Tag: Africa

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Uncommon Hero

“When the simba came at me I brought up my shield but then he knocked me back.” The young African opened his palm, extending it my way. I surveyed the seasoned lion-claw scar running near his thumb and forefinger. “My brothers then speared him.”

My chat was with a tall lean Maasai named Gaddiel, recounting his lion-hunting venture – an initiation rite demanded to get labeled a warrior. His voice was calm, undramatic, as if he were recounting details of a routine walk to the local market.

Gaddiel Nkarrabali had become a warmly-regarded Christian pastor among his nomadic, cattle-tending kin. His gospel work came about largely because of Eva.

Eva, a single missionary mother – her two kids schooling at Rift Valley Academy – had come to Kenya in the 60s, settling down eventually in a dusty remote outpost called Mashuru. Her first house, put up in less than two days, was a home-made tin structure covering just 209 square feet. Once erected, she and a local co-worker lady settled down for the night. In her memoir, In The Shadow of Kilimanjaro, Eva describes her next-morning surprise.

“All around the (parked) car were large pad tracks where a lion had inspected it. Well, what you don’t see doesn’t hurt you. It excited us but we weren’t really troubled. We knew what country we were in so went on fixing our little house.”

Along the way the gutsy pioneer missionary came across a young tribal warrior. Gaddiel.

“I had asked some young Morani (warriors) if any would like to go for more schooling.” The school in Eva’s thinking was Kaimosi Bible School off to the north and west.  None of the youth were Christ followers.

“Up went a hand and one said, “Nanu” (I wish to). His name was Gaddiel, the chief of his manyatta.”

Years later the cattle-herder turned Christian shepherd, recounted his first days at the Bible school.

“I saw many miracles that God showed me. One night I prayed so much asking Jesus that I wanted to see his face. That very night there came a man in my dream in a great light. I woke up shaking. A song came into my heart. I am sure Jesus was doing something to (in) me. . .”

Eva Butler’s “Welcome kiddos!” greeting on our first airport arrival to Africa gave my wife and I no hint we were encountering face to face an authentic hero in frontier missions.

©2018 Jerry Lout

 

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Tarzan Country

When noting the kinds of things God often does through ordinary people, Philosopher Dallas Willard was fond of citing the term “divine conspiracy”. Such deeds – often a little mind-boggling – are probably not as rare as many of us assume.

“This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground.  Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.”   – Jesus (Mark 4:26-27)

***

The term Belgian Congo would never have crossed my mind as a child separate from images of Tarzan trapezing lofty vines, crying his trademark jungle yodel. Nor would I have seen myself ever addressing a crowd in that place deep in the heart of Africa.

Especially at one particular place.

Moving to the pulpit of the capital city’s downtown church I was greeted by the pastor, a man I’d been told was a former anti-Christian militant.

Alexander Aidini.

The throng of Congolese worshippers acknowledged me, their out-of-country guest, with happy shouts of welcome as my friend, Ben Dodzweit, introduced me in their native Lingala.

Pastor Aidini’s journey from gospel foe to disciple-of-Jesus was by now thirty years in the making and the accounts of his pilgrimage had left me nothing less than awed.

Not long after his dramatic conversion in Mombasa, Aidini answered a call to Christian service. Art Dodzweit, Ben’s uncle, had taken the rough-around-the-edges disciple into his mentoring care. Following a stint in Uganda, Aidini returned to his Congo home and its capital, Kinshasa. In time forces opposed to colonial rule overthrew the Congo and assigned it the name Zaire.

Along the way, Aidini’s fiery devotion to Jesus grew. And unusual things followed.

©2018 Jerry Lout

 

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Past the Bougainvillea Vine

Skirting the red and orange and purple array of bougainvillea vine, the visitor stepping to Steve and Anne’s veranda catches the sing-song call of her hostess.

“Kah-reee-bu!” Anne Street’s cheery voice trills the Swahili welcome like a free-spirited vocalist in full operetta form. The scene in some form repeats multiple times each week as a parade of visitors drop in, some randomly, others by arrangement.

They’ve come for a ‘hot cuppa’ or for a listening ear or a compassionate prayer. Or all the above. And – often enough – a personal care presented by an impromptu guest carries a tangible element. . . needed bus fare to Kibosho or Boma Ng’ombe. . . school fees to cover (just this once) a high schooler about to forfeit his education because pounding hail and rain just wrecked the family’s maize harvest, their only viable revenue source.

