let heaven and earth collide: mpongwe round two [8.1.11]

Happy Farmer’s Day! (It’s a national holiday in Zambia, so everyone pretty much gets off work.) Since I last wrote a lot of things have happened. So I’m going to have to cut out a lot of the details and just give you some highlights.

Last weekend the team and I were still in Lusaka, and we got to join Patrick and Gordon (med students from Ireland and Scotland) for the afternoon on Saturday at the Olympic Park. That entailed basketball, soccer, and a 100 meter dash with about 20 local kids. Needless to say, JA won the 100 meter dash, but the rest was anything but a victory with my lack of skill. Then Sunday gave us a chance to go to a local church and the market for some bargaining and shopping. Church was… different. The guest speaker for the day was a Texan evangelist that actually was the founder of the church here in Lusaka. The service was uncomfortable for me. It was all about what he was doing, where he had been, what he had done, and where he was going next. So many times he used “I did” or “I went”, proclaiming that he gave people the power to speak in tongues, or that he healed people. The topper of them all was that he had an angel that personally appeared to people in their dreams and told them “Go to (a place) because (this preacher) was going to be there and they needed to hear him speak.” Literally, he shared two stories like that. So apparently he has an angel as a publicist haha. I’m not saying that God doesn’t work in mysterious ways, but I didn’t see the Gospel in his message. I saw him. Hardly ever did he mention Christ or give him the credit; he was hording it all for himself. He even went to the point to say that if you didn’t speak in tongues that you had a “mundane Christianity”. And that scares me – that preachers like this are the ones that are listening to the great commission and going all around the world supposedly proclaiming the good news – for their benefit and glory. There was only one point that I agreed with him on that I can remember and that was “if religion could have saved Zambia then Zambia would have been saved a long time ago”. But then his message didn’t match up. Man, it was rough, but thank God that He is in control and not that preacher.

Onward ho. At 4:30am on Monday morning, the team and I woke up to depart for Mpongwe with the team from the hospital. For last year’s team members, you’ll be happy to hear that we left at 5:30am and made it there by right around noon! Such an improvement from last year! It was such an amazing time being back in Mpongwe for a second time, and for 7 days this time. And the kids! The kids were there and some of them had really practiced their English since last year! (Here’s a disclaimer for Ally: Esnoti says “Hey!”) All in all, the outreach was such a success and I was so thankful to be a part of it again. This year we really explored whether it’s better to try to reach as many people as possible, or to truly build relationships with the locals. To me, it was such a display of God’s love that we cared for them by name, rather than number. It wasn’t about being able to come back and report that “this amount were saved”, but that we could report “that this person accepted Christ and this one”. So high-five to Harold and the outreach team! I enjoyed it thoroughly!

Back to the kids! Wow. I wish I could have just taken a hand full of them back with me on the bus. Several of them were attached to our hips all week, which made it even harder to leave the village. I’ll note that they might have been attached to me because I had a headlamp, but it’s ok. I’m cool with that. Edwin, a little boy that was there last year, was the kid that as soon as he saw me, he would grab my arm and hang all over me until I had to literally remove him. I’m sure going to miss that boy. And Rongo, and Onest, and so many others! Hopefully I’ll be able to see them again one day.

Well now we’re back to the hospital and I know it might sound lazy, but it’s nap time. Then hopefully off to go play with the kids on the ward. Here are a few pictures from the trip so far: