We are back into the full swing of circuit visits. In the past three weeks we have visited four circuits: Kamwendo, Mchinji, N’gabu and this weekend, Zomba. Each visit is exhausting physically and demanding spiritually and emotionally. The proportion of the need is only matched by the faith and enthusiasm of the people.
This week we were also privileged to visit the community of Tiwasunge again. The thoughts below are some highlights from our journeys. And by highlights I mean things that especially compelled me or broke my heart – or both.
At Kamwendo we were asked to speak to the conflict in the community that had arisen over the new borehole well. The funds for the borehole had come from donors within the United Methodist Church in the USA. As the community prepared to open the new well, some of the United Methodists in the village were blocking other members in the community from participating in the conversations and decisions about how the borehole could best serve the community.
The pastor wanted to be sure that the congregation understood that Methodists value serving the community over and above any exclusive rights or dominion over this precious gift of water.
Our first official borehole opening
The pastor further demonstrated his inclusiveness and compassion when he told us the story of a lifelong practitioner of witchcraft who had come to his house seeking to repent and ask for the prayers of the pastor and his wife. She had made a profitable living selling potions and herbs to the people of her community but had become convinced that she needed to turn her life over to Jesus.
The pastor and his wife prayed with her, casting out several demons and she accepted Christ as her Savior. This woman’s husband is Catholic and so he would prefer that she worship with him rather than the local United Methodist Church. Pastor Nkhoma did not allow her past, her history or her present day reality from blocking the grace and ministry that she so desperately needed.
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In Mchinji we worshiped with three congregations gathered at Jimu, the site of one of Belmont UMC’s “miracle churches”. We were surprised and delighted to see when we arrived that the church has been entirely constructed. They have molded and fired their bricks and hired a mason to build the church. They are now anxiously awaiting additional funds to purchase the iron sheets for the roof so that the rains do not wash away all their hard work and investment.
congregation in front of Jimu Miracle Church
One of the most striking things about the visit to Jimu was that we only found out at the end of our visit that the Lay Leader is also the Chief of that village. And sprinkled in the congregation that morning there had been at least three other chiefs from surrounding areas. Normally the chiefs sit in chairs of distinction at the front or side of the congregation and are acknowledge first and foremost by the host and visitors. Jeff and I were struck by their humility and willingness to sit with and worship with the people.
But when they were finally introduced at the end of our gathering time they took full advantage of the opportunity to share their challenges, hopes and needs with us. Because the United Methodist Church had donated a church building and borehole well to Jimu, each chief requested the same for their villages… along with farm inputs and seed money for small businesses. It was overwhelming to hear of the great needs and to be asked for so much.
Jeff reminded me of an insight from Six Months in Sudan where the author comments that we can hear these multitude of requests two ways. The first is to be worn out and frustrated by the multitude of requests. The second is to realize that Africans often see Westerners literally dropping food from the sky so they assume we can do anything. Especially as chiefs, it is their responsibility to ask us for what they need because we just might have it and are only waiting for their plea.
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Visiting Tiwasunge never ceases to be an inspiration. The founder, Lucy Kandioni, and Project Coordinator, Thereza Katumbi, serve an HIV/AIDS community within the Kampala neighborhood with such humility and integrity that no one can deny them the respect they so richly deserve. They have servants’ hearts, a twinkle in their eyes and the strength of 10,000 women. You would not think that such slight women could hold up so many of the weakest and most vulnerable. But they do so with amazing grace and perseverance.
The most striking thing in their presentation during this visit was the definition of an “orphan”. Lucy explained that an orphan is any child who has lost one or both parents, most likely to AIDS. They have 75 orphans registered. But then they went on to say that if we were to read the registered names on the list we would also find the names of Tiwasunge’s children because living with HIV/AIDS they know that they can die any day.
beautiful community at Tiwasunge
I can’t imagine what it feels like to see your own children as future and certain orphans, living each day as if it might be your last and praying that someone will take care of your children in the same way you have sacrificed to take care of others. What must it feel like? How must it rip one’s soul to register your own children as orphans?
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N’gabu. N’gabu. I hesitate to even try and capture their plight in words. But because it is so desperate I know that I have to try. These are men and women, mostly old and aged, whose only food most days is the Word of God. These are old men and old women who are boiling the leaves off trees because there is not a single vegetable in the rain-starved fields. These are people young enough and strong enough to gather the “nyika” (small, black, almost-rotten seed pods) from the river beds eating them even though they know eating too many will poison them to death.
a glimpse of the multitude who greeted us at N'gabu. This community has grown from 75 to 5,000 in six months.
What pain and desperation gnaws at your gut that causes you to seek poison in order to quiet the hunger for a few moments? And how is it possible that I can visit and worship with these men and women one afternoon and be home despairing over their hunger, as I eat a pizza six hours later?
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At the Zomba Circuit we heard the story of a man visiting Zomba Local Church while visiting his daughter. He had started his own church over 130 kilometers away in Nayuchi but after the worship with the United Methodists he asked them to please start a church in his village. Pastor Kambona arranged for a consultation with local leaders from Nayuchi and the Conference District Superintendent, and started a local church there just two months ago. They have already started two additional congregations and have had a request from just over the border in Mozambique to start another.
We traveled three hours over teeth-rattling and beautiful country to worship with this new church. We witnessed for ourselves the challenges they face. The closest primary school is 3 kilometers away. The closest secondary school and medical clinic are 30 kilometers away. We marveled that chimanga (maize) was able to grow out of the sand that constitutes their gardens, watered only by sporadic rain because they do not have a nearby river or borehole well.
walking the fields in Nayuchi
But in this congregation they were not paralyzed or discouraged by their challenges. After narrating their difficulties, the lay leader went on to tell us their plans for meeting these challenges. Just two months old, they have planted crops as a church in order to feed the orphans and elderly in their congregation. They will sell any remaining crops and hope to build a permanent structure in which to worship and utilize for literacy classes and a nursery school.
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Several times in these weeks the words echoed (again) through my mind and heart, “taken, blessed, broken and given”. Each person, community and ministry exists in such brokenness. Yet somehow they manage to seek God in the midst of it all and give the broken pieces of themselves in service to God and we are all blessed. All of us… may you feel the blessings of these communities wherever you are.
