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...

Trip to Kolwesi

Loadin' up

A few weeks ago we had our first outing—Kolwesi, a large city about 4 hours away from Lubum where a
brother named Jonathan had his ministry base.  Frère Jonathan runs a distribution relief deal.  Local churches in Lubum and Kolwesi donate clothes and food to give to the poor in rural villages, widows, orphans, old folks, and handicapped. 

Here’s a few accounts of what happened.  The first village we went to was about 20 minutes’ drive outside the city.  African countryside on the way there.  Nothing like it.  While riding in the back of Bill’s Land Cruiser, I talked with one of Jonathan’s assistants, Patient.  Patient was the first orphan that Jonathan raised in his ministry, and now he’s finishing up his missiological studies in preparation to be a missionary towards businesspeople in China.  Yeah… young people are being trained to be missionaries here in Africa!  I am not sure how good the training is, however, since he didn’t seem to have the most realistic view of how evangelism would work in China, but there it is!

Maman Sonia giving some clothes to a woman
in the first village

The distribution.  We arrive at the village to see a tarp on the ground surrounded by neat lines of mamans, papas, and children.  Jonathan’s wife sang a few traditional songs, then Michelle, Hannah and I sang a few songs in Swahili.  Bill preached the gospel after that with Pasteur Ezechiel translating.  Oh the village had a Bible study going but no church, by the way.  Jonathan then encouraged the people to believe in Christ, and about 7 people responded to the call. 

I doubted if they actually got saved.  I don’t know why.  I don’t think it was good that I did that. 

But after that we dropped down the clothes and food and started the distribution.  The process was that they gave out tickets and spread the word to people in the village a couple weeks beforehand, then they come with their tickets to receive the donations.  Everyone seemed pretty satisfied… even though it didn’t seem like they needed clothes.  Bill did say that they dressed up from the last time he passed by the village.  Then we took a ton of pictures UGH we got so tired of taking pictures and rolled out.

Talking to an "mzee," an elder
at the old folks' home

We followed about the same procedure for the old folks’ home and handicapped distributions, except the old folks gave us plenty of African-style wisdom parable stories and we showed the handicapped people the testimony of this evangelist dude with no arms and legs.  Again, not sure of the complete need of clothes for these people, but Jonathan has plans for farms and technical schools to help these people get further out of poverty with income-producing skills. 

And then there was the final village.  It was about an hour out of Kolwesi in a smaller city called Fugurume.  This place was wow.  The countryside here was picturesque Africa.  After about a 45 minute drive through the bush, we’re welcomed into the village church with Swahili songs.  Then we and the about 60 villagers gather underneath a big tree in the middle of the village to sing songs, hear preaching, and receive donations. 

The normal distribution process went well for a while… but eventually the neat line turned into a big huddle around the piles of clothes.  I noticed a lot of activity around one pile and saw Patient throwing clothes around like it was Mardi Gras.  That triggered a mad scramble to grab whatever, and when the dust settled there were no more clothes and no more human dignity.  The same thing happened with a nearby pile of shoes.  I noticed I was standing guard around the last pile of shoes, but soon after Sonia tapped me on the shoulder and told me we were leaving.  We took a few more pictures, the villagers gave us some bananas, potatoes, and a chicken, and we left.  Needless to say by us, this distribution was poorly maintained.  I do hope and pray that the Lord would continue to move through Jonathan and that this ministry now would be guided in faithfulness and wisdom.

No matter how the trip went or whatever happens, one of the greatest things I admire about Congolese is how much their faith is integrated in their outward life.  Their speech is full of faith, vision, and assurance in the grace and power of God. 

Hannah holding Excellence

Oh… and this.  Jonathan always had a bunch of little ones running around his house whenever we came to eat his generous meals or meet with the team.  The youngest, his baby named Excellence, quickly became a part of our hearts.  The girls loved holding and playing with him during the journeys.  He always seemed happy.  But suddenly, only a few days after we got back, we were told that he got sick.

Excellence died that day.

