Servant for God's Glory: Growing

Sorry I haven’t posted anything for a while! A lot has been going on, and I have been processing. The past couple of days have been very exciting days. On Thursday the campaigners arrived and so things have been a little different with everyone here.

Here is a tiny bit of background about the campaigners. The campaigners are members of a church in Abilene who come every summer to help to encourage the mission work that is being done here in Mumena. The group this year is consisted of six men. This summer they have been working a lot with the school and encouraging the teachers and the parents.

Saturday we did a big health care outreach where we helped people get eye glasses and provided dental care.

Sunday I was able to go with two of the people who are here for the campaign to visit a nearby refugee camp. It was the same camp that I visited the last time I was in Africa a year and a half ago. I was pleased to be able to see some of the people whom I remembered from my last visit.

Monday, Karen Love was taking one of the workers to the hospital because she had gotten a pretty deep abrasion on her leg sometime during the weekend. On her way to the clinic, a man who lives in a nearby village came running up to her car with his baby. He begged Karen to take him to the clinic because his baby was very sick. She could tell the baby didn’t look well because it was foaming at the mouth and was severely malnourished. She drove them back to the house to get some food to take with them to the clinic, and I was out in the yard teaching the two oldest of the Loves’ kids. When I saw Karen’s face I knew something was wrong, and she explained the situation to me. I ran out to see the baby before they left for the clinic, and I really thought I saw the baby breathe its last breaths. I immediately started praying. The baby looked to be about one or two, but I was astonished to learn later that he was four years old. I was able to watch all the kids while Karen ran to the clinic. We went to visit them that afternoon, and the baby was doing a lot better. I found out that the family had already lost two or three children because they weren’t feeding them properly, and they had been told by several people that they needed to change, but they just wouldn’t listen. But praise God for that child to be healed.

Tuesday I attended my first Zambian funeral. I had read lots about them, but I had never been to one, and I was very curious. Yesterday evening Rick Love got a call asking him if he would preach at a funeral. He didn’t know any of the details except for what time it would be. We expected it to be someone older, but when we arrived we found out that it was a child. When we got to the village we could hear lots of wailing people in one of the homes, and the wailing was continuous. After a little while they brought out the small wooden casket from the home from which the wailing had been emanating and sat it on a bench in front of everyone. All of the wailing women also came out of the home. The people there had Kevin (one of the campaigners) say a prayer, and then Rick spoke. They opened the casket up so that you could just see the top part of the child. After Rick finished speaking, we all walked towards the other side of the major road farther into the “bush.” When everyone arrived at the burial site, they said a prayer and sang. Then they started to bury the casket, and they collected all the “ties” and lay them down and put flowers on top.

Every day I am reminded more and more of how challenging the missionary life really is, and how much it isn’t anything like the postcard picture-perfect “missionary life.” The missionaries sacrifice a lot to live abroad wherever it might be in the world. There is heartache, loss, homesickness, sometimes little earthly comfort, sometimes danger, and sometimes frustration between different cultures. But there is something so much more valuable than any of these “sacrifices” that make everything so worthwhile. We have the joy of seeing brothers and sisters all around the world be buried and reborn again and having the eternal hope and joy of living with Our Lord and Savior and taking as many people as we can with us. We get to be witnesses to growing and maturing Christians and be encouraged by the mature brothers and sisters in Christ from a different culture.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from this past week: