Africa Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Background Partners

“One thing!”

(Highlights From The Past Year series)

Friday night baseball. Bottom of the sixth inning. Ryan’s team has already lost this game 9-3, but that doesn’t matter at the moment. You see, the coach has just looked over to Ryan at shortstop. “Ryan, take the mound…”

Ryan’s never pitched a game in his life. For the past few weeks he’s been practicing in the backyard, throwing to Brady and me. We’ve set up 2×4’s to keep him from stepping wide. We’ve practiced holding the ball, swinging his trail leg, and following through. And all the time we keep saying, “Ryan, you’re doing great, but none of it matters if you forget one thing – you have to hit the catcher’s glove. One thing, just remember one thing.”

Ryan starts walking to the mound and parents start asking me, “Does Ryan know how to pitch?” “We’ll see,” I said. I turn to the field and yell, “HEY RY! ONE THING!” He grins, looks to the catcher…

Really early Thursday morning I’ll board a plane, and 32 hours later walk across the border from Rwanda into Congo. This past week we almost canceled the trip.

You see, hard to reach places aren’t just ones with extremists or polytheistic theologies. Some places are just bad places. For thirty-five years there has been constant conflict in the northeast region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Guerrilla groups hold villages in fear, raping women, killing men, abducting child soldiers. The UN has their second largest international peace keeping force in the world here (17,000 troops). The Congolese army treats the women not much differently than the rebels. Children depend on feeding centers for food in many villages. And Congo is statistically a “Christian” country.

Paul’s words in Romans 15:20 constantly echo in my mind. “It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ is not known.” During our nine days in DRC, that’s what we’ll be doing. Jesus isn’t unknown in this region, but he is not really known. Fear, power and domination, abuse, death, hopelessness…these are the realities that course through the villages, walk the hill paths, and envelope people’s daily lives.

We’ll be teaching pastors how to use storying in the villages. The younger members of our team will be sharing stories with children at feeding centers that the pastors can build on. Our ladies will be spending a couple days with women who have been victims of indescribable rape and abuse, share life stories, pray, and share stories from the Bible of women unloved by men but completely loved by God (and there are a lot in Scripture).

This trip is really about one thing. Doing what we can with our Congolese brothers and sisters to help fearful, hurting people begin to know a God they know about but don’t know.

Focusing on one thing can make a difference. Ryan’s pitching? He struck out his first batter.

Sweaty multiplication

(Highlights Of The Past Year series)

A couple weeks ago I got back from Africa. It was the hardest trip I’ve done – physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Believe it or not, it was the first trip I’ve ever gotten sick on. My host and I miscommunicated several times, effecting the training schedule. We drove for hours, four men wedged in the back seat sitting shoulders sideways, windows down in 120^o and dust blowing in. I got back to the US and was completely drained.

But it was a good trip. I could share about how many people came to the trainings and comments they made, but let me share a bit about four men I saw God move in during this trip. We pray for churches to start and people to become believers in hard to reach places and those are the “cool” things to share, but notice in Matthew 9:38 that Jesus says to pray for laborers. This has been my biggest prayer this year, shaping the trips we’re taking and how we’re making decisions – are we preparing qualified laborers who can train others?

We pulled up to our first training, surgically separating ourselves from each other as we climbed out of the backseat. Eugene came up to me and I forgot about trying to get my spine realigned again. I recognized his huge grin from last year when I was training in a different part of the country. He gave me a huge hug! “Pastor, it is so good to see you again!” Last year we talked one-on-one about how storying could fit in his church. “Let me tell you how the Lord has worked among the people of…” Eugene had changed his preaching to a story approach, inviting interaction and asking people to share the stories with other people before the next Sunday. Then in church they review the story, visitors ask questions and members of the church (not pastors!) stand to answer. “Pastor, the people are talking to Muslims about Jesus without fear!”

