“I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow.” (1 Cor. 3:6)

To me, everything was business as usual.  Nothing stood out as extraordinary.  It was just another meeting.

Two weeks ago, the leaders of the Lutheran Church of Central Africa-Malawi Synod (LCCA-MS) met with the leaders of the WELS mission in Malawi.  Five Malawians represented the local synod.  Three missionaries represented WELS. We gathered at a rustic little lodge on the southern shores of Lake Malawi in a region called Mangochi. 

The scenery was stunning, but the meeting felt routine to me.  In the past 10 or 12 years, I have participated in dozens and dozens of such meetings.  So when we gathered in Mangochi, I didn’t think much of it.  It took the fresh perspective of a newly-arrived missionary to recognize what was extraordinary.

Let me explain.  The LCCA-MS is almost 55 years old.  In 1963, two WELS missionaries from the neighboring country of Zambia moved to the densely-populated southern region of Malawi.  Back then, WELS missionaries did 100% of the ministry in Malawi.  They preached all the sermons in the local languages, baptized all the babies and taught the confirmation classes.  Yes, there were a few dedicated laymen and church elders who could help with this, but the LCCA-MS did not have even a single Malawian pastor until 1976.

In fact, the missionaries weren’t just doing the preaching and baptizing.  Back in the early days, missionaries also served as the elected officers of the local synod.  A missionary served as synod president, another as vice president, as secretary, treasurer and so on.  The missionaries ran the meetings of the church.  The missionaries made the plans and controlled all of the funding.

Think about that for a minute.  Back in 1975, all the members of the Lutheran Church of Central Africa-Malawi Synod were native Africans, and all of the pastors and leaders of their synod were foreign missionaries.

How strange!  How very, very strange.

Things are much different today.  Today there are about 35 Malawian pastors and vicars who serve the LCCA-MS. No congregation of the LCCA-MS is regularly served by an American.  Malawian pastors do virtually all of the preaching, all of the baptizing, all of the confirmations and the funerals.  All of these pastors are paid and supported by the congregations that they serve.  Today, the executive committee of the LCCA-MS is a five man board, and every one of them is a Malawian.  They stand at the head of a Synod that numbers more than 45,000 baptized souls.

Two weeks ago I sat beneath a large Kachere tree on the shores of Lake Malawi.  As a warm breeze blew across the lake and monkeys bounded through the branches of the tree, three WELS missionaries met with the leaders of the local Malawian synod.  All five of those LCCA leaders had names that might sound strange to you – names like Rev. Riphat Matope (mah-TOE-pay), the Synod Chairman, or Rev. Alfred Kumchulesi (KOOH-mtchoo-lay-see), the Synod secretary – but they are not strange to me.  They are my friends, my brothers in God’s family, my fellow workers in Christ’s vineyard.  So we sat and talked like brothers, easily and openly, about the gospel ministry we share.   

There was a time not too long ago when the LCCA-MS had very few members and not even a single pastor.  Now they have 45,000 baptized members and better than three dozen pastors.  There was a time when foreign missionaries completely controlled the operation and administration of the synod.  But now we take the fact for granted: It is a Malawian synod, and Malawians will lead it.

And perhaps the most amazing thing is this… No one bats an eyelash anymore.  It’s business as usual.  It’s our standard practice over here.

Amazing growth. Amazing grace. God’s business – as usual.

Missionary Mark Panning teaches at the Lutheran Bible Institute in Lilongwe, Malawi

Please pray for those working in fields that are ripe for harvest. Share their story, engage with future news and receive updates. Go to this link to learn more about our mission fields in Africa and how the Holy Spirit is working faith in people’s hearts  https://wels.net/serving-others/missions/africa

“Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia.” (Acts 16:6) For 50 years the Spirit has kept WELS from entering Mozambique. We believe and pray that God is now calling us to this ripe mission field. Listen to our story…

The First Look at Mozambique

In 1962 Central Africa was still under the colonial administration of the British government. WELS missionaries had established a presence in the country of what was then called Northern Rhodesia (Zambia). There had been a major shakeup of the mission staff, but a solid foundation was set in place and growth was steady. Missionaries Robert Sawall and William Scheppe were serving at the Mwembezhi Mission, while Theodore ‘Tate’ Sauer, E.H. Wendland, Richard Mueller, and Raymond Cox were located in Lusaka.

