WELS’ third visit to Liberia brought together two originators of the Confessional Lutheran Church of Liberia (CLCL) and two members of WELS’ One Africa Team (OAT).  Besides CLCL’s regular attendees (they have gathered several times in recent years), we started to incorporate a few men from another group that has recently been started by a WELS Liberian in Minnesota AND another group that had expressed some interest in joining us.

Each side had much to offer: CLCL already has a constitution and organizational structure. They have about 240 hours worth of study behind them.  OAT has experience with our staunch WELS understanding of Scripture in an African context (the two missionaries representing OAT carried about 45 years experience with them).  Knowing the right way to shake hands is cool, but gaining a spiritual connection through Christ is incredible—done only by the power of the Holy Spirit.

I say our mission work there is “a work in progress” because we are only now getting this program organized and bringing it into line with our other programs in Africa.  Our Liberian efforts are actually not much more than a foundation (solid – Scripture) and a bunch of building material stacked around it. Those materials are the 80 or so men and women with enough knowledge of Scripture to go beyond being simply part of a group or getting some sort of degree.  These are men and women who are beginning to understand about their Savior “…who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good” (Titus 2:14).  There were some great questions as people discussed amongst themselves.  My favorite was the day before Reformation Day when one of the men challenged his brother: “Can you prove that from Scripture?” We still have a lot to do to establish a group in fellowship with WELS, but I think we are on the right track with our solid foundation—I can hardly wait to get back (Feb 2019) to put a few more blocks in the walls!

Missionary Dan Kroll serves West Africa and currently resides in 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

This past October I had the opportunity to attend the LWMS Freedom Circuit Rally at Sure Foundation Lutheran Church in Queens, New York. Two years earlier I attended a women’s Mission Festival in Malawi at Fisi Lutheran Church. These two rallies on two different continents couldn’t be more different.

The rally in New York was in a store front church next to the elevated subway tracks that rumbled by. The rally in Malawi was outside in an open field under the hot African sun. Women drove all the way from Canada to attend the one-day rally in Queens. Women in Malawi walked for miles to attend the three-day rally and camped in the church.

I sampled local cuisine at both rallies.  At Sure Foundation the ladies prepared delicious Latin American dishes. In Malawi, the women lovingly prepared local food on campfires. In Malawi, six women’s choirs joyfully danced and sang in Chichewa during the worship service. In Queens we sang hymns in both English and in Spanish, as Sure Foundation is reaching out to both English and Spanish speakers in the community.

These were two very different rallies, but both of them had the same purpose. At both rallies God’s people raised their voices in worship and praise, pastors preached sermons and shared Bible studies, with the goal of strengthening our faith and reminding everyone that now is the time to share the love of our Savior with a dying world! That is the purpose of the Lutheran Women’s Mission Society in churches everywhere, both in Africa and in the United States.  It is also the mission of every Christian to share the Gospel with their families, neighbors, and the world.  Every day is a mission rally as we wait on this side of heaven. Look for the people God is placing in your path and tell them of the sure hope you have in your Savior!

 

Teacher Hank Hoenecke lives in Ft. Myers, FL and serves on the Administrative Committee for Africa

 

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

Cool, refreshing water.  Cool, refreshing, CLEAN water.

That’s what the community and congregation at Nagome village have.  Finally have.  And they can’t get enough of it.  Every day they come to draw and to drink. Cups.  Containers.  Buckets.  Pots, pans and pails.    Now there’s nothing they can’t fill with clean water. But they weren’t able to do that for more than a year since October 2017.  

It was then that the first well was dug, the hand pump installed and hopes were hung on the promises:  “Don’t worry, the dirty, muddy water will clear up after a short time.  Just be patient.  Let things settle down.  Give it time.” (The WELS Committee on Aid and Relief, CAR, funded this well. In Malawi, a well like this is called a “borehole.”) The drillers packed up and pulled out. Off they went with their words of promise blowing in the breeze.

