An alligator in the Nesbit Castle Hotel

Conference with the men from around Bulwayo

Todd teaching the men from Bulawayo

On Sunday around noon we finally meet with the Apostle Liberty Atawa for the first time in person. We were speaking with him about the problems in Zimbabwe for the spread of the Gospel. He complained that no one wants to listen to teaching. “They will say, ‘yesterday we were dancing and singing and today we are only talking.’”

Liberty gathered twelve men for us to meet briefly with on Sunday night, and another five for a total of seventeen which gathered together on Monday for study. Again since it was our first meeting with these men we went through the CLC statement of faith and purpose. Already in our brief talk Sunday night many of the men were eager to be taught. They expressed a great desire in the possibility of going to school at the Bible School in Tanzania, even though that would mean leaving their homes and families for five years. A few of them were already taking correspondence courses from a Bible School in South Africa, and a few were enrolling in classes at local bible colleges.

During our conference on Monday there were definitely some questions and even some lively debate. These mainly centered on speaking in tongues/miracles, baptism, and women in the church. I always find it far more encouraging when pastors ask questions and challenge what I am teaching rather than simply nod along in agreement. For one it shows they care. For another it shows they are familiar with God’s word (they were often taking me to passages ). For a third it shows that they know what their churches teach. And for a fourth it shows they have the backbone to stand up for what they believe to be right. Furthermore they often seemed not to be asking so much because they disagreed with us but because these were arguments they faced and questions the wrestled with. For example I noticed that the man who was grilling me most ardently on speaking in tongues was also the quickest and loudest to clap after Todd and I had answered those questions with scripture.

After everything it was a very encouraging meeting. We pray that the Lord would continue to bless the work through Pastor Gullerud and Liberty here. Liberty is going to continue to meet with these men every month and take them through more lessons, which Pastor Gullerud will be sending him. Hopefully when a missionary returns next year there will be seventeen solid foundations and even more in the process.

In Christ, Matthew Ude

The Pastors from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

Pastor Ibrahim pretending a bowl is a hat

Victoria Falls

Todd Ohlmann, Ibrahim, Matthew Ude at Victoria Falls

Friday January 27^th we held a short conference with the pastors from Lusaka, and pastor Yumba from D R Congo. Pastor Yumba had accompanied us from Lubumbashi in order to meet the new pastors in Lusaka. As this was our first meeting with these men we took them through the CLC statement of faith and purpose. These men had already been studying with Ibrahim and were familiar with our doctrine. There were some questions, but not really any disagreement. The men seemed ready and eager to study and learn and join Ibrahim in working for the Lord in Lusaka, and throughout Zambia.

We ended the conference at 3pm and Todd, Ibrahim, and I packed up for the trip to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. We had intended to take a plane but there are apparently no direct flights. The journey by car it is close to 15 hours. So we had decided to drive to Livingstone Friday night and get a bus from Victoria Falls City to Bulwayo on Saturday. Saturday morning we woke up and since Victoria Falls is right there we stopped to see it. There is little I can say about Victoria Falls other than to simply state that is without a doubt the most amazing things I have ever seen in my life. I will post a few picture but of course they can hardly do it justice.

Zimbabwe ran into a bit of economic trouble a few years back and was having some serious currency problems; as a result they took a rather unique solution. They quit printing money altogether. Instead they just use American Dollars. Almost everyone will apparently accept Euros, and Pounds as well but as far as I could tell Dollars were the predominant form of currency. However they don’t use American coins instead if they have to give you change for less than a dollar they give it in Rand (from South America). It all seems like it would be a bit confusing for them but for us it made things easy.

[I will post more pictures of Victoria Falls later ]

[ note: I updated the map "Central Africa Visits" ]

Thursday, our first day in Lusaka, we spent running errands trying to find tickets to Bulawayo, changing money, etc. Today we headed out for hospital visits and evangelism. We stopped briefly at an AIDS/HIV hospital but there was some program going on and we weren’t allowed in. We went down the road a little to a village and started visiting houses. At the bottom of this post is a map of the village and houses we visited along with a description of what happened at each place. There is also another map showing the various place in Lusaka mentioned here.

Pastor Ibrahim is a native of Tanzania. He went to the Bible School in East Africa before the trouble we currently are having there. He has worked with Nathanael Mayhew. He had some friends recently ask him to come teach in Zambia, so he came over to Lusaka and has been working hard here ever since. From the first moment we met Ibrahim he showed his love and zeal for Christ. He constantly talked about how we must not waste the Lord’s money. He always sought to find the cheapest way to do things, even though we were the ones paying not him. He also spoke about how many pastors are lazy but that we must work to support the work of the Gospel. He is planning to return to East Africa in time for the mission helper trip this summer, so that those of you who will be here this summer will get a chance to meet and work with him also.

Here is the map showing the various places that we visited around Lusaka.

Here is the map showing the village where we did evangelism.

[Click on the Red Box with the white magnifying glass ( left hand side of the map about half way up ) to view full screen map]

Map of the places we have been and visited in central Africa.

