Africa – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

February 12, 2026February 11, 2026

Talking With Whom?

In the mid-1970s a gifted couple were putting together a series of Bible studies to help equip church leaders across Africa. Fred and Grace Holland* found themselves mulling over the program’s course on Prayer. “What name can work that best identifies the heart of this practice?”, the couple wondered.

The textbook, Talking with God – a modest-sized publication bearing an attractive green-tint cover design – still enjoys wide usage across the continent.

If prevailing prayer reflects the life rhythms of a maturing Christian, anyone who engages the discipline finds themselves in admirable company. From Abraham to Daniel and from Hannah, the mother of Samuel, to Hannah the widow in the temple where little Jesus was dedicated.

This practice (talking with God) has, through history, helped form his people into a different kind of humanity. Christ’s apprentices have grown to exhibit his core nature.

“Talking with” God implies something beyond a mere one-way conversation. In listening attentively to God’s voice – spoken through the revealed word (holy scripture) and through impressions and promptings brought forward from his own indwelling presence – the believer grows receptive to Christ’s particular “way of being”. Like a caterpillar-turned-butterfly, change is underway from the inside out.

As one’s own heart then finds voice (silently or verbally) – offering up thanksgivings, petitions, groanings – or bursts of joyful praise. A longed-for resemblance to God’s son takes form. Apprentices of Jesus, habituating themselves in their talking-with-God discipline, take on over time, just a little bit more of the likeness of their Lord. His graces: Goodness. Patience. Meekness. Lovingkindness. . .

As the writer of Celebration of Discipline put it, “The primary purpose of prayer is to bring us into such a life of communion with the Father that, by the power of the Spirit, we are increasingly conformed to the image of the Son.”*

January 15, 2026January 21, 2026

To The Full

In a pilgrimage that is shared among people who are marked by a growing love for one another, words like boredom and drudgery fall by the wayside. And, introduced now in their place, are terms like invigorating and adventurous.

Receiving heaven’s grace that transports a Christ-follower more fully into “life in the kingdom”, means that partnering practices are called for. These are not burdensome. But they are necessary.

“Whither Thou Goest” is a lyric my brother sang at my wedding. The years that followed saw my bride trekking with me from her Montana home to Texas, to New York, to Africa and many places beyond. Our wedding vows held concrete meaning for Ann and me. New (and renewed) union in Christ will bear similar features. Unrelenting love marked by a choice. To orient one’s life to walking in step with the beloved.

Growth in grace (God acting in our life) “is something we must plan for by regular engagement in activities that enable us to receive God’s grace in all areas (of our lives)”. Professor Willard’s statement brings clarity to what is actually called for in the life of a Christian convert. For the remainder of life.

In truth, a lifelong journey of deepening companionship with Jesus is the thing a disciple longs for. It is what they are made for. Nothing less will usher a person along a path of flourishing in the faith pilgrimage.

Much different from the case of a dreamy-eyed bride taking her place alongside her flawed and maverick-minded groom. The disciple’s union is a forever-journey of unfolding goodness in the companioning company of the all-wise Christ Jesus (bridegroom of heaven).

The Jesus-follower carries an increasing conviction that nothing must be allowed to compete with their single-hearted aim. Of journeying in the close company of Christ himself, up and into, all of eternity.

“Our intention as apprentices of Jesus”, Willard states, “is to become the kind of person who lives in the character and power of Christ. We must, then, do those things that will enable us to become that kind of person from the inside out—through appropriate actions and practices. Such actions and practices are ‘disciplines for the spiritual life.’”

Could it be, that coming into God’s salvation means something far more (far richer) than simply getting one’s sins forgiven in order to escape the bad place and get into the good place?

While the good news (gospel) most certainly includes securing forgiveness of sins (how wonderful), the Gospel which Jesus himself repeatedly preached is not merely defined by the word “forgiveness”.

Christ came bringing a new kind of life, a radically transformative kind of life into all aspects of the believers being. What could be clearer about the message Jesus conveyed, through both his life modeled before others, and by his spoken words?

“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”*

April 24, 2025May 22, 2025

Family Ties

There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved. It is God’s finger on man’s shoulder.

The reflection attributed to Playwright Charles Morgan, brings a soul-warming smile this day.

I was not smiling those several weeks back at Christmastime upon learning my twenty-seven-year-old grandson was being wheeled off to surgery. T.J. would soon be left without a colon. The culprit – advanced Crohn’s Disease.