In that year, representatives of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) visited WELS Missionaries living in Lusaka. The delegation was on its way to Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique) to explore the possibilities for mission work. After their visit they stopped again in Lusaka, convinced that Portuguese East Africa was “ripe for the harvest.” However, they told the WELS missionaries, “You are next door and are in a much better position to start work there rather than us.”

At the same time missionaries were exploring other areas to expand the work, notably the Copperbelt area of Zambia, as well as neighboring Nyasaland (Malawi). Missionaries Richard Mueller and Raymond Cox recommended that WELS enter Malawi with all haste. Plans to enter Mozambique were ‘temporarily’ put on hold. Mueller and Cox were called to Malawi in June 1963 and the Lord blessed that decision in ways no one could have foreseen. Today there are over 40,000 members of the Lutheran Church of Central Africa – Malawi Synod.

Second Chance

In 1968 there was a “bump” in the road to our work in Malawi. The Malawi missionaries were told by the Office of the President of Malawi, “Your church cannot expand into any new areas without the consent of the President.” To engender good relations with the government of Malawi, in 1971 WELS began operating the Lutheran Mobile Clinic in the Salima area where access to medical care was severely limited. Miss Edith Schneider (now Mrs. E. Hintz) was the first nurse.

The Malawi missionaries, who were based Blantyre, made frequent visits to Salima to support the nurses and fellow Missionary T. Kretzmann. At that time the best route from Blantyre to Salima passed through the town of Dedza, which is located on the border of Malawi and Mozambique. Due to internal political conflicts in Mozambique in the early 1970s, refugees began pouring into Malawi. An estimated one million Mozambicans perished during a 15 year civil war. The missionaries witnessed grass huts being built by refugees on the Malawi side of the border. In just a few years, Malawi’s population increased from 7 million to 11 million. The Malawi mission staff asked the Mission Board to call another missionary who could work among the refugees, but unfortunately funding was not available at the time.

The Third Time’s Not a Charm

In 1990 a special WELS Mission offering called, “Lift High the Cross” funded the calling of Missionary Tim Soukup to serve the Mozambican refugees living in the border area by the towns of Dedza and Ntcheu, Malawi. Three years later however, Mozambique’s civil war came to an end. By mid-1995 more than 1.7 million refugees returned to their homes in Mozambique from neighboring countries, part of the largest repatriation witnessed in sub-Saharan Africa (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozambique). This resettlement coincided with Missionary Soukup leaving Malawi in 1995, having only done a little work with cross-border Mozambicans together with sainted Rev. Dais Boloweza. Some national pastors continued to serve some cross-border congregations. Efforts were made to meet with a group near Tete, Mozambique but these visits were very limited because of the distance (Tete is about 200 miles inland from the Malawi border).

The Fourth Attempt

In 2005 the WELS Administrative Committee for Africa requested another survey of the Mozambique field. Missionaries Bill Meier and Paul Nitz made a visit in February 2005 to the capital city of Maputo in the south of the country. Encouraging reports about the stability of the country and the need for humanitarian work led to a second visit eight months later to the north, where there was considerably less mission activity among the most densely populated part of the country, and less crime. In the city of Nampula they met an expat missionary named Dave Lepoidevan. He encouraged them that mission work in this part of the country had just recently begun. He and other local expats encouraged the WELS Mission to use higher education (like a teacher training college) as an effective form of mission work in Mozambique, especially if it offered English classes. They also informed the WELS missionaries that it was necessary to speak Portuguese in order to live and work in Mozambique.

