The Gathering Place. I remember there used to be a small restaurant by that name in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. That was decades ago.  Perhaps it’s still there.  Maybe not.Regardless, it’s a fitting name for a restaurant as the locals would, well, gather.  Eat the special of the day.  Drink endless cups of coffee.  Chat, laugh, share the news and enjoy the stories and the company.

There’s a gathering place here in Malawi, too.  Many of them, in fact.  And now there is one more. In a place called Salima.  This particular gathering place is not a restaurant, but it is a place where you can get a drink any time of day or night. 

It’s a borehole.  This borehole serves one thing and one thing only:  WATER!  (Hey, I just thought of something…maybe THE BOREHOLE would be a good name for a restaurant here in Malawi….they’d probably have to serve more than water, however, if they are going to make any money!) A borehole is simply another word for a well. Here they are usually equipped with a hand pump.  The depth of the pipes depends a lot on the level of the water table as it is normally found in the dry season.

It’s a gathering place.

Women and children come every day to pump water and carry it home.  Often the queues are long and the crowds thick. Buckets and pails everywhere.  But it’s worth the wait because there’s food to cook, clothes to wash and baths to take. If all these people had taps in their gardens or faucets in their homes, they wouldn’t have to gather at the borehole.  But they don’t so they do.

Many community members go to this newly tapped borehole for water.  But if it is up to the LCCA congregations like Holy Trinity, then they will go home with more. Much more. The Lutheran Church of Central Africa (LCCA) congregation called Holy Trinity in Salima applied to the WELS Committee on Aid and Relief (CA&R) for funds for a borehole. 

   CA&R granted it.
Water Access drilled it.
    Holy Trinity dedicated it.
       Many gather around it.

CA&R asked the pastor and congregation a question and
they answered it this way…

In Malawi, the ones who normally gather in numbers at the
borehole every day are the women and children. 
They have come for water, yes, but there’s a whole lot more that goes on.  It’s a gathering place.  It’s a bee hive of activity and there’s a
buzz of conversation. News and lives and stories are shared.

This particular borehole has been placed right next to another gathering place:  the church itself!  Holy Trinity Lutheran Church.

      Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Salima,
Malawi

Holy Trinity currently has 164 baptized and 129 confirmed members and is being served by Pastor Patrick Magombo. What a gathering place!  The building is strong, the size adequate, the location prime. But more importantly, the Gospel of Jesus is preached and the sacraments are administered!

And now Pastor Magombo and Holy Trinity Congregation has
a gathering of people from the community coming on their premises for water. 

Every day.

Every day their water needs are met. And they will be
back tomorrow. And the next day.  And the
next…

It’s not only a good
time for a drink of cool water, it’s a great time for a prayer:

“Lord, we know that the gift of water is a precious
thing.  Forgive us for taking water for
granted.  Many don’t have the easy access
we do.  Many don’t have the convenience
of clean water that comes straight into our homes.  But you provide in various ways and even
water from a borehole is a gift from your divine Hand.  Thank you for moving the hearts of people who
have donated offerings to CA&R.  Many
people in faraway countries are blessed because of it. Thousands in Malawi!  Encourage the Holy Trinity congregation and
Pastor to also reach out with the gospel as the people gather both inside and
outside the church building. In Jesus’ name. 
Amen.”

With the borehole water, the
people will thirst again. (John 4:13). 

With the living water of Jesus from the wells of
salvation, they won’t. (John 4:14).

In the presence of Jesus….

What a Gathering Place!

Your Malawi Mission Partner,
John Holtz

I have left both shoe leather and sweat on the streets of
suburban subdivisions and communist-built housing blocks. I have offered Tennis
Camps, Renaissance Faires, Bible giveaways and free English lessons to attract
my busy neighbors’ attention. It is no small task to establish a new church in
either a home or a world mission setting. But God’s promises still encourage
church planters today: “Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord,
because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” (1 Cor. 15:58)

For the last nine months the members of Chikulupiriro
(Faith) Lutheran Church in Lilongwe, Malawi have been conducting worship
services in the village of Saera, about 18 miles away. It’s a thirty minute rumble
over rocky roads by car – but the lay evangelist usually travels by bicycle,
after working all night long. The pastor makes the trip every other month by
motorcycle, which is much easier to get unstuck from the mud than a car once
the rains begin.