The smallest illnesses can take the smallest lives and make the biggest mourning.  Too often Africa becomes a very cold place.

Bottom line from the whole trip is this, though.  Even though things don’t always go the best and things can always be improved, God still moves, He is still moving, and He will accomplish His purposes in Congo, those things that are more that we can ever ask or imagine according to His power that works through us. 

 

Meeting the mayor of Kolwesi

This is how the Congolese welcome guests:
Lots of food and lots of fufu.  J'aime le fufu!

The chicken and bananas the second village
gave us.  The village church pastor is on the right.

Dieu fidèle—Faithful God

Congolese wedding receptions seem interesting.  I hear a lot of singing (currently the French version of “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever”), loud music blaring, dancing, cheering, and plenty of the traditional Congolese cries of joy coming from the chapel in the Bible school right across the path from our house.

Pasteur Ezekiel's church.  This is where we'll
be going in the morning.

They also make good excuses to write blog posts because all of this is happening at 11:30 at night and it looks like I won’t be going to sleep any time soon.

If you asked me before I left what I would be doing over here ministry-wise, I may have told you that I was thinking about starting some sort of radio ministry.  More about that.  About two weeks into my first semester at SAGU last fall, I was praying.  After I got up, I received a strong, distinct thought from God:  “Create a ministry.”  Hm.  “Well,” I thought, “I’m a freshman here, and I’m leaving in 4 months (then I was planning to come to Congo January 2014) … what could I possibly start that would last and be good?”  Trying to be obedient to the crazy notion anyway, I looked for opportunities to start something on campus.  Nothing turned up. 

Swahili homework, African style.  Note smashed mosquito.

Somehow I got the idea that maybe I was to start something in Congo and I should start thinking about it now.  I looked up some potential needs in Congo and saw that there were a high percentage of Christians—statistics range to around 80-90%--yet sound teaching was rare and mixing non-biblical cultural practices in with the faith was too common.  What could transmit true, biblical teaching for many Christians to hear and be brought to a fuller understanding of how they should live to please the Lord?  Radio ministry came to mind.  I typed in something like “congo radio ministry” into Google to get more information, and the very first site that popped up was perfect.  It had information about Congolese history, a ton of statistics about radio and TV in Congo, and regulations on media.  I definitely took it as confirmation, and did so even more after I received a wave of fear, anxiety, and “oh you can’t do that,” which probably came straight from the enemy, right after reading the site.  So I decided to do it.

Bill and Pasteur Ezekiel preaching/translating
at a village on the Kolwesi trip.  The two have
a good relationship.

I thought I would write one of my ministry focus papers on creating such a radio ministry in Congo to make some preparatory plans, but during my research I found that a lot of local people said that outside-sponsored media enhancement projects that didn’t incorporate the advice of the local people ended up being entirely irrelevant.  Realizing whatever plans I made by myself at home would probably be obsolete there, I decided to wait and ask God to raise up someone here with the same idea for this ministry whom I can partner and plan with to make this work.

Recently I found out that the very pastor we’re working with in Lubumbashi, Pasteur Ezekiel, has been thinking about starting a TV station to meet the exact same need.  There’s already 12 church-sponsored TV shows, but all that all of them do is preach.  No creative, relative teaching whatsoever.  It’s been nearly 9 months since I first prayed that prayer and the Lord gave me that vision, He has guided it since then, and now He is bringing it to pass.  The Lord is ever so good and faithful!!

So there’s a cool testimony to what God can do though one prayer.  Many more will follow through your prayers for this ministry!

Me and Pichene in ESL class.
If you notice my nametag, I kinda changed
my name to Zacharie.  It's easier for them to say here.

What else has been going on?  I started Swahili lessons a while back.  Those are going well and I’m able to say a good number of relevant sentences.  Wanaimba kule.  Sipenda maana naitajiya kulala.  (They’re singing over there.  I don’t like that because I want to go to sleep.)  My French is improving incredibly as well.  I’m thankful for the Lord’s help in that.  Sonia started up an English as a Second Language class at Pasteur Ezekiel's church a few weeks ago.  