This Moshi home takes wageni (visitor arrivals) in stride. And the sons, Benji, Peter and Philip, like their father – bright, industrious, mischievous – have exhibited the family ‘hospitality gene’ almost since their early days in nappies.

Anne, born and raised in Africa of British parents, grew up in farming country where her father helped manage estates for Kenya’s pre-independence baron, Lord Delamere. Meeting Steve in his native England during her college years ensured that her future husband’s heart would be captured – not only by her – but by ‘all things Africa’.

Year after year the Street’s mentoring of students (elementary-age and high-schoolers alike) in the knowledge of their faith, never grew wearisome. Steve had accepted a chemistry teaching spot with Moshi’s international academy. His and Anne’s after-school Bible Clubs came to life with spirited discussions. Wisdom was shared. And students cheered at the mention of an outing – “How about a view of Amboseli Game Park from Mount Kili!”

After some years, when the teaching position for Steve ran its course, the couple took a step back, weighed their motives and inner impressions. And drew a conclusion. . .  “Why not!” Launching as full-time missionaries (roles they’d arguably been filling a long while already) came naturally. Laboring alongside their beloved pastor and friend, Wilbard.

Now, decades in, the Street’s dew-drenched lawn boasts a path worn thin  by flip-flops, dress shoes and bare feet alike. Guests of African, Asian, European, American, islander origins, and elsewhere – none kept at arm’s length from Anne’s infectious “Ka-reee-bu!” welcome.

Home-away-from-home travelers have gotten lodged, prayed over, teased, affirmed. And roundly blessed when the visit is ended and they move toward the screened door and out again. Beyond the bougainvillea vine.

©2018 Jerry Lout

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Seed

Alright everybody. It’s that time!

 Though the sanctuary lighting was nothing exceptional it highlighted the richest shock of blond hair I had ever seen. On anyone – male or female. The occasion – our youth rally, where teens showed up at that monthly gathering’s host church – wherever it happened to be.

Oddly, for a clergy simply receiving an offering Pastor John’s enthusiasm seemed tangible. Contagious. The glint in his blue eyes conveyed his pleasure. And warmth. This was near his heart – this offering – for missions.

Songs had already been sung. Hands had clapped. Youthful energy released into guitar strings, accordion keys and the occasional tambourine. It was the way with our youth rallies. Kids with musical talent – whether well developed or barely evolving – united in praise. John affirmed at every level. No spectator himself, his own electric guitar drooped comfortably at his midsection. It responded easily to his familiar touch.

Two empty collection baskets sat at the church’s altar up front.

OK, here’s our chance to join the Lord in sending his Good News of Jesus throughout the world.

The contagious smile, strong as ever.

Our Rally Offerings help Nigerian evangelists share Jesus way over there in Africa. But now first, young people (his voice softened), let’s quiet ourselves. Let’s pray for our dear brothers laboring in hard places far from here. These servants need our prayers as much as our quarters, dimes and dollars.

By the prayer’s ending most of us guys and girls fished what currency we could from our blue-jean pockets or pink-and-silver purses.

Filing from our seats, weaving forward, we dropped our modest offerings in. Dispatching salvation to the ends of the earth.

Pastor John laid aside a guitar pick. He took up his microphone, then his Bible. And soon found a reference.

Young people, listen up. I want you to hear this. Tonight we are helping dear African brothers to go among their own – taking God’s precious message of hope and life.

Listen. The slight pastor with his planet-size heart paused reverently. The room grew still.

God calls every one of us to the mission field in one way or the other. All of us to the world’s unreached nations. Now. I want you to do something. Turn your eyes toward your shoes. Just do this would you. Look at your shoes now, your feet. Keep your eyes to them.

Our focus shifted from hair-dos, from after-meeting burgers and fries. And from wherever our minds may have been carried by a random daydream.

Pastor John read slowly – his tone deliberate – from the book of Romans in the New Testament. We young people each one remained still. Eyes fixed – throughout the sanctuary – on our respective pairs of feet.

“How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!”

I stared at the pair of shoes nearest me. My own. The shoe at the end of my shorter leg – that limped, sometimes tripped. My mind went to descriptive mode. Shoes housing the weirdest, most pitiful-looking feet in the county. Maybe the state? I let myself try to imagine.

What if, though, in God’s eyes somehow – What if he sees beauty. Even in this pair of feet?

I smiled slightly. In the continued quietness supplied by Pastor John the  question surfaced again. From within. More forcefully, but sweetly. What if.

What if?

I felt my eyes moisten. As if to water a seed.

©2015 Jerry Lout