Some WELS Home Missions begin their existence in a member’s
home or in a school cafeteria. When the Lutherans roll into Saera, they set up
shop under the shadiest trees and the children come running. Judging from their
excitement, you’d think that Martians had landed. Some WELS Home Missions offer
outdoor Easter services in a park or on the beach, but I wonder how many of
them have been graced by the presence of goats, pigs and chickens?

Some WELS Home Missions are blessed with a keyboardist or a
computer that plays digital hymns through a P.A. system. The worshippers in
Saera hear the evangelist’s singing and preaching via a battery-powered
bullhorn. WELS members of a mission church are well acquainted with “Lutheran
exercises” – working up a sweat before the service setting up chairs, chancel
furniture and tables, and then taking it all down afterwards. Worshippers in an
African village church find their spots on benches, stumps or the ground, the
sweat running off their faces induced by the sun.

There is no budget for mass mailings or targeted ads on
social media. Word of mouth is the LCCA Malawi’s primary method of outreach in
new areas, supported by Bible tracts and the occasional visit by the talented
student choir of the Lutheran Bible Institute (LBI). New preaching stations are
always the result of a personal connection with a member of the LCCA. Saera is
the home village of a current LBI student. Once the connection is established,
the supervising pastor identifies a local man who can serve as the
congregation’s chairman and begins preparing him to conduct the worship
service. It is also important to establish a solid connection with the local
authorities, who in African villages are hereditary chiefs. On the day I
visited Saera there were 3 chiefs in attendance at our worship service.

In remote places like Saera there is a greater hunger for
the Gospel than in the busy urban centers. Nonetheless, even in a sleepy
village the devil is active and is working hard to distract people from the one
thing needed. The pastor is seeking permission to put up a grass structure on
the outskirts of the village, in order to put some distance between his flock
and the occasional Sunday drunks. The villagers are poor, primarily surviving
off of what they can grow, and they have large families with many mouths to
feed. The total offering taken on the day of my visit was just under $5, half
of it given by me. Few of the people are educated beyond primary school, and
Bible teaching proceeds slowly. The pastor and evangelist must patiently
instruct people about the differences between the true teachings of the Bible
and the false teachings of other church groups. 

A total of 82 people attended worship that Sunday in Saera.
In spite of the many logistical and spiritual challenges, the Holy Spirit is
blessing this outreach effort which is being conducted entirely by our local partners.
Once the Gospel seeds have been scattered, they sprout and grow by the
mysterious working of the Holy Spirit without our direct observation (see Mark
4:26-27). What a privilege it is to witness the zeal of these church planters
in Malawi!

Missionary John Roebke lives in Malawi and is the
Communications Director for One Africa Team

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

For over 80 years the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod
has supported mission work on the African continent, bringing both spiritual
and material relief to weary and burdened. Over that time, nearly one hundred
called workers and their families have given up the comforts of life in the
United States to offer their time and skills in service of God’s kingdom. There
have been missionaries who spent only a few years in Africa, and there are
those veterans who have spent the majority of their lives here yet the Lord has
used each and every of them to accomplish his own goals, in his own time.

From the very beginning of our mission outreach in Nigeria
back in the late 1930’s, American expatriate missionaries performed all the
Gospel ministry tasks such as teaching and baptizing, preaching and
administering the sacrament of communion and proclaiming the Good News of Jesus
Christ both in English and in foreign tongues. Who could begin to count the
cost of these missionaries’ sacrifices, the time devoted to learning foreign
cultures, the trials of life-threatening diseases, the threat of
post-independence civil unrest? These sacrifices are hard-won trophies known
only to the missionaries and their merciful God, who gave them their confidence
to keep on moving forward in spite of all obstacles.