 Last weekend we went on a trip to a city about 4 hours northwest of here called Kolwesi to see and help out with a brother’s relief project.  That was definitely a cultural experience worthy of its own blog post, so next time.  Making friends is still taking a while.  There’s a lot of people who are outwardly friendly and I think I have yet to establish an equal, trusting relationship where all of my American white dude influence has been ironed out by equality and trust. 

Final thought.  I’ve tried to live a missionary lifestyle at home, and I was passionate about serving Christ and expanding His kingdom and seeing people hear the good news that there is a way to eternal life, there is a place of peace and love and rest and, and persuading others to be reconciled from a life of darkness and sin to the righteousness of Christ.  And now here I am in Africa, “missionaire apprentice,” living the call to go to be Christ’s witnesses to the ends of the earth, and yet… I keep asking myself these questions… Do I really want to see God’s name be glorified?  Am I concerned about His kingdom coming?  Do I really care about His Name, this Name above all Names, the Name of my Heavenly Father, being kept holy?  Is following Jesus and seeking to please Him the primary motivation in my life?  Am I really groaning for His soon-coming return and am ready to see Him come? 

The answers to these questions within me, these very motivations to the missionary calling, are a lot more barren than I once perceived them to be.  This is when the Holy Spirit is working in me what is pleasing to the Father and the heated shock of cross-cultural living are really bringing the worst in me to the surface.  This is the time where the Lord is forming my motivation not just towards the fulfillment of a call, but for the very longing of my soul to be clothed with the fullness of eternal life in Christ.  This… well… this is quite the making of a missionary.

Next time:  Visiting villages on the trip to Kolwesi.

Things are looking up

It’s been two weeks since I got here.  On average, most short-term trippers would be on the flight home now.  I am still here for the next 10 months, and I haven’t even almost barely begun to understand how to relate to people here.  But things are looking up.

Talking with a few "jeunes" (young people)
in the quartier... with my perpetual confused face

I’ve realized a few things about African relationships.  Story time.  The first time I went to the duck duck goose quartier, I had the opportunity to talk to a couple young fellows, Jean-Luc and Gabi.  During the conversation, Jean-Luc showed me this paper filled with Scriptures and declarations about the blood of Jesus, printed all in English.  I thought he was asking me to translate his paper into French.  I agreed, thinking it would be a good friendship favor, but later I suspected that he just duped me into doing his homework.  I translated only the declarations, thinking that he could translate the verses on his own with his French Bible, but upon taking it back to him and telling him that, he had a new request for me.  He didn’t have a French-English Bible, but he wanted one.  I didn’t have one either so I said I would talk to someone about getting one.  A few days later they showed up at the gate to the house asking me if I could teach an English class for them.  See where this is going?    

I thought the same thing too, that they just wanted things from me.  Not that I was opposed to that, since they were asking for uhh Bibles, but relationships in my perspective are hard to form when nearly the first to the last sentence of a conversation deals entirely with the latest request. 

But I talked to the missionary who knows these kids and runs the school they go to about the whole thing, and she gave me a different perspective.  Apparently they fell away from church and slipped into witchcraft and worldly living, but now it looked like God was bringing them back.  That’s why she gave them the Scriptures about the blood of Jesus, and that’s why they wanted the French-English Bibles.  She said that Gabi wanted to get the whole quartier saved, and they were hungry for more teaching and discipleship.  Both of them agreed to work to earn money to buy the Bibles.  So…they’re not just some kids trying to jip me into doing their homework or getting them free stuff.  They are honestly spiritually hungry. 

People are not always as they appear to me here.  I need discernment and patience to be able to figure out relationships and who people really are.

Inside Pasteur Ezekiel's church.
There were about 60 adults and 80 children that came.

Ministry plans here are starting to spirit out.  Because we’re not living according to the flesh.  Haha lame Jesus juke.  Ok so I love talking with young people—les universitaires, university students my age.  At the prayer meeting last Friday, a new fellow joined the church.  He transferred from the larger parent church of the church plant.  Back there, he worked with the evangelism/get-people-to-come-to-church department, and I’ll be serving with him in talking to, visiting, and praying for people while inviting them to come to our church.  I would love to do that. 