Wednesday January 25, 2012

This morning we packed up at 8am to head out. This time we left Congo for good and headed across the same border once again unto Zambia. We rented a Taxi to take us to the Zambia border. From the border we took a small bus ( really a big van stuffed full of people ) to Kitwe. Kitwe is the same city where we meet the Zambia pastors on Monday. In Kitwe we got on a big greyhound style bus for the six hour trip to Lusaka. This bus would have been comfortable except that they didn’t leave until every single seat on the bus was sold. And of course the seats were too small even for a normal person much less some of the bigger Africans. I had an aisle seat and spent the ride half off the seat. Todd was sitting on the back seat and was squished between two people.

We arrived in Lusaka around 8pm almost exactly twelve hours from when we started. The Kewelle Lodge where we are staying is a decent price and fairly nice, especially by the standards of most of the hotels we normally stay in. Apparently there is a big soccer match between the Zambia national team and someone else. So the bar and restaurant is packed full of people tonight.

We meet Ibrahim and received our marching orders for the next few days. We will be here at the Kewelle Lodge for the next four nights including tonight and then we leave for Zimbabwe. One of the first things we need to do tomorrow is look for tickets to Zimbabwe either by bus or plane.

Tuesday January 24, 2012

Monday morning we went through a large part of the Statement of Faith and Purpose. Todd was gone most of the morning trying to exchange money so that we could pay for our hotel. We started class around 10:30am and needed to leave around 1pm. Obviously we didn’t get a chance to talk to these pastors about everything but Pastor Yumba will continue to have classes with them every other month.

Two of the pastors Amos and Alexander drove us back to the border between Zambia and Congo in their car. It was probably about an hour to the border, and then another two to three hours from the border back to Lubumbashi.

The next day went really well. We had classes for three hours. After lunch we meet with various pastors and committee.

The translation committee has a number of new translations they have finished and published, as well as publishing a lot of other material which had been translated in the past.

Pastor Hubert, Pastor Muzukuza’s son is hoping to attend one of the bible colleges next year, perhaps the one in Tanzania if we get it up and running again, or the one in Nigeria.

In the evening we went out in search of a restaurant. Todd had mentioned one really good restaurant in the city that he and Nathanael had visited when they were here. Todd couldn’t remember the name and although he thought he knew where it was, we kept getting lost looking for it. That night we gave it one more try. When we once again couldn’t find it we ended up eating at the same place we had eaten at all week. It was a good restaurant though so it wasn’t any problem.

Sunday January 22, 2012

Sunday and Monday were set aside to visit with Yumba of the CCLC. He wanted us to visit with some churches he has started working with right across the Zambian border. We have to be back to Lubumbashi Monday night so that we can have the combined pastoral conference ( CCLC and ELCC ) on Tuesday. So we are headed across the border to Zambia on Sunday, are returning to Lubumbashi on Monday night and then will come back across the Zambia border and on to Lusaka on Wednesday.

Sunday morning Mark ( the translator that Yumba uses ) arrived at 6:30am to wake us up, apparently the bus was supposed to be there at 7am. Todd and I didn’t really know what was going on. We were under the impression that we were taking a public bus and were surprised that it was actually coming to the hotel to pick us up. I have photos of the bus I will post soon. After picking us up however the bus made another stop at which time it quickly filled with children and adults. We found out that pretty much all the members from Lubumbashi were coming with us and the bus had been specially rented to take us all to Whiski. So we ended up with a bus packed full of members singing in Swahili as we drove to Whiski.

Whiski is about an hour and a half from Lubumbashi just before the Zambia border. Here pastor Yumba has been working with the government to develop a new area. We meet at a half built new school building for service and to dedicate the building.

The pastors from Zambia showed up just at the end of the service, very anxious for us to leave and head for Zambia. The church we were to visit there was expecting us at 2pm and it was 1:15 before we finally left. We ran into delays at the border. We had our visas and everything was in order but the Congo immigration office was trying to tell us we didn’t have the right vaccines. Since we were leaving Congo and not going in I don’t see why this was a problem for them. The nurse finally agreed it wasn’t a problem if we gave her $10 each. TIA!

It was after 4pm when we finally arrived at the church in Zambia. There a couple of surprises waiting for us and a very energetic young pastor. But we all agreed to meet with the pastors the following morning and go through some basic teachings with them.

Saturday January 21, 2012

Not as much going on today. We visited the other of Muzukuza’s two churches and then we went to the zoo. They were charging extra money for cameras and I didn’t think the zoo would be worth it so I didn’t bring my camera in. But it turned out to be a decent zoo. They had lions, tigers, crocodiles, parakeets, parrots, many different types of monkeys, and a couple of different eagles and falcons. We also saw a banded mongoose and a shoebill stork.

Later I was talking to Vanessa and describing the animals to her. She is the one who figured out the names of many of the animals I had seen. When we were looking up the shoebill stork, we found an article from the Houston Zoo bragging about how “only a few zoos in the world have shoebills.”