the conversation after that.  He gratefully expressed that what I told him was the best thing I could give him after all.  “That’s the way men did things—working for it,” he attested.  He really appreciated the spiritual advice too.  After praying together we parted ways.  I praised God all the way home that he came through and sorted out that situation as best as possible!

*name changed

Story Time: New Orleans Voodoo Round 2

Well it sure has been a while.  I am back in the United States now and have completed my 10-month internship in the DR Congo.  As much as I like writing and would have liked to share about my experiences, I never could find the time to do so between ministry, coursework, and team-building time.  So now that I’m back and have a little more time, I’ll write posts to catch up on those stories.  I really hope God is glorified through these testimonies of what he’s done.

Here's us sharing a meal with our Congolese brothers
from the Ruashi church--from left to right, 
Joe, Jean, and Jacques.

This one is cool.  I shared a little bit about this in church a couple Sundays ago, but here’s the full story.  You might remember an experience I shared earlier about a guy I met in New Orleans named Lumbar.  In short, while street evangelizing on Bourbon St., New Orleans, I had an opportunity to share the gospel with a man donning a black cloak, white facial makeup, a crystal-topped staff, a top hat embellished with a voodoo skull, and real, filed-down vampire teeth.  Right when I thought about sharing, I felt a strange spiritual force pushing me away, telling me to say nothing and leave.  I discerned that didn’t come from God—however, I found myself saying goodbye and parting.  That really stunned me—why would I obey some dark force like that?  Why did I not say “no,” and just share the good news of freedom in Christ?  I wondered if the events that day happened to prepare me for another encounter with darkness in the future.  As it turned out, they did.

Me and Gael

Another day, one-third of the world away, while passing out flyers for the Ruashi church’s seminar, I saw a man sitting on the side of the avenue.  I decided to go over and invite him.  We struck up a conversation about the church, and then I asked him what he knew about Jesus.  His answer reflected much hesitancy and uneasiness.  “Uh… tomorrow.  No, tomorrow, I will come to the seminar and tell you everything I know about Jesus.”  I found his adamancy in not wanting to talk about Jesus strange for the normally spiritual and open Congolese.  But then I felt something even stranger.  Right as the conversation was about to close, I thought about going ahead and sharing about Jesus with him quickly, but I sensed that same, unholy force I felt before in NOLA, pushing me away from him, telling me to say nothing and leave.  Recognizing that, this time I… did the same thing as before.  I walked away.

David and I had the honor of being cabin leaders

for the teenage missionary kid guys during the Central/

Southern Africa AG missionary conference.

It was a blast!

At home I reflected on the afternoon, wondering with anger and confusion as to why I discerned that same force yet reacted the same way.  I thought of some pointers for next time, and the next morning during our team’s daily devotional time we prayed that I would have another opportunity to meet that guy.  Later
that same day as I was on my way to the church, guess what happens?  I see him walking my way!  I asked him where he was going and if I could walk along with him, and he replied in English “Oh yeah, I’m just f***ing around!  Sure, you can **** around with me!”  Oddly enough… that was almost the exact same thing that Lumbar in New Orleans said when I asked him what he was doing!  He told me his name was Gael*, so Gael and I… walked… around as we talked about the Bible and what Jesus did.  Eventually we stopped at where we met before, and he revealed what I suspected to be the source of that oppressive  negative force.

Gael questioned me about sorcery.  He then explained the deep roots that witchcraft held in his family.  One family member murdered another yet continued to visit with the deceased relative’s spirit.  He recounted times when that same relative convinced him to partake in highly demonic fetish charms. 

We also got to participate in the Lordship and Lostness 
DR Congo field discussion with all of the DR Congo 
AG missionaries and strategy director Scott Hansen 
to assess the situation of the church and 
re-orient for the future.

He then confessed that he wanted to get out of that.  I shared Colossians 2:15 with him—“And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross,” emphasizing Jesus’ power and victory over the spiritual powers of darkness.  I encouraged him to make a decision to commit his life to Jesus to cut those spiritual ties to the past.  At first he was a little shaky, but he said he couldn't lie to God.  He said yes to giving his life to Christ, cutting those ties, and accepting Jesus’ forgiveness.  After I prayed for him, he promised that he would come to the rest of the seminar, and I saw him there for the next two days!

