Seventy years ago the Wisconsin Synod sent two pastors to Africa to explore locations for planting a new Lutheran mission. This week’s post is written by the grandson of Pastor Edgar Hoenecke, who was one of the missionaries on that exploratory trip and who later served as the first full-time Administrator of WELS World Missions.

I grew up a fan of the San Francisco 49ers
football team. I have many fond memories of Joe Montana & Jerry Rice
leading their team to Super Bowl victories. I also have memories of a 49er who
never played in a Super Bowl. Seventy years ago my grandfather, Pastor Edgar
Hoenecke, teamed up with Pastor Art Wacker to explore sub-saharan Africa for a
site to begin WELS mission work.  Their
adventure is chronicled in the book The
WELS Forty-niners, published by the WELS Historical Institute in 1985.
Download it here: https://bit.ly/2J9NzRe

The 1947 WELS synod convention passed a
resolution authorizing the exploration of foreign mission fields. Two years
later Pastors Wacker and Hoenecke set sail on a three week journey aboard the
ship African Crescent to follow the
Great Commission. As Pastor Hoenecke said to his companion,  “Jesus has commanded His followers to go into
all the world to preach the gospel. And He has spoken clearly through our synod
that our mission board should send two men to explore the African continent for
a promising field. We are under God’s orders.” 

At the end of World War II European colonial
powers attempted to hold on to their African colonies, but a new Africa was
emerging.  These two missionaries had a
front row seat in their Dodge caravan (not the minivan) as they drove four
thousand miles. In South Africa, the evil system of Apartheid had begun to take
hold with a new government in power.  The
expedition would never have cleared the Capetown port authority but for a
birthday card sent by the missionaries to the former South African leader,
General Jan Christian Smuts.  This
birthday card resulted in a letter of introduction from the former leader that
“…was an open sesame, we were to find, in moving our big camper through
customs and in obtaining a visa for Southwest Africa…”

All along their journey God provided the
answer to roadblocks to their mission through people they met along the way.
For example the Kurt Stern family, whom they had met onboard the African Crescent, welcomed the American
travellers into their home in Windhoek and provided invaluable assistance for
both repairs to the caravan and direction for the entire mission. Although Kurt
and his wife were Jewish they “were most concerned about the success of our
quest for a good mission site.” My grandfather talked late into the night with
Kurt about the hope of the Jews for a Messiah. He continued to correspond with
the Stern family throughout the remainder of his life, and some of them came to
know the Messiah as their Savior.

Then and now, travelling through Africa is
challenging. The mission explorers crossed the Orange River on a ferry with the
help of local workers that used poles to push the barge across and then up the
muddy bank.  The retrofitted Dodge
caravan truck was not designed for the rough road conditions and frequently
broke down.  In 1949 there was no GPS and
few road maps available. The two missionaries used a National Geographic map of
Africa to plan their routes.

An eighty-five mile detour one day brought
them to a missionary from Mississippi, Pastor Sam Coles, who had been working
in Angola for over 25 years. Pastor Coles and his wife explained that they had
grown up in Mississippi and always had the urge to “help our brothers and
sisters in Africa find Christ.”  Other
stops along the journey led to the bush hospital of Dr. Anni Melander from
Finland. Dr. Melander performed “delicate eye surgery by the light of a
discarded automobile headlight” at her hospital. Both physical and spiritual
healing were core elements of this Finnish medical mission. Dr. Melander’s
native choir sang hymns for them on their visit to the clinic, just as other
vocal groups serenaded them at many stops along the way

Camping in the wilds of Africa and eating
supper under the stars was all part of the adventure.  One night some bushmen (indigenous people of southern Africa) joined them around
their campfire. The bushmen surprised the two pastors by singing the German
hymns Stille Nacht (Silent Night) and
Ein Feste Burg (A Mighty Fortress)
that they had learned from German missionaries. 
Pastor Wacker commented “Just think, here we’ve come halfway around the world
to preach the gospel and these bushmen a hundred or more miles from nowhere
already know our Christian hymns. I think we have come to Africa very late.”

They had not arrived too late however, because
a mission field was waiting for them in Northern Rhodesia (present day Zambia).
In Lusaka, the colonial capital of Northern Rhodesia, they located the office
of Mr. John Moffatt, the Commissioner for Native Development. The British
commissioner told Pastors Wacker and Hoenecke “Your coming to our country at
this time is a veritable godsend.” Pastor Hoenecke wrote in The WELS Forty-niners, “We had found an
English-speaking country where the government policy was designed to protect
Christian missions, but in no way to interfere with them.” 

Pastor Hoenecke concluded: “The weak bumbling
efforts of the ‘WELS Forty-niners’, and their prayers have been more than
richly rewarded. By sheer grace and God’s guidance the ‘WELS Forty-niners’
struck ‘pay dirt’ in the ‘mother lode’ of Christian missions in Central Africa.”  Seventy years after the WELS Forty-niners
expedition to sub-saharan Africa, the Wisconsin Synod enjoys fellowship with
sister Lutheran synods in Zambia and Malawi. In addition, WELS is partnering
with sister church bodies in Nigeria, Cameroon, Ethiopia and Kenya to reach out
to souls in those countries and several others. 70 years after the WELS
Forty-niners’ expedition, Africa still is calling. May God grant us the grace
to respond to that call, as his Gospel adventure continues to unfold.