The procedure complete, T.J.’s body then faced a string of bewildering, daunting and very worrisome hurdles. The hospital’s I.C.U., his new address. Seven weeks into the journey, T.J. and his (rock star companion) wife Ashley are breathing a bit more easily. This week’s physician report thankfully signals a turn for the better.*

The expressions of love directed toward T.J. and to our whole family certainly did not come as a full surprise. Many readers of this column can relate.

A number of those praying and caring supporters cheering us on are people already near and dear in our lives. Still, the parade of well-wishers, friends and acquaintances, shoring up our feeble faith through their voices and their unrelenting praying seemed at times super-human. Indeed , the Divine element is irrefutable – his strong presence.

Our brother-in-Christ and past co-laborer Pastor Wangombe in Africa – adds his voice to many of our international student friends, past and present, “It is war; and in all these things we are more than conquerors through Christ our Lord”.

South Asia friend, Raj, chimes in, “Amen, rock on TJ and team. PTL”!

Smiles, indeed.

*further update: T.J. is out of hospital. With family, gaining strength

April 17, 2025April 17, 2025

Primed and Ready

Scene ONE: “I’m sorry, Ann, can I please ask a favor of you?”

The South Asian scholar, Bao, had become a brand new father and his wife and baby boy were set to be released from hospital. They needed help. “My academic advisor is just now assigning me extra duties and this is keeping me from getting my family back home to our apartment.”

“Sure”, Ann replied, “just give me the information and I will be there.”

Scene TWO: A year or two passes. Our phone rings.

“Hi Ann, are you very busy this afternoon. . . my wife and baby; they are at the hospital. .” (Déjà vu was in the air).

Such calls can readily spring out of the blue for campus workers in service to international students. My wife adjusted some things and, in each instance, headed to the medical facility. A mother herself – (now grandmother) – a smile visited her face as she navigated city traffic.

Her professional training – first as LPN, afterward as Registered Nurse – had simply reinforced Ann’s natural bent. Wired for responding to people (friend or stranger) in time of need, my wife was once the focus of a family chat around our family dining table, I posed a question to our children,

“So kids, which of these five qualities would you say most hits the mark as your mother’s ‘primary love language’. . Physical touch – Quality time – Gift giving – Acts of service – Words of affirmation.

“Their response was immediate and unanimous – each of them chiming, “Acts of Service!”

In an earlier season a couple decades prior when our home rested atop a remote hill at an Africa mission station, Ann launched into action one night to speedily fashion a makeshift bandage from a set of bedsheets. A young man brought to our screened back door had been laid open at the hand of an angry, inebriated fellow tribesman. The downward swing of the attacker’s machete left a grotesque open gash. Ann’s stop-gap measure (bad pun) met with success.

“To the servant of God, every place is the right place, and every time is the right time”*

March 27, 2025March 26, 2025

Fresh Lens

“Take Perspectives – it will ruin you for the ordinary!”

By the time Floyd McClung, author of ‘The Father Heart of God’, heralded the Perspectives challenge he and his wife Sally had for years lived an ‘Indiana Jones’ kind of existence. Their ground-breaking disciple-making ventures in Youth With A Mission in Kabul, Afghanistan and in the heart of Amsterdam’s red-light district yielded abundant fruit in radically changed lives.

My first learning of the fifteen-week ‘Perspectives on the World Christian Movement’ course came at the corner of our city’s Third and Zunis avenues. Outreach Pastor John McVay of Tulsa Christian Fellowship – a flagship church for missions in Tulsa – “accosted me” outside my office door.

“Hey Jerry, you might be interested in doing this course – three hours on Monday nights for the Spring months. You and fellow students will take in top-notch presentations on insights featuring cross-cultural outreach. And, you’re likely to get a deeper-than-ever picture of Biblical, historical, cultural and strategic Perspectives on reaching out to the world and making disciples.”

I showed up for my first class, and was soon “ruined for the ordinary”.

Perspectives struck such a chord that I afterward offered a confession to my friend, John. “Although I served in Africa missions for twenty years, a part of me feels like I have never been a missionary!” While the stark comment wasn’t far from the truth, rather than it leaving me bummed, the course fired me up more than ever for the ‘Great Commission’ enterprise.

Over time the Perspective’s series – compelling in both spirit and substance – has stretched its boundaries to regions across the world. A number of our ministry staff and volunteer teams gave themselves to the rigorous and rewarding task of plowing through those fifteen weeks.