Two weeks later I crossed paths with Gael again.  I asked him how his decision was going.  He hesitated, and proceeded to tell me that I didn’t know that sorcery wouldn't let go of someone so easily.  I tried to encourage him to persevere in Christ and remember that he is the one who is victorious, not sorcery. 

Playing football as a goodbye celebration with some guys

from the Ruashi neighborhood.  If you think you're good

at soccer, these guys would probably whoop you.

I can’t even imagine what he faced—what the loosened grip of darkness striving to reclaim a soul looks like.  I don’t know how he’s dealing with that now either.  I can only pray that the Lord places people in his path to encourage him in the truth and that he helps him to persevere in his victory!

So kudos to M10 and whoever was involved in putting together the preparation we received in New Orleans.  I hope this goes as a testimonial to the good that can come out of that!  And big shoutout to God—may you be shown for how awesome you are through what you’ve done in Congo!

*name changed

Ministry on the Wet Wood and Fire at the Altar

First, sorry that I haven’t updated in a while!  School kicked off in September (taking 12 hours this semester), plus French studies and work at some recent church events have left me more than a little busy.  Despite a fuller schedule, one thing has not changed--I’ve still been facing incredible opportunities and lessons in this school of missions!

Altar call at the end of the first Ruashi evangelism
campaign.  Altar calls might be a new idea here, since
the call was for people who wanted to believe in Christ
for the first time and many involved believers showed up,
but praise God anyway!

We just finished participating in one of our biggest events since we've been here.  On Sunday, Oct. 19, the church we’ve been working at threw its first anniversary celebration.  Lively praise and worship, an exhortation and invitation for the baptism in the Holy Spirit, dancing, food, and good times with friends filled our time together.  We weren’t just praising God for what He did the past year, though.  We were especially remembering all that He did the past week.

The week before the anniversary, Pasteur directed a three-day evangelism campaign to focus the church on its real mission and to bring more souls into the community of believers.  This was going to be big.  Four banners posted around the neighborhood, 4000 flyers distributed (and later 1000 more after those all went out in only two days), church reconstruction, tons of extra chairs, new musicians and instruments, a car with speakers tied on top parading around the community announcing the services… this part of Lubumbashi was definitely going know about this crusade. 

I got an idea during the second day
of the Ruashi evangelism campaign
to go outside and invite people in off
the street.  At least 5 people came as
a result of that and a few went up to the
altar to confess Christ.  Praise God for that!

Everyone was involved in preparations for the event.  We gave.  We prayed.  We fasted.  We believed.  The day finally comes.  The church is packed, about 100 people attending, a decent number being non-church people from the neighborhood, and about 60 kids.  Pasteur preached a powerful, Spirit-lead message on the importance of believing in Jesus, and at the altar call, about 10 people answered.  After two more days of similar services and responses, we praised God for a successful campaign and were looking forward to see the lasting fruit. 

The week directly following the campaign would show if the people who came would remain in the church.  During the week, only two people, relatives of a recent convert, came to the Wednesday night teaching as a result of the campaign.  The following Sunday service attendance was below the average before the campaign.  It’s tempting to see the astounding amount of work invested in this campaign to have amounted to very little. 

In spite of any doubts on the efficacy of the campaign, God’s been teaching me a lesson.  We are people of faith.  I must still believe even though I don’t see the results I believed for.  I need to trust that the Lord is working through the seeds that this campaign has sown to bring about a fruit that I may never experience.  And not just because I myself invested money, time, prayer, and fasting—but because the work of God demands that we trust God to produce the results that we are unable to fully accomplish in our own strength.  Sometimes we do ministry on the wet wood, but we must believe that the Lord will send fire to the altar!

New arrival on the field:  my fellow intern, David.
Great guy, we get along well, greatly blessed to be
doing missions together for the next 6 months.
Here's us helping out at a community clean-up we
put together with the Ruashi church.

However, I’ve also been learning that we can both have faith in God bringing to completion what’s already been done and we can adjust our strategies to serve God more excellently.  We need to continually improve on our personal abilities and corporate resources because those are the gifts God has given us to use for ministry!  Maybe our time, energy, and resources could be better invested in another way that would produce more lasting fruit, more people who would stay in the church community to be made into disciples.  I’m not sure exactly what that would look like or even how to go about discussing that.  But I will do my best to learn why the Congolese do the ministry they do and we will work together to complete God’s mission in excellence!