Oh and about that… a couple days ago, Hannah and I went around the neighborhood with Pasteur Ezekiel’s wife, Maman Mimi, to hand out church invitations to people.  She kept saying “Si un blanch le leur donne, ils viennent.” If a white person gives them a flyer, they’ll come.

Hm.  I was not quite sure what to think of that.  It made me a bit uncomfortable.  After talking with Bill a bit, I realized this…  Here, people highly regard all things Western.  If it’s American, it’s better.  That, and they associate white skin with wealth, because most white folk who pass through are wealthy.  When white people attend a church, it gives the church credibility.  That’s kinda why the church we went to this Sunday often had the camera on us for their TV broadcasting.  So, then I will use this white skin—wisely—as a tool to draw others in.  Does that make you feel like that’s not right?  A lot of me does too.  But we’ll see how this goes.

That calls for another corollary lesson on missions:  keep the long-term goal in mind in the midst of temporary ministry.  After 10 months, white man will be gone and so will the attraction that comes with me.  Whatever draw I could offer myself is only temporary.  That’s not a bad thing, and it’s certainly not so if people see that credibility, come to church, and are made into disciples because of that.  But I need to offer more than just my skin color in order to help establish a long-lasting, effective evangelism/people-reacher department whose ultimate draw is the love, fellowship, acceptance, grace, and provision of Christ, not just a white man.  The relationships I will establish with my Congolese friends in this ministry are essential to completing this.  This is what I am so looking forward to!!

Here's another great ministry possibility.
Students come from all across town to study
on the peaceful, beautiful compound.
Maybe something can come out of this.

The girls got to sing at a prison a couple times.

All in all, relating to people cross-culturally is tough.  I have found that is easy to concede to fleshly tendencies and frustrations on the field and let new changes in character and behavior get out of hand.  But I have learned one powerful weapon against conforming to the flesh and towards living by the will and Spirit of God--prayer.  However, prayer is not what strengthens us and gives Christ-like character and directs our path—our Heavenly Father does that, and He can be related to in prayer.  It is only through Jesus, who has cleansed me of my sin and put me in perfect standing before God, through whom I can relate to the Father.  And it is only through living the example of Jesus, which can only be forged by God in prayer, that I can relate to these people in love.

Did I mention this would be the making of a missionary?

Congo just got real

Up until today, this just hasn't felt real.  We are still literally driving through stereotypical African city, and I am still playing with dusty village kids, but I still haven’t felt like I’m in Africa.  I’m actually not sure exactly what that would feel like… well, granted, I also haven’t been to Africa before.  But today, our eyes were opened to true perspectives of life in Congo.

There’s a soccer field that local village kids gather at about 5-10 minutes’ walk from the house.  I think this is the place where I hear traditional church gatherings occur—complete with drums, chanting, and shouting, all of which I can hear from across the valley.  One afternoon a couple days ago I walked up there with Michelle, and we ended up singing, dancing, and talking with about 50 village kids.  Today, Savannah, Hannah and I went up there again to see what was up.

When we got to the dirt clearing, there were about 10 kids playing soccer with a little ball.  Hannah joined in with them.  After some time we asked them if they wanted to play another game… an American game, perhaps.  Excitedly, they agreed, and we proceeded to teach about 35 Congolese kids how to play duck duck goose with instructions in French.  Heck to the freakin yeah.  They loved that and had a lot of fun.

Teaching duck duck goose

Now up until this point, my main perspective towards the Congolese is that I’m seeking to build relationships with them.  The value of the relationships themselves is intrinsic, but through these I also hope to increase my French language capabilities, which are greatly increasing every day.  After I’m fairly secure in communication, I can proceed to more personal, spiritual, and evangelistic conversations.  A huge underlying assumption of that perspective is that the Congolese would also want to engage in those equal, mutual relationships the same way that I did.  Today that changed.