Today we witness the fruits of their hard labor, and God’s
blessings on the preaching of his Gospel through the ever-increasing numbers of
Christ’s followers gathered in the Lutheran churches of Africa and the national
African pastors who serve them. There are over 125 ordained African pastors
serving over 50,000 members, forming seven independent Lutheran church bodies
located in six countries.  Our “children”
have grown up and are reaching out to their countrymen on their own. Although
WELS still supports 11 expatriate missionaries in Africa, none of them are
currently ministering directly to African congregations. None of them are
baptizing or teaching or confirming new Lutherans. None of them are preaching
in the local languages of the people.

Instead, the missionaries of One Africa Team have
transitioned into a new role as consultants to the leaders of our sister
churches in Africa. One Africa Team has stated its core focus thus: “Through
theological education and coordination of WELS resources, we assist our
partners in Africa to grow as independent, healthy church bodies.” WELS is
committed to securing theological training for African pastors both on the
undergraduate and graduate levels by supporting both expatriate and national
teachers in African worker training schools.

In some countries, expatriate missionaries teach side by
side with national teachers. In West Africa, where it is currently not safe for
Americans to live, our missionaries provide remote support to teachers via
assistance planning curriculum and encouragement over the phone and email. In
Ethiopia, the Pastoral Studies Institute (PSI) of Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary
sends guest professors to Maor Theological College, which is headed by Dr.
Kebede Getachew. The LC-MC Kenya, WELS’ newest partner in Africa, and One
Africa Team are exploring options for training pastors.

One Africa Team, which consists of missionaries living on
the continent as well as stateside administrators, is the official face of WELS
in Africa. One Africa Team is in a prime position to help connect our sister
churches in Africa with the vast array of WELS resources available to assist
them in other ways. Recently, the OAT missionary of Publications helped
coordinate a pan-African Publications conference in Lusaka, Zambia which was
underwritten by WELS Multi-Language Publications. OAT has helped connect our
sister churches in Zambia and Malawi with WELS Christian Aid and Relief on
projects of a humanitarian nature, such as drilling boreholes. OAT is
partnering with the WELS Mission Journeys program, which will give WELS members
the opportunity to participate in short-term mission trips to Africa that will
benefit local partner congregations in their ministries. OAT missionaries are
willing to facilitate our African partners’ connections with a multitude of
other WELS groups such as the Global South Sudanese Committee, the Central
African Medical Mission, Kingdom Workers, the Vulnerable Children’s Fund, and
Grace in Action (to only name a few).

As our African partners are assuming an ever greater
responsibility for their ministry in their own countries, One Africa Team
missionaries have trained their sights on outreach to new groups of believers
in countries that are new to WELS missions. Africa’s huge landmass is the same
area as the USA, China, India, Japan and Europe combined, and its population
will be upwards of 2.5 billion by the middle of this century. These are
compelling reasons alone for WELS missions to continue to invest its time and
manpower in Africa, but let us remember that the blessings of African mission
work flow in two directions, both from the sending church to the daughter
church and vice versa. WELS’ involvement in African missions over the last 80
years has kept Gospel outreach at the beating heart of our ministry and
mission. We do not send missionaries only to build hospitals and schools, but
to preach the life transforming Gospel of Christ that sets people free from
fear and superstition. 

That is why One Africa Team is currently exploring new
opportunities to partner with Christ’s followers from Liberia, Mozambique,
Rwanda, South Sudan, Uganda, and Zimbabwe who share our passion: “Christ for
All, Great News for Africa.” We need to work closely with our partners, to
overcome cultural barriers and to lovingly work through the resulting
misunderstandings that often arise. OAT has set the goal of declaring
fellowship with 12 groups of Christians in a total of 12 countries by the year
2025, with another 6 prospective groups of Christians in 6 other countries in
the process.

And OAT has set a goal for empowering its African partners
to assume a greater role in the training of new pastors, as well as the continued
nurturing of their current corpus through peer mentoring and formal education
program by the middle of the next decade. 
One Africa Team’s prayer is that Christ continues to bless our journey
together with our partners that benefits all parties and advances His kingdom
goals around the globe.

Missionary John Roebke lives in Malawi and coordinates
Communications for One Africa Team

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