These are the people who answered the call for service
in the Kingdom at the Acts in Africa conference.  There
was another one of these with the same result
the Sunday after!

Another big event happened in L’shi recently.  Acts in Africa, an Assemblies of God group dedicated to igniting a world-evangelization vision to this continent, put on a 5-day seminar on the Holy Spirit and the mission of the church.  Two seasoned American missionaries, Denny Miller and Mark Turney, and a prominent Malawian pastor, Ensen Lweysa, thoroughly hammered Acts 1:8, Jesus’ commission to the disciples to preach the gospel everywhere by the power of the Holy Spirit, into each pastor’s teaching and vision.  After the conference, the Katanga district committed to planting 156 new churches, training 36 new church planters, sending out 4 missionaries to other countries, and creating an extension school to train more church planters.  Further, In two of their services, over 200 people in each responded to the call of God to ministry.  Praise God!  Truly this was experience of God's fire on the altar!

Right now we're teaching an English class at Ruashi's
mother church, Epee de l'Eternel (Sword of the Lord).
The courses's purpose is to provide a place for regular
attenders to bring their friends to hear the gospel
and be more easily welcomed into the church, but
already people who don't normally attend there
are showing up! 

The conference’s emphasis on the Holy Spirit’s role in the individual believer’s life made me seriously question my relationship with the Spirit.  If the apostles in Acts were performing miracles, healings, and powerful sermons in the power of the same Holy Spirit that lives in us, then where is that power in my life?  Where is that power?  Where are those messages of wisdom and knowledge, those prophecies, those healings and miracles, those utterances and interpretations of tongues?  Will I just be content with saying I believe these things but never seek their power in my life?  Or will I really commit myself to being lead and taught by the Spirit and using His gifts for the good of the church and the salvation of unbelievers? 

Well there’s enough thoughts and events for one blog for now.  God really has been teaching me the most life-changing things!  I’ll make another post soon about other adventures!

Mark Verslues, the missionary here overseeing the
construction of a new Bible school, invited David and I
to help build a brick oven.  That's what we're standing on.
At the end of the day, it was up to our chest and we still
hadn't loaded the field of bricks in the background.
In total it contained 6,000 bricks.

Before I go, I want to say a huge thank you for everyone who’s been praying for me.  Thank you to #iam2nd back at SAGU for praying for me every hall devo and every midnight proverbs.  Thank you to the many saints at Gateway and WBC church who’s been interceding for me.  Thank you to the WBC college group for lifting up my needs to the throne.  Thank you friends, family, and everyone else for interceding for me.  There are too many times to list here where something has happened in my personal life or the ministry around me only because someone was praying.  Thank you and Mungu awabariki!  God bless you!

Bumps in the Night

Tonight’s another good night to start a blog post.  There’s more noise coming from the Bible school across the path.  Except this time it’s not cries of joy and French and Lingala worship songs blasting through the night.  This time it sounds pretty scary.

I'm currently working with these two brothers,
Jean and Amede, to help put together the evangelism
program at the Ruashi church.  Another local pastor
will be putting on an evangelism for the church
this weekend

A spiritual youth retreat has been going on for the past few days, and tonight must be deliverance night.  I hear some strong prayer and bloody murder screaming going on inside the school.  There’s a few girls wailing and wandering around the compound right outside our gate.  They’re babbling something that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.  I’m really glad I didn’t come in the gate a few minutes later. 

Here’s a good opportunity to share a bit of what I’ve experienced on the spiritual side of Congo.

The church I’m currently working at just finished a two-week seminar on deliverance.  On the first night of the seminar, during worship time, I strongly felt the Lord leading me to go and pray in the back of the church.  I talked myself out of it and didn’t do it then.  During the teaching time, Pasteur gave an introduction to having a spiritual perspective and acknowledging the influence of evil.  After that was prayer time, and again I felt the same urging to go towards the back of the church and pray. 

I taught a three-week teaching on love overcoming
legalism at the Ruashi church.  Here I'm illustrating
Jesus' example of serving others in love.