The duck duck goose game drew the attention of every passing village kid.  One kid tried to talk to Savannah, who let me know that he was trying to say something.  That’s him in the picture below with the white uniform shirt.  His name is Josué, a young schoolboy, about 12-14, very polite and well-educated.  He said hello, showed off some of his English skills, and we talked a bit about how we came, when we came, and where we were staying and all.  At this point, a crowd of about 30 kids and a few mamans (mothers) gathered around us.  He then asks a question that I had trouble understanding at first.  He kept saying “cadeaux,” (gifts) and “de l’argent, money,” (complete with the universal thumb and forefinger rubbing gesture) and he demonstrated what he meant by offering me his notebook, but it didn't look like he was about to give us anything.  Then I finally understood what he said—“Ou sont les cadeaux que nous vous avons apporté?” (Where are the gifts that you’ve brought us?)  Shocked—and trying to be apologetic, I told him that we didn’t come to bring gifts, but we did come to learn to be missionaries.  He then quickly asked that, when we return to America and come back to Congo, if we would we build free schools for them.  I tried to cut off the conversation and push away any promises by saying that I was planning on coming back to eastern Africa but not Congo, but maybe someone else would in the future.  We decided it was time to leave after that.

Talking with Josué

So apparently, someone came through this area in the past and gave these kids free stuff and now they expect it from us too because we’re white foreigners.  How can we build mutual relationships with people who are looking more for a handout than a friend?  How can we play with these kids the same way when they’re always thinking of us as the rich white folks that don’t have presents?  

Here’s a note, no, a WARNING for future relief workers/short term missions organizers:  giving free candy and handouts to needy people may seem like a great and biblical thing to do, but that very relief work will create serious perspective problems for long-term workers who don’t come with quick handouts but do come with greater, longer-lasting development plans. Think ahead to the long-term consequences of your ministry, not just what you can do in a couple weeks to make yourself think you did something good.

I’ve heard many stories about groups that have come to an area, given away stuff, made the people happy, and left, and then later long-term missionaries come in to facilitate long-term change, but the people are even harder to reach and cooperate with because they expect the same handouts from them.  I was not prepared to actually encounter this relief work gone bad so soon, and now we must negotiate the consequences.

That shocked me and greatly turned my perspective of life in Congo.  I’m still reeling a bit from that.  But maybe it’s not all that bad.  I’m not used to being seen as the rich kid, plus about all of these kids may not know where they’ll get food in a few weeks, and they are kids too.  This can also just be the way they think—there’s this African mentality called “patronage,” where the wealthy man gives favors for others in exchange for loyalty.  I may have noticed this in a couple individuals—the main subject of our conversations is them trying to get me to do stuff for them.  Instead of my immediate assumption that they just want to play the rich kid being true, that could just be how they naturally act towards us.  This perspective towards foreigners could be used for good as well, even allowing us to go places we could not have gone if it wasn’t there.  We now have the opportunity to share with them what really matters—is it all about money and stuff, or family and faith?  Nevertheless, this mentality of us rich foreigners having loads of money and goods ready to distribute is still a great barrier that we will have to overcome in ministry to these beloved Congolese.

Me and Willy

And of course, not all of the Congolese may think that way.  My first Congolese friend’s name is Willy.  He works the yards around the missionary compound.  I see him every day.  He also is a new believer who’s involved in the church we go to.  Oh yeah, I went to a Congolese church this Sunday.  That’s another post for another day.  But Willy offered to take us to some fun places in town, and when an unexpected taxi ride came up, he paid for us.  Yeah.  During that trip, a few times he put his arm around my shoulder, grabbed my arm, or held my hand.  Those are Congolese signs of close friendship.  I love Willy.  I’m kinda crying as I write this.  I am very thankful for a true friend here.

It seems that Congo just got a bit more real.  Now we know what perspectives we’re dealing with, and according the Lord’s strength, guidance, and favor, we can show the love of Christ to the Congolese even more.

Yes, this is definitely the making of a missionary.