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.