Indeed, one of our busy student leaders ended up facilitating the full program himself in the heart of our campus. He and his wife afterward relocated their young family, at no small expense, to the heart of a major American metropolis far from their neighborhood roots. Immersing themselves in the language and culture of this “foreign ethnicity” has since been yielding spiritual and relational dividends. This young family, “ruined” by the seeking-and-saving nature of God’s lovingkindness, go about their daily lives fueled by a substance referenced by a writer long ago.

The love of Christ compels us.*

August 29, 2024August 28, 2024

Curious Coincidence

Home from the whirlwind prayer journey and recovered from a jet lag episode worthy of a Guinness Book entry, I answered our kitchen phone.

“Hi Jerry, and welcome back to the States!” The party on the line with warm Pennsylvania voice was primed to offer intriguing news.

She and her husband had committed to pray for our team in far-off China throughout our just-completed two-week prayer-walking venture. During that fortnite, they received a surprise phone call from the adult son of a Chinese friend from long ago. The father was a former international student befriended by the American family those years before.

“I am serving in government and am now in your state leading a delegation of other officials from my province”, began the caller.

“I have a request, please. May I bring our group of twenty to learn something of your American religion? May we gather somewhere so that somebody of your choosing* may share with our delegation on the topic of Christianity?”

“Certainly, of course”, came the reply.

My PA friend’s mind raced. She and her husband had been praying intently for the precious people of this young man’s homeland – and specifically for the very province he and his accompanying cadre represented.

The visit was made and a culturally-clear presentation on the story of creation, redemption and of life lived in Jesus given. Printed resources in their language, including a Bible for each of the twenty, were presented to an enthusiastic, grateful company of visitors.

It happened that the presenter was son to missionary neighbors of ours in outback Africa of the early 1970s.*

“God, this deep, deep wisdom? It’s way over our heads. We’ll never figure it out.” Romans 11:33 Msg Bible

August 22, 2024August 21, 2024

Street Beat

One of the most astonishing episodes of my life happened in 1995, stemming from a phone call from New York’s Lake Ontario region.

“Hi there Jerry, this is David Spencer. Would you like to go to China?”

David’s grandfather had long ago pioneered the mission agency through which we had served in Africa through our younger years. David was in pursuit of friends to pull together a low-profile short-term prayer team.

From the early 1970s a phenomenon (tagged later on as ‘Prayer Walking’) had been evolving, expanding its reach year after year. No single group or organization or church had a corner on this partnering-with=God practice. Prayer-walkers – hundreds, then later on thousands of small bands of intercessors donning all manner of footwear – had been taking to the streets all across broad sectors of the globe. Missiologists, evangelists and church planters took note, sensing that a burgeoning prayer movement was clearly afoot. The work of a sovereign, compassionate, pursuing God.

By the 1990s bands of such purposeful intercessors (Jesus-followers directing their praying outward toward the needs of others) had lined up at airline ticket counters. It was as though the world’s nations, many of them hosts to entire people groups still uninformed of the existence of Jesus, had seized the hearts of these travelling travailers.

Our prayer-journeying team (of Canadian and American heritage) numbered twenty and rangwd in age from 19 years to 81.

From our Hong Kong Port of Entry where orientation sessions were taken in through the fog of jet lag, we navigated thousands of miles by train, plane and automobile, by country bus and the occasional rickshaw. Add to this the mile on mile prayer-walking stints along strategic venues of five ‘gateway cities’, the occupants of one such urban center numbering sixteen million strong. Indeed, no town whose sidewalks welcomed the touch of our collective shoe leather boasted populations of less than three million.

An eye-opening, soul-stirring adventure of a lifetime.

Soon, I would take in a piece of news from a Pennsylvania farming community set to catapult my mind to jaw-dropping wonder. Leaving me happily puzzling in the general direction of the heavens,

What manner of God are you?

March 14, 2024March 13, 2024

In Other Words

For the college student suddenly thrust into the streams of an unfamiliar location and culture, it can feel like a whitewater rafter battling turbulence along a Category Five canyon. Sympathetic voices of those who have traversed such currents ahead of them can prove priceless. In the language of Clinical Psychologist Wilson Van Dusen, “Perhaps the most important skill that should be taught to all persons is the capacity to really see, hear, and understand others.”