Last year I had the most incredible translator I’ve ever had anywhere. This month Obed was my translator again and basically became the fourth member of our training team. Like I mentioned, there were several miscommunications with our host about schedule issues, which most of the time we didn’t find out until we started speaking, so I’d have to say something like, “OK, Obed, we were supposed to have two more hours, but I was just told we need to be done in thirty minutes. Doing this with translation is going to kill us. You’ve seen me do this part several times. I need you to run with it.” OK, yes, I was taking advantage of the situation to see what Obed could do. I watched him float around to groups, answering questions, clarifying things, giving encouragement, people tracking with everything he said. We watched a man move from being a gifted translator to passionately teaching his countrymen.

On this trip, I took two young American men with me. Jack is moving to Africa in the future to live among a Muslim people group and has been doing storying discipleship with the youth group he pastors. Ben is going to an animist unreached people group in a couple years. This was the first time they had done storying training, so I gave them plenty of opportunity to lead different parts.

On the last night in country, we sat in our room. It had dropped to a chilly 97^o and we had three fans blowing on us, which basically felt like standing in front of three hair dryers on high. We talked about an invitation from Eugene to come to a nearby Muslim country to do training. “Guys, I can’t do it then. Wish I knew a small team who could.” Then I sat back, closed my eyes, and listened to three young men – two Americans and an African who had met each other just ten days ago – talk about training church planters in a Muslim country later this year. Even the heat didn’t seem all that bad right then.

“CANNON…CANNON…”

(Highlights Of The Past Year series)

With two minutes left, Ryan says he’ll sit out the rest of the game so we can put Kenny back in. Kenny had never touched a basketball until December. He’s short, a little nerdy looking, and had no clue what to do on a basketball court. My son and I have been working with him this season to give him some confidence. But he still hadn’t scored a basket. Actually, he could barely get the ball to the rim.

But these last two minutes are Kenny’s time. Whatever we need to do, even lose our last game, Kenny was going to get a basket! We designed a special play just for him called “the Cannon”. The first few times we ran it, our bench started yelling “CANNON! CANNON! CAN…” The ball came to Kenny…and he missed the pass. The next time, Justin hands him the ball and Kenny tries dribbling… and dribbles the ball off his foot out of bounds. Next time down, Blake makes a beautiful pass to a wide open Kenny and – zip – the ball flew right past him.

The whole gym knows what’s going on. Parents from both teams start yelling “CANNON! CANNON!” Kenny misses the pass again. “CANNON! CANNON!” Kenny gets the ball and shoots…and the ball somehow goes behind him. “CANNON…” Aaron gets the next rebound, runs the ball down the court, gets it to Kenny, who shoots…there’s a huge sucking in of breath in the gym…and it hits the rim and bounces out! “NOOooo! Come on, Kenny! CANNON!…”

Our team is standing up. Parents are yelling. Thirty seconds left. Nobody’s paying attention to the score. It’s just pure fourth grade basketball mayhem! Blake gets the ball, passes it to Justin, who hands it to Kenny who is already facing the basket! Kenny sets, raises the ball, the defender jumps, giant sucking in of breath, Kenny shoots…

If Kenny makes this basket, who’s happier – the kid who scored his first basket ever? The crowd cheering on the underdog? Or two coaches who got to see the kid they have been working with for three months make the biggest shot of his life?

By the time you read this, we’ll have a team heading to Africa for two weeks. We’ll be training a thousand believers. But that’s not nearly as exciting as what happens two weeks after you read this letter. A thousand people will be back in their villages telling stories. There will be Muslim families hearing about Jesus. Many won’t know what to do with this. They’ll argue, they’ll miss ideas, they’ll have questions, they’ll get confused when what they’ve been told to believe clashes with what they are hearing, and they’ll get restless in their hearts. But these thousand followers of Jesus will keep “getting them the ball”. It’s their time.