I obeyed this time.  All of the kids were seated in the back, and I felt further led to pray for them.  While I was laying hands on them, the Lord pointed out one child in particular.  I felt Him telling me that this little girl had a serious problem—demon possession.  “What?!?” I reacted in my mind.  I quickly waved that thought off. “This is just a kid, there’s no problem here,” I said to myself.  I prayed for her anyways, though. 

Nothing spectacular happened.  After I finished, I felt the Lord further pushing me to tell her a message from Him.  I figured she only understood Swahili so I waited until after the service until an usher could help me translate it. 

...I realize at this point that if you don’t have a Pentecostal background this all might seem really freaky, but, please bear with me... 

After the service, I told an usher what just happened.  He found the girl, pulled her in front of him facing me, and she up looked at me.  I asked her in French if she spoke French and she shook her head no really big, just like kids do.  I began telling the usher what I felt I should tell her, and I said something like “Listen, the Lord wanted me to tell you something,” but right when I started to say that, she starts trying to run away, yelling at the usher to let her go, and jerking her arms out of his grip.  My voice trailed off as she ran into the dark neighborhood.

At that moment, I just figured that she didn’t want to hear that, but later on I put the pieces together.  She started off very calm and sweet, but as soon as I started to say what the Lord had lead me to say, she reacted to it strongly and negatively and tried to run away.  Wow.  Maybe God was right when he told me there was a serious spiritual problem.

Jean being another illustration.  If we
try to follow the Lord's commands
without the foundation of our forgiveness
or loving others and God, it's just a
heavy burden we can't carry.

I told Pasteur about it the next day.  “Ah... Merci pour entrer dans le monde spirituel.”  Thank you for entering into the spiritual world.  He said that we needed to keep praying for her and talk to her parents.  That night, a brother and I found the same girl after service.  I remembered that verse that says no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Spirit.  Some people had used that before in seeing if someone was demon-possessed, because they couldn’t say “Jesus is my Lord” if a demon was controlling them.  I mentioned that to my brother, and he asked the girl to repeat “Yesu ni Bwana yangu” after him.  She repeated it twice.  We prayed for her anyways, and nothing extraordinary happened again.  Right after he finished, however, my brother looked at me and told me that he was sure she was possessed. 

I asked him how he knew that afterwards.  He said he saw an image of an adult when he looked at her.  I wasn’t sure what that could mean.  He went on to say that he was sure Satan was working in her because there was “resistance,” that she was biting her fingernails and trying to lift his hand off of her when he was praying.  “Ok...” I thought.  “It’s pretty normal for kids to bite their nails like that when they’re nervous, and especially whenever you pray for someone in the Congolese head-lock of deliverance style, they might try to resist a bit (people praying for deliverance will put on hand on a person’s forehead and another on the back of their head and walk around the room).”  I told him that was normal for kids to act like that though.  “Well...” he continued, “I just had a bad feeling about it.”

Simba helping out with an illustration on 1 Corinthians 13.
Even when things poke at us and annoy us and provoke
 us to get angry, love does not get irritated.

I wondered if this was real at all.  The next night we pointed out the kid to Pasteur, and he recognized whose family she came from.  “Ooooh. Ooh.  Je comprends.  Je comprends. Je comprends.”  (I understand).  I asked him what he was talking about later, what he understood.  He said that in this family, one of the other girls had apparitions speaking through her, maybe a deceased relative or even someone alive.  Wow.  That fit in with what my brother said earlier about seeing a vision of an adult.  Whatever the issue was, Pasteur said that it’s important to have wisdom when dealing with this.  The parents might make a big scandal about it, that people were thinking their child was a witch.  He’ll take the situation from here.  The Lord will take care of this, as He’s shown that He will throughout this whole story. 

“Merci pour entrer dans le monde spirituel.” 

This is one of the kids we saw on the mountain.
Thankfully, some people come by and take care of them
There's a guy here who's started a school for kids who
have been kicked out for "being sorcerers" like that.
After 5 years, it's already producing fruit of kids
who've got internships for a local mining company

So yes, here in Congo, spiritual stuff happens, stuff that us naturalistic Americans are not used to and are skeptical of.  But it’s very real.  The works of darkness are here. 

When we went up to the prayer mountain, we noticed a few dusty kids off by themselves.  When we asked Pasteur, he told us that they were kicked out of their houses onto the street because people though they were sorcerers.