Such nerve-calming figures might arrive on the scene as volunteers who had previously served in missions service or other cross-cultural vocations. Indeed, lessons gleaned from such informal coaches can sometimes translate to things of life and death! How lucky was I as a twenties-something arrival to Africa, having locals on the ground orient me to new ways of thinking and acting within a different context. Navigating a car along a bustling corridor on the ‘wrong side’ of the road while, poised at a steering wheel affixed to the wrong side of the vehicle carries the potential of posing a risk! Contrasting roadway differences of the American and the British landscape give rise to humorous – and terrifying – tales.

The task of orienting our new international students did not just fall to American welcomers. To our real pleasure, a student or two from abroad – who had by now stacked up some cultural mileage in adapting to Tulsa life – sometimes showed up to lend aid.

“Remember this point. . .” The university upperclassman from Hong Kong paused a moment for emphasis as she served up nuggets of wisdom to a handful of new arrivals. . . “Keep it in mind, that words displayed on a sign along a sidewalk do not always mean what you might think”.

“When you see a sign along a city street announcing SUBWAY, please do not look for stairways leading you underground. No” (here she raised both arms toward an imaginary placard), “it is only a sandwich shop”.

February 8, 2024February 7, 2024

Reptile Routine

Extending circles of friendships for newly arrived foreign students proves priceless, over time. Stewarded well, the practice can translate into treasured relationships. It’s been noted that a Houston professor researching the matter arrived at a remarkable finding.

When a local resident extends kindness to an international student in a meaningful way within the first 72 hours of the newcomer’s arrival, a lifelong friendship can well have been launched.

My wife and I resonate with stats like these, having drunk deep from the wells of hospitality at the hands of local residents upon our maiden arrival to Africa.

In mere moments of our friends Carl and Annette swinging open their door in welcome to my friend Constant, the space in their cozy residence was ringing with hospitable cheer. Is it any wonder, given the needs and the makeup of we human creatures, how soon authentic friendships among us can bud, then flourish?

Lingering a moment at the apartment door, I took in the surroundings and wondered how many stories lay past the many other student housing doors. My good-humored, keen-minded, bespectacled friend from the Far East greeted me in what had by now become a predictable norm. A cheery grin seemed to mark his countenance at every turn.

Waiting outside his door, I had already begun scanning my brain for a specific kind of word or phrase for this fun-loving Chemistry major.

In the experiment of figuring out ways to help students get a better handle on the English language, I had recognized a robust interest among some scholars over our common American slangs or idioms. My student friend was, I discovered, not merely interested in the world of slang. Constant grew such an appetite for new expressions he inaugurated a kind of game. We were not to part company following any of our sessions without my having left behind a fresh new idiom to take its place inside his ever-expanding slang storehouse.

This Tuesday afternoon, having wrapped up our regular conversational time in the New Testament, Constant hit me with the reminder, “So Jerry, what slang do you have for me today?”

“How about this, Constant. . .”

I coached him then on a common back-and-forth dialogue featuring reptiles as the theme. From that day onward, no conversational session was complete without a shared parting refrain,

“See you later, Alligator. . .”

“After while, Crocodile!”

December 28, 2023December 26, 2023

Behind The Scenes

“Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous”. Einstein’s quip leaves me wondering whether the renowned Physicist had some family of returning missionaries in mind.

With us no longer living and serving overseas, Ann and I found the Twilight Zone our new address. We talked, we dreamed some rather feeble dreams, we pondered. . . And prayed. “Guidance”, Loren Cunningham wisely noted, “is first of all a relationship with the Guide”.

A question surfaced in my thoughts over and over as I again strolled the lovely Tulsa campus, What if I requested and was given approval by the University to register as an international student volunteer organization? What then about a ministry ‘covering’?

Elim Fellowship of Lima, NY had through all our Africa years served as our sponsoring organization. Deep friendships and spiritual camaraderie had been forged between us and fellow Elim team members through our many ups and downs of Christian service.

I am not a brilliant man, but I’ve been given the sense to suspect it is almost always a bad idea to strike out in the Lord’s work as a lone ranger.

Enter an Einstein coincidence.

To my utter surprise word came that our mission agency (Elim) had just elected to create a new department. Its central focus being to extend Christian friendship and service to college students – but not just any college students. Elim Fellowship was right now poised to launch its first-ever international-student-ministry department. Christening the arm as All Nations USA. A seasoned servant-leader, David Spencer, would be tending the helm at the NY office.

The timely development of such an unlikely script indicated, it seemed, the handwriting of divine providence. Signed, Anonymous.