Hank Hoenecke
serves as a Lutheran school principal in Ft. Myers, Florida and is also a
member of the Administrative Committee for Africa missions.

You can
also view the movie Africa Still Calls, which captures the WELS Forty-niner’s
mission trip on 6mm film here: https://bit.ly/2PVJn86 Although the movie quality is subpar and at
times reflects the prevailing European colonialist views of the postwar era, it
is a fascinating trip back to a time when Africa as a whole was on the cusp of
coming into its own.

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

While Americans look at bicycles as a children’s toy or a
piece of exercise equipment, in Africa bicycles are the main means of
transporting people and goods for a large segment of the country. Malawians use
bicycles to move wood, sacks of grain, furniture, chickens and goats from home
to market. Bicycle taxi drivers move customers quickly and efficiently around
town.

Some people use bicycles for longer trips from one village
to another, travelling on both busy tarmacked highways and deeply rutted dirt
roads. Until recently, about a third of the pastors in the LCCA Malawi were
using bicycles for transportation in remote rural areas. Some pastors serve as
many as six different congregations, getting to some of them only once a month
for worship. It takes Pastor George Chumba over two hours one way to reach his
congregation in Migowi, and that’s when the weather is fair. During the rainy
season, you can add an hour to his travel time each way. He is glad to be able
to reach his front door before sundown.

The pastors of the LCCA Malawi must be both spiritually and
physically strong to fulfill their calling, but even so the time they spend
pedaling could be used more productively. One of the ways that WELS One Africa
Team has helped its partners in the LCCA is by securing the funding of
motorcycles for the pastors to use in their ministry. Recently, funds became
available to provide eleven motorcycles to pastors, a significant investment in
both terms of money and time!

The logistics of providing eleven new motorcycles are
incredibly complex, from importing the motorcycles to registering them with the
department of Road Traffic, insuring them, delivering them to remote locations
around the country and then training the local pastors how to operate and
maintain them. Thankfully, the leaders of the LCCA took on this enormous task.
The members of the Board of Stewardship filled out the necessary paperwork and
arranged transportation at a fraction of the cost that their US counterparts
would have been able to secure.

The LCCA has assumed the cost of operating, maintaining and
insuring these vehicles, as well as assuring that the pastors’ licenses are all
up to date. It is the sincere hope of WELS One Africa Team that these
motorcycles will be of great benefit to both the pastors and the members of the
LCCA in Malawi, providing them with more time to connect with each other and
with God’s Word.

How beautiful on the mountains
are the feet of those who bring good news,
who proclaim peace,
who bring good tidings,
who proclaim salvation,
who say to Zion,
“Your God reigns!” (Isa. 52:7)

Missionary John Roebke
lives in Malawi and manages Communications and Publications 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

Every mission trip needs clear objectives.  On our recent trip to Liberia we had two:  1) Introduce record-keeping to help people understand that this is a proper program rather than simply a series of workshops, and 2) Bring together the Confessional Lutheran Church of Liberia (CLCL) and the Royal Family Fellowship International (RFFI) into one group to whom OAT and PSI can bring a unified program of study.  With Pastor Dennis Klatt, we came with the truth of Scripture for the first two weeks of February, 2109.

In effort to make this a truly Liberian program:  it was agreed to take four leaders from CLCL and three from RFFI to form a “Joint Education Committee.”   Those men are working on a system of organization now.  As they plan their own program, our focus becomes more pinpointed and better understood, so that we are all together in our efforts to develop the Lord’s kingdom here in Liberia.

Many of our “students” already carry the name “Deacon” or “Pastor” in their congregation, but might not have clear standards of what that means – it can change from one group to the next.  It was fascinating to me to have a conversation about titles with one of the CLCL leaders on a Wednesday, and by Thursday in class, people were addressing one another with the title “student,” explaining “we don’t want to get wrapped up in titles.”  In a similar situation, I used the word “heresy” to explain the importance of our teaching only truth; within two hours, the same students brought it up in Pastor Klatt’s class: “Is that heresy?”   It seems they are listening, learning and applying whatever they hear.  The Holy Spirit is working here!

As we look at these two different groups forming into one, they agreed that they would like a particular curriculum to know what the final target is going to be and to know, at any given time, how far along they were toward reaching that goal.  On this particular visit, we took attendance and evaluated students to give grades.  We will then have an objective opportunity to evaluate exactly where our students are in their understanding and helps us teachers to know whether or not we are teaching well.

Some of the courses taught in the past will be reviewed at the next visit and a test taken so we have a record for it.  On this visit we taught:

• Level One  – Aiming for a “Deacon” or “Elder” Certificate
  • BIC course – Pastor Klatt
  • Storying through Genesis – Pastor Kroll
• Level Two – Aiming for “Evangelist” or “Pastor” Diploma
  • The Three Ecumenical Creeds – Pastor Klatt
  • Teaching Bible Class – Pastor Kroll

… But we are just beginning – completing this program will require commitment!

It’s a pleasure to work amongst people who don’t regularly hear the truth of Scripture.  On this visit, we taught about sixty-eight students in the two levels of courses.  Perhaps not all of them will stick with the program for the full ten years, but we praise the Lord for their desire to better understand the opportunity to share the love of our Savior to a struggling world!

To God’s glory,

Missionary Dan Kroll