T.P. Mazembe

There’s a Lubumbashian soccer team sponsored by a big mining company here called Tout Puissant Mazembe.  Tout Puissant means All-Powerful, and Mazembe is the Swahili name for those big mining trucks that can run over and destroy houses and stuff.  Everyone is fanatic about this team.  I got one of their jerseys off the street and I love wearing it.  People are surprised and really excited to see a random white guy supporting their team.  One day, a friend came by and I asked him how their last match went.  We talked a bit about that, then he added a comment about the way African leagues went.  The coaches make all of the players go to the witchdoctor before the game so they can have the best chance of winning the game and the money.  Even if one of the players refuses, another of his teammates might throw curses against him.  If he got sick on the field because of that, his malicious teammate could replace him and earn more money. 

The other day I was playing soccer with some guys on the lawn outside my house (no curses involved). 

After the game we talked a bit, and one of them asked me if I did karate, wrestling, or sparring.  I said sometimes I would do that when I had the chance.  The guy who asked me then looked surprised and laughed a little.  “Even a Christian!!” he exclaimed, pointing at me.  "Huh?"  I asked what was up with that.  Another guy explained that sometimes in those sports people would invoke impure spirits to enter them and make them stronger so they could win the match.

I was recently in the hospital with malaria.  Stayed out
a bit too late in the night.  Four days, four bags of
quinine, and much, much, appreciated prayer later,
I was feeling all better!

Do you recall that verse where Paul was saying that he was in danger from false brothers?  That happens here too.  I asked a friend if witchdoctors were sometimes Christians.  He laughed a little.  “No, but les sorciers are.”  (He explained to me that les fetisheurs are more good-hearted people who some come for healing or to solve a problem make someone do something, and les sorciers are more malevolent and just want to bother, curse, or even kill people with their evil practices).   “Sometimes les sorciers will come to church just so they can put magic on people.”

It’s different here, how much the spiritual world has an impact on everyday life.  I wonder sometimes how many of the frustrations, sicknesses, and arguments we have here are a result of some sorcerer’s wicked work.  This side of sin is pretty shocking to Americans—I’ve had very little experience with this.  Yet at the same time, it’s starting to feel like just another sin.  Just another result of a fallen people separated from the only powerful, wise, and loving God.  Just another messed-up aspect of this culture, and there's some in every culture, that ever so desperately needs the redemption of Jesus.

Revelations in Jambo Mart

Currently I am sitting outside the girls’ house at about midnight waiting for their water tank to finish pumping water.  Since this swarm of mosquitoes isn’t that great of company, I think this is a good time to update da blog.

Jambo Mart's the grey building.
Slick modern design stands out downtown.

I’ve been reflecting on a recent event that changed my perspective a bit on what I can offer while I’m here.  Just the other day we went to Jambo Mart, an Indian-run department store downtown to get some groceries and look at the clothes they had.  Looked around a bit and then decided to talk to the Indian floor manager named Nitach.  Good to be reminded of my Indian friends back at UTA (shoutout to Subu, Ankit, Bharat, AD, Satish, Yash, Chinmay, and everyone else!).  Talked about work there, what we were doing, life in Congo, what Americans did on the weekends (“chilling out and drinking beer,” according to him), religious views… and then Papa Jonas showed up. 

Here's a picture of the core group of Pasteur Ezekiel's
church when we went up to the prayer mountain.
In Congo, on the national holiday, everyone goes
to the mountain to pray, and on Fridays, everyone
goes to church.  Yep not in America tho lol

Papa Jonas is a Congolese fellow who worked at the same floor.  He noticed that I was speaking a little 

French, I think I told him I was a missionary intern, and upon finding out I was an American Christian he got really excited.  Then, with Nitach and another Indian guy standing right in front of him, he said something like “Ah these guys…they’re not Christians!  They believe in… what’s the name of your god again?  Brraa…”  “Uh Brahman!” the Indian guys reacted with a bit of an incredulous and ok-whatever-old-man chuckle.  “Oh yeah yeah he’s got like six arms and haha nahhh… They must believe in Jesus!”  Then he proceeded to ask, no, demand that I should bring him a Bible because he was a Christian brother trying to do some evangelism up in Jambo Mart.  Désolé Papa… but even if I had one to give, I wouldn’t without you having the proper training on how to use it.  That thing is a sword, you know.   

