Greetings from Africa! Wednesday, September 08, 2004
This morning I am preparing to send off this email, and later today I will be sending off myself. It would be nice if I would arrive in America as rapidly as this email will, but the actual travel time is, in fact, amazingly short – far better to spend hours on a jet than weeks (or months?) on a sailing ship. I truly can not imagine the dedication of the ‘old time’ missionaries. Compared to them I do not even feel comfortable wearing the label, but I don’t know what the toned down version would be – ‘American dude living and ministering overseas, but living in comfort and having easy access via Internet, telephone and air transport to his homeland’ is pretty cumbersome.
On Saturday there was a meeting of people in the Rustenburg area involved in evangelism and church planting, with perhaps 100 people in attendance. There were several presentations, one by a man named Jan Burger. Jan is 61 and, in my opinion, one of the best teachers I have ever seen/heard. He has already prepared curricula for about a dozen short courses, ranging from one to eight days in length. The courses are prepared, the facility is in place, and the need is great, but just the small cost of transport, meals and copying the materials is still too much for most of the people. Father, help! I also spoke for a couple of minutes on inner healing. A pastor from Zimbabwe who now lives in Rustenburg spoke to me afterward and wants to get together after I return from the US.
a combined service of a network of small Presbyterian churches spread out in various towns and villages. The attached pictures were taken there, and show – I hope well – one of the more meager church structures on the earth. It was nailed together from scrap materials on open ground, and I imagine that in a hard rain being inside is rather like being outside. But the place was packed, everyone wearing their best clothes and prepared to worship. People arrived over a considerable span of time, and the first to arrive just start singing when they got there. More arrive and joined in, and at some point the ‘service’ started. From time to time someone would just spontaneously start singing, and everyone would join in. After a while the program resumes where it had been left off.
When the ‘service’ was over Pastor Fred Lambert (the man with one leg standing in the doorway in one picture) and I went and stood outside the door to shake people hands as they walked out of the ‘building’. As they passed by they formed a line, each person joining the end of the line, which wrapped around to form a circle. During all this they never stopped singing, with some going to the middle of the circle to dance. If someone hadn’t prepared lunch for us at their house I don’t know when they would have quit. The message had to be translated into Tswana, but after a while you get the hang of preaching one sentence at a time, pausing for translation as you go. One advantage is that you can watch people’s faces as they listen to the translation – this works a lot better for me than trying to watch them as I preach. When speaking my attention is on the message and I just can’t concentrate on faces.
Yesterday Johan Louw (owner of the farm where Judea Harvest and the New Life Mission Station are located) came and picked me up. We went to the farm, and then I met a very interesting individual named Dr. Klopper. He is a physician and entrepreneur with a BIG ministry vision involving organizing African communities for various dimensions of community development. There is considerable use of technology in his vision, and I, of course, really like that! He has LOTS of connections and funding sources and partners and every other which thing you can think of, and I think good things are going to happen. There is a substantial research component, so my education and background might prove to be of some use. I’ll pass along more news as it happens.
Then on Sunday I went out into ‘the veld’ (open country and villages) to preach at
Time for my next project! I’m looking forward to seeing some of you soon. My mother’s memorial service is on Saturday the 18th, so please pray for God’s peace for the whole family at that time.
Love from Africa
Lary