Not long after that, Meier made a third trip to Mozambique together with Portuguese speaking Ken Cherney, former missionary to Brazil, and Rev. Steve and Sally Valleskey, former missionaries to Malawi. They concurred with the mission strategy of using higher education as an outreach tool. They also heard from local missionaries about the necessity for learning Portuguese, preferably before coming to Mozambique.

The report and proposals out of that trip convinced the WELS Board for World Missions to call Bill Meier and Jeff Enderle as missionaries to Nampula, Mozambique in 2007. They were sent to learn Portuguese in Lisbon, Portugal, where Rev. Artur Villares serves the Lutheran Church of Portugal, a member of the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference (CELC). Both missionaries made excellent progress learning Portuguese, and they also made a visit to Mozambique to look for housing. But the move to Nampula was delayed by various factors, including problems with visas and registering the mission with the government.

And then at the end of 2008 the world’s economy came to a standstill in the Global Recession. Investment losses were in the billions, including investments made by WELS. Funding cutbacks forced the Board for World Missions to recall Meier and Enderle to the United States and to defund the Mozambique mission in 2009.

One More Time

In 2009 there were over 4,000 Mozambican Lutherans living across the border from Malawi. These people speak Maravi, a language that is almost identical to what is spoken in Malawi and parts of Zambia. Over 600,000 Chichewa speakers live in Mozambique, representing about 4% of the country. Due to government restrictions, personal visits to these Lutherans have been very limited. Work is slowly progressing on registering the mission.

But even though the Lord has made us wait so long to enter Mozambique, he has been working quietly through the Word which has been sown. During a recent visit 61 people were baptized at a worship service! It is evidence of Jesus’ words in John 3:8, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” After over 50 years of waiting, we pray that the Spirit of God will finally allow WELS and the LCCA-M the privilege of serving our fellow Lutherans in Mozambique.

Missionary John Roebke serves as the Missionary of Publications for Malawi. He is also the Communications Manager for One Africa Team.

Special thanks to Raymond Cox and Bill Meier for their help with this article. Ray Cox is retired and lives in Oshkosh, WI. Bill Meier is the CEO of Kingdom Workers kingdomworkers.com

Please pray for those working in fields that are ripe for harvest. Share their story, engage with future news and receive updates. Go to this link to learn more about our mission fields in Africa and how the Holy Spirit is working faith in people’s hearts https://wels.net/serving-others/missions/africa

Another book is being written, and I can guarantee a good read. It includes the Rob and Rebecca Wendland family, and so many more.

Maybe you already read the first book that Rebecca authored.  She compiled a selection of emails that she and Rob had written to their family and friends over the years while in Malawi, Africa; it was those very writings that became the basis for her book, “Bloom Where God Plants You.”

And they did. In 2003 God planted them in Malawi’s oldest city and main commercial and industrial center: Blantyre.   This is a busy, bustling southern region city of multi-story offices, markets, and mini-bus mayhem. The streets are as crowded as they are noisy.

Rob’s ministry work, however, for the most part, took him out of the city into the quiet, laidback African bush known as the “Lower Shire.”   It was there in the stillness of this valley where he would let the Lord Jesus whisper His own story of forgiving love.

In July of 2017 Rob accepted the call to Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary. Even though Rob and the family are back in Wisconsin, it is this unique Malawi gospel ministry that is still fresh in his mind:  “Ministering to people in the Lower Shire & working with national pastors have been highlights.  Long days down to the Shire, dusty & bumpy roads with enthusiastic members receiving me at the end of the journey are wonderful memories.”

Wonderful memories indeed!  And what else will Rob miss about Malawi?

“Aspects of the culture and people – the rural lifestyle of my (former) members, the way respect is shown and received. The warmth of the people and also warm weather and climate…the people can show so much kindness and patience. The beautiful, tropical landscapes, as well as the relaxed idea of time, are also things I’ll miss.”

Rebecca, too, has her things that she will miss about Malawi:

“I will miss the enthusiasm of the village worship and singing along with the friendly people…I’ll miss the tropical weather, plants and country. I will also miss the mission ladies’ retreats studying and sharing together God’s Word.”