“It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way,” (Pr 19:2).  Heck I wish I had some more Congolese zeal to serve the Lord, openness in expression of faith in God, exuberance in worshipping the Father.  That’s a huge strength that my brothers and sisters and papas and mamans here can bring to the global Body of Christ.  But… without knowing what you’re doing… well, case in point, making fun of what someone believes doesn’t exactly make Jesus more credible. 

So I’ve realized that this knowledge, or this American-style, or even Zach-style plan-everything-meticulously-before-you-do-it would be a great thing to use in partnership with my fellow believers here so that we, from our different backgrounds, gifts, and skills, could grow more into the fullness and maturity of Christ. 

A lot of people have asked what Congolese meals
look like.  Here's one I forgot to put on the last post--
us at Fr. Jonathan's house, eating fufu, cabbage,
chicken, potatoes, some mashed up pork, 

Which is coming about in a lot of great opportunities.  I’ve been sharing ideas and helping put together the evangelism team at Pasteur Ezekiel’s church.  A guy in a local neighborhood who’s pretty passionate about preaching the gospel to his friends asked me to help him with a Bible teaching he’ll be doing.  And I just gave a teaching on making love the basis for all of the other commands we follow last Wednesday and will be giving two more the following weeks.  Yeah, I taught in French for like a whole hour.  Wussup. 

More on the evangelism ideas…  The Congolese style, as you can kinda see, is really confrontational—if the

Oh and caterpillars. 

 harvest is ready when they talk to someone, it is sure gonna be harvested.  They don’t miss an opportunity to encourage or instruct someone with the Bible, even if that person says they sing in a choir from their same

 church’s denomination.  However, confrontation doesn’t work with everyone, especially with those who don’t want to believe just yet.  Instead of just moving on, it requires a bit more laboring in the field to produce the harvest, a bit more investment in the relationship, a bit more time spent caring and talking and loving before being a part of a bunch of people who sing and are preached to several times a week becomes a willful and passionate experience with a community of believers who are truly alive in Christ.  Jesus told the disciples to pray not just for harvesters, but for laborers who do the plowing, planting, watering, and fertilizing too.

Sunday right before Michelle left.  The girls got
pretty dresses made and Mama Mimi got a matching
one too.  And I've got my slick tie

If you happen to be reading this and aren’t exactly sure about this evangelism or Jesus thing or what I’m even doing in Africa… Hey.  Yeah I’m in Africa right now trying to learn how to help people follow Jesus.  Yeah, it doesn’t make a lot of sense… didn’t Jesus live a long time ago?  Why would I want to “follow” him?  Well, for me, I met him one day, and he kinda changed my life.  He freed me from trying to live up to a standard of my good deeds outweighing my bad ones because I believed that he took the punishment for everything I’ve done wrong and forgave me and washed me clean.  I can’t say for a fact that he’s done that, but what the Bible says is trustworthy and I have personal experiences with him every day.  That’s kinda why you have to believe it though.  John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.”  And he gave me this calling, to go to Africa and work with a church organization that helps others tell people this great news, that even though our world is really messed up and we’ve done a lot of things wrong against God, he still loved us and sent his Son, Jesus, to die in our place so that we could be the ones who could be made good and pleasing towards God.  There’s nothing else I would rather do with my life, just to help others grow to know this Jesus more and more and be free through this awesome thing he’s done for us.

But of course that doesn’t mean I’m anywhere near perfect.  I think I mentioned a while back about the Lord really using this time to bring up things in me that really need to change.  That has not stopped.  What’s going on now?  Congolese papa gives a very kind offer to me and I turn it down pretty jerkishly.  Younger guy after talking to me for like 15 minutes says that he loves me, and I think in response ok, thanks for being superficial, shut up I hate you go away.  Wait what?  Missionaries shouldn’t be thinking like that, they should be burdened for these people and pray for them and love them all the time and stuff.  Whoops.  Yeah it’s hard sometimes… it’s really hard sometimes… just to even love the people who show genuine kindness towards me.  But hey that’s just one of the many things that’s being brought up as I live here and that I’m trying by the grace of God, and the grace of the Congolese too, to better and overcome.

This is probably my favorite picture so far.  Perfect description of life here...
Savannah and Hannah talking about something that I have no idea about
and me just standing there looking all dorky and confused
next to my Congolese friend Jean...