Do the crowds in heaven watch, cheering the names of people playing in this “game”? Do they suck in their breath each time a story, a truth, a biblical reality is passed to them, shout “NOOooo” when it’s dropped, and then stand up to cheer them on with even more adrenaline? How big is God’s grin when it all comes together for that one lost person, that family, and they finally get it?

We’ll never know what happens in most of these villages until we’re in heaven and can ask people how in the world they ended up here when all the odds were against them. But we’ll have plenty of time to hear the story.

And you can ask Kenny what happened in the last thirty seconds of our game, too.

All-nighter in Africa

Benin is the birthplace of voodoo. The voodoo that is in Haiti and New Orleans can be traced to Africans brought from Benin as slaves. Today it is still very active. Many houses have small altars at their doorways to make small chicken sacrifices or egg offerings. In Ouida there is a small round building with one hundred pythons that are worshiped and attended to by priests. Once a week the doors are opened up so that the snakes can roam the village at night to feed before they return on their own to their home. In one village nearby there is a pile of human heads from ritual sacrifices. Voodoo is very alive.

Ode is a believer in one of these villages. He came to the first day of training on how to use stories for evangelism in his village. The first night we gave them “homework” to go share one of the Bible stories we had done. But the second day Ode didn’t show up. On the third day, he came apologizing for being absent.

“I was walking to my village along the ocean. I saw some of my friends working on nets. They asked where I had been, why I had not gone out today. I told them the story [of the demon possessed man]. I was asking questions, but some people came and I had to tell it again. Then they got some friends and I had to tell it again. So we sat on the beach talking about it. Then they asked if I had another story. I told them the paralyzed man.

One of the older men said to me, ‘Why haven’t you shared this with us before! I am very upset with you.’ They stayed until the morning. Then they went home and I fell asleep on the beach. That is why I didn’t make it yesterday.”

When an unschooled man believes God can use him

I recently got an email from a friend in Africa. A couple months ago I did a training in Ghana (Storying in Ghana). One of the men who came lives in a remote Muslim area. For the past year he has been trying to start a church, but has not been able to. He has never been to school and he can’t read.

My friend wrote, “Since he returned from the training, he has been sharing the stories he learned. 47 Muslims have been coming regularly to talk about these stories.”

Why is this happening? What was different from a year ago? Probably two things that stand out to me. Our friend saw that God wasn’t limited to just use people who have been educated (Memorizing vs Knowing). And his village didn’t see his talking about Jesus as a threat or “infidel evangelism”; it was natural, relational, and simple.

It’s finding ways to get people into God’s Word and God’s Word into people with the fewest number of obstacles possible.

Memorizing vs Knowing

One of the questions I know I’ll get each time I’ve done a training anywhere – US and overseas – is “Don’t you feel it’s important for people to know where things are in the Bible?” Absolutely. But every situation it is not needed or sometimes even right to whip out a Bible and “get my preach on”.

In Ghana a cool scene occurred. One guy said something like “I can’t memorize the Bible. I can’t read and I only know a couple verses.” We had just done four stories together and he had done an incredible job. When I told him that the four stories were made up of over sixty verses, he got WIDE EYED and a huge grin and all the brothers around him started cheering him, rubbing his head, and making noise. It was great.

Storying in Ghana

In Accra, the coastal capital of Ghana, the prosperity gospel is very present. People name their shops after something about God in the hope they will be abundantly blessed, so there are thousands of places like “Halleluiah Redemptive Praise Hair Salon”, “Christ Fire and Salvation Repair Shop” or “Magnified Creator Our Savior Restaurant”. My favorite was the “Though Millions Have Come To Heaven There Is Room For One More Motor Repair”.

Several hours north of Accra I spent my week training people who had a different label. Illiterate. That adjective has affected how they view themselves being able to contribute to reaching the unreached people groups around them. The first region I was in has the highest number of Muslims in the country. Christians work all day in the fields and try to do ministry among their Muslim neighbors. They have felt under-qualified to do so because they can’t read. The focus of this trip was to help a West Africa region ministry begin to answer the question “How do we train illiterate missionaries?”

For two days we sat under a mango tree in this village with a mixed group of twenty literates and illiterates, sharing stories from the gospels. During the first few hours, you could see those who could not read remain silent as those who could read started analyzing and questioning everything. I tried very hard to not have us pulled this direction. The illiterates were used to these sorts of trainings and being left behind.

On the third story, everything changed. The illiterate men began to see that this method of ministry was something they could do! The literate men wisely joined in instead of trying to take control. Using the story content as our context, we talked about evangelism, church planting, personal spiritual growth, prayer, God’s character, the nature of sin, and salvation through Jesus. At the end of the two days, one of the older men stated what had become obvious to everybody – “We can’t read. We don’t need more training in methods. We need you who can read to teach us more stories so we can reach Muslims!” Everybody’s head nodded and voices echoed agreement.

Driving several kidney-busting hours further, I spent two days in a village made up of mud and bamboo houses that doesn’t appear on any map. The place we trained in is four bamboo posts on top of which lay bamboo leaves for shade. After we arrived, fifteen men and women began to show up from the orange fields and nearby villages to meet the oburuni (white man) teacher.

At the end of the first day I gave an assignment. Go share one of the stories we did with somebody, anybody. Animism and traditional religion dominate this region. People live in fear of evil spirits being everywhere. The next day, every single one of the people who couldn’t read gave testimonies of sharing their faith with neighbors and other workers in fields through a story. (Interestingly, most of the literate men did not share a story that night.)

The story most shared was about the demon possessed man being healed (Mark 5) and many said their friends had never heard anything before about evil spirits being submissive to anything else. One man stood up and said his friend demanded to hear more stories of Jesus because he was tired of living in fear. He made a plea to his literate brothers, “PLEASE, teach me more stories so I can reach my village!”

In both these villages, national ministry leaders were present. When I debriefed at the end of the trip, the West Africa director of mobilization said, “This changes everything we do.” We will be talking more to see how throughout Africa training can be done so that the focus of the phrase “illiterate missionary” is on missionary, not illiterate.

Under a tree

In a North African country, a group of national Christians entered a Muslim region. Before long, they could see a cloud rising in the arid horizon. The believers sat in the shade of the only tree grove around. Before long, the Islamic horsemen arrived. “What are you doing here! You are on our land!”

The believers told them they came to tell people stories from the injil (Bible). The armed men dismounted, sat under the tree, and began listening to the stories that were shared.

After several stories, the chief stood up. “I will make a deal with you. We will give you the land around this tree and build a hut for you if you will send men to teach us more of these stories. You will be under our protection.”

Unbeknownst to anybody else, two of the believers had been praying that day, offering themselves to live among this extremist people group.

Today, there is a hut near the tree where a group of men regularly arrive by horseback, sit under the tree, and discuss stories from God’s Word.

(This story was one inspiration for the logo we use.)

Blogging as communication and catalyst

Last month I went with a small team to Congo. There we trained 27 pastors and missionaries in how to use chronological Bible storying to go start churches in undeveloped villages. It was a fantastic trip full of answered prayers, unexpected barriers both human and spiritual, people becoming Christ-followers, and sharing of lives. Where but in the Body of Christ can you find people who don’t speak the same language and have almost no common background, but can worship together, pray together, share the spiritual journey they’ve been on, and move forward by faith towards a common goal – seeing people glorify God?

One of the frustrations we had was being able to keep folks updated. We had several people checking here for updates, but it wasn’t possible to do. Either we had no power, no access to internet, or when we did it was a sizzling 0.78 kps, which hampered any possible blog entry. So we’ll have to figure out some alternatives for reporting from the field on future trips.