But is there anything Rebecca won’t miss?  Maybe a few things…

“I will not miss security issues, being far from family & sleeping under mosquito nets. I won’t miss power, water, internet & food outages and fuel shortages. I won’t miss the dust and mold.”

Though their daughter Bethany won’t miss waking up with clusters of bites from “who knows what kind of bugs,” she says she’s going to miss the fresh vegetables and fruits (like Litchis) and the delicious slabs of Chambo (aka tilapia) from Lake Malawi.

Hannah and Nathanael, who have been away from Malawi while schooling at Lutheran Prep School (LPS) in Watertown, Wisconsin, both share the same sentiment: “Though we will miss Malawi, it’s going to be nice to have the whole family back together again!”

Perhaps unknowingly, Caleb has been preparing for this day when they would move.  Throughout the years he’s been collecting stones.  When he and his family would visit various sites throughout Malawi, invariably he would find a stone and keep it.  He’s selected a few choice ones from his rock-pile stock-pile and has taken them to Wisconsin. Most likely you’ll find them proudly displayed on a shelf in his home.  His mom comments on his behalf: “Those stones bring back memories and are reminders of the special places and times with family…they will serve as concrete reminders of all the rich blessings we have enjoyed together.”

For Rob and Rebecca, those rich blessings have come over a span of 14 years in Malawi. But the house that was the Wendland home now stands vacant and quiet. No more Wendland birthday celebrations at the Kabula house. No more St. Andrew school runs. No more shopping trips in the Blantyre markets. No more holidays at the Lujeri Tea Estate. The things of Malawi are the things of the past.

The Malawi mission staff held a farewell for the Wendlands at their Fall retreat on the Zomba plateau. The Wendlands sorted and sold belongings. They took what they wanted and left behind what they didn’t. They packed up and movers came with their truck, which unfortunately was a little too wide to fit through their gate! They boarded a plane and said good bye to the Warm Heart of Africa and hello to the Dairy State of the USA.

But really it wasn’t the land of milk and cheese that beckoned them to move.  The Lord of the nations did. The One who called and equipped them to serve in Africa is the same One who now has called them to serve Him in America.

Rob will serve as a Church History and Homiletics Professor at the Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary.  Just think…Rob will have the opportunity to touch the lives of many men who will also go out one day – only God knows where – and proclaim the message of forgiveness in Christ.  The very same message that Rob had shared in the Lower Shire Valley in Malawi!  Imagine how blessed the Seminary students will be to have a professor who will be able to share his rich mission experience that the Lord had given to him on the Malawi field.  “Dear class, let me tell you about the time when…”

Maybe some of Rob’s classroom experiences and some of Rebecca’s home situations on the Seminary campus will end up in their emails.  Maybe Rebecca will write another book. But someone else is writing His book: our Lord God!   It is the Lamb’s book! (Rev. 21:27) Hasn’t He already begun writing?  Isn’t the Author of life also the Author of the Book of Life?  Isn’t He, in a sense, writing the chapters of our lives that are yet to be read?  And isn’t it true that every believer’s name is written in that book?

And when the last chapter is finally written, those same hands which wrote the book will be the same hands enthusiastically receiving every one of his believers at the end of this earth’s bumpy journey, including the Wendland family, and including you and me!  A Book we might call a “best seller?”  I think so!  An exciting read?  No doubt!

Even though the Wendlands are now gone from Malawi, they are not gone from the real Warm Heart of Africa which is Jesus Himself.  The Wendlands are securely tucked in Jesus’ arms like a page in a book.  The next chapter about the Wendland family is now being written. They have been received a new calling. A new home. A new congregation. A new circle of people.  In a sense, a new planting by the Gardener Himself. Another place to bloom.

Missionary John Holtz lives in Lilongwe, Malawi

Please pray for those working in fields that are ripe for harvest. Share their story, engage with future news and receive updates. Go to this link to learn more about our mission fields in Africa and how the Holy Spirit is working faith in people’s hearts  https://wels.net/serving-others/missions/africa