As we’re planning 2010 trips to train others, I felt like during this next year I’d like to expand the scope of this blog. Recently we did an intro to storying workshop for several churches. It wasn’t for those only interested in global missions, but for local outreach, small groups, student ministry, international university students, and families. It was a great time. (If you’d like to find out more about doing something like this at your church, let us kn0w.) During the day, it became obvious many people were making connections to use storying in their various niches that God has placed them.

What I hope you’ll start seeing here are more regular entries that deal with a variety of topics:

storying that is occurring globally;
thoughts to spur storying use wherever you are in the relationships that God has given you;
pointers to other resources and articles in popular mags, mission mags, and scholarly journals that are out;
and more reports from locations we are able to train as we are able.

Hopefully the Lord will allow the posts and comments to be a catalyst for us to see people get into God’s Word (the written) in order that God’s Word (the person of Christ) can get into people with the fewest number of obstacles possible.

Congo trip

A dozen pastors were waiting for us across the border. The men were smiling ear to ear. The women were raising their hands and yelling a very fast high pitched “la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la…” greeting. We walked across the bridge, leaving Rwanda and after two and half days of travel finally entering Congo. For seventeen minutes. Sometime between when we had left Richmond and the day we entered Congo, the Congolese government had changed the visa policy, now requiring a visa from the embassy in Washington, DC. We couldn’t get in. As we walked down the hill to cross the bridge back to Rwanda, all we could do was ask the pastors to pray.

Ahh, the battle. The next day, as we were leaving the hotel, my foot slipped on the stairs, I elbowed a window, and gashed my arm forearm on the concrete frame. As I was passing out, my phone got a text message. Here I am laying on the stairs of a Rwandan hotel with a gash in my arm, passing out, no idea if we will get across the border or not, our host has invited all these pastors and missionaries for training, and we had spent the day before praying and having others pray and what does the text message say? “Welcome to Congo.”

It was from a Congo cell phone company, but it reminded me that God was going to get us in because He wants to do something and wants us to be a part of it. I’d like to say that I jumped right up praising God, my arm was healed, and shared this confirmation that God was in control and that Satan was not going to keep us out of Congo, but honestly I was out cold because I looked at the blood.

Thirty minutes later we walked across the bridge, took our passports to the immigration desk, and got stamped to come in. “Welcome to Congo.”

A number of things happened this past week that kept reminding us that our trip was a real pain in the rear end to Satan. Our van had a major part break. A road we needed to take to get to see the rape victim women was closed for two days because of a car burning riot. Rebels attacked a truck several kilometers from a church we were teaching at on Sunday. Kath was throwing up two minutes before she was supposed to teach, felt fine, and as she was ending had to run out the door getting sick again.

Many of the pastors and missionaries came from difficult backgrounds. The war has claimed many victims. One of them is a young woman, Zjebolei, who I’m guessing is 18 or 19. Rebels attacked her village, kidnapping many woman and holding them hostages. Zjebolei was a raped for a year. Finally escaping, she made her way back to her village, only to find it burned and her mother and father killed during the raid. She made the two day trek to the city we were in, met an older woman named Noela who led her to Jesus. Not long after she gave birth. Zjebolei is an outcast in her country because she’s been violated, and her baby is an outcast because the father is one of the Rwandan rebels (she doesn’t know who) killing people in the region.

Zjebolei didn’t miss a session of the training. And guess what she’s going to do? Tell other women who have been raped, lost families, and have outcast children stories about a God who loves completely, even outcasts.

This trip seared in my heart more the vision God’s given us, to be a catalyst to help national believers plant churches in hard to reach places by helping get people into God’s Word and God’s Word into people with the fewest number of obstacles possible.

We’re about ready to land in Ethiopia on our way home. Kath has been sharing stories with a Rwandan woman sitting next to her for the past two hours. I’ve got a lady changing her kid’s stinky diaper next to me. So much for the glamorous life of a missionary.

Yours for seeing God glorified in hard to reach places.

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