The people in the village were patient.  They gave it  time.  But like a visitor, time came and went.  Days passed.  Then weeks.  Then months. An entire year crawled away. But one thing remained:  Mud. Reddish brown liquid mud.

For over a year, nothing but this muddy soup was coming from the well.  They could pump from morning till night and still the only thing that would come from the spout was this appalling brown muddy soup.

Clean water?  Not a drop!

But there was a deluge.  A deluge of phone calls, text messages and emails to the drilling company.  Face-to-face visits.  Questions and complaints from the village heaped up like the mountains that surrounded them:  Where was the drilling company to fix the problem?  How could they simply pull up and back out?  Are they ever coming back? It’s been so long!  Why did they leave us high and dry?

It wasn’t just the land that was thirsty, it was also the people!   This well was supposed to be the answer to the people’s need for potable water.

At least to a little extent, I now have a sense of what the widow felt like. The widow? (Luke 18:1-8)

The one who badgered the judge. Persistently she came to his office, knocked on his door and demanded justice.  He wouldn’t help her.  I can only imagine her questions and complaints. Why won’t you do something! Why are you leaving me high and dry?  Why must I hound you to do your job? Why won’t you help me?

Finally he did. Finally.  But he did so begrudgingly.  The judge gave in to the widow’s pleas.  Mind you, not because he cared for her or because it was the right thing to do, but simply because he wanted to put an end to all the bother.  He feared that she’d wear him out with her relentless coming.

Jesus told this story so that his disciples would always pray and not give up (Luke 18:1).

The widow didn’t.

Neither did we.  There was too much at stake.  More than the value of money, even more than the value of water, it was more about the value of life.

How do you measure it?  In buckets and cups and pails?  I think not.

Like the widow, we persisted.  We didn’t give up.  Not only did we bombard the drillers with pleas and pleadings but we knocked on heaven’s door (yikes,  did we knock it down?) in prayer.  Persistent, believing, hopeful prayers.  You might say by the bucket full!

Finally the drilling company (“Water For Life”)  responded.

I don’t know exactly why they consented to finally come to the site and sink another well, but they did.  Did they want to actually set things right?  Or like the judge, did they just want to put an end to our coming?  Did they fear that we’d wear them out with our widow-like persistence?

I don’t know.  But I do know that it took over a year for them to show up. They came. They drilled.  They went.

This time when they drove off with the drilling machine, they left behind a working pump that produced fresh water.  Not just a drop here and a dribble there.  Nope, a deluge.  Pump the handle and your bucket is full.  Cool, refreshing CLEAN water.

Full buckets make for full hearts.  Happy hearts full of thankfulness!  “Now Thank We All Our God, With Hearts and Hands and Voices!”  Maybe you wondered what all that singing and shouting off in the distance was. Now you know: the joyful songs and voices of people at Nagome were echoing and  resounding off the nearby mountains of Mulanje.

But wait a minute…the newly drilled hole is literally just a few meters away from the previous one…so why is there plenty of clean water this time and nothing before?

Because this time they drilled deep.

After pulling out the pipes that had been installed the first time, they discovered that the previous drillers had only bored down 15 meters.

But the cool, refreshing CLEAN water?  It’s at 30 meters. The significant factor now is this: The well is deep.  32 meters deep.  A “Water For Life” worker even inscribed those very words into the base of the Nagome well when the cement was still wet.

Now there is plenty of water for everyone and you’ve probably guessed it, everyone is coming.  Like the water, there’s now a continual flow of people from the surrounding villages.

For Ammon Mangungu Macherenga, the Pastor at Nagome Lutheran Church, a prime sermon illustration stands right out his front door.  The steady stream of the same people coming to the well each day is a reminder that when we drink this water we thirst again.  No matter how much water people consume in one day, they are back the next.

Repeat customers.

Even Jesus, True Man, knew what it was like to thirst.  And thirst again.  One day he stopped by a well and asked a woman for a drink. He asked because he was thirsty.  But there was so much more to that request.  Not only did he want to get a drink, even more-so he wanted to give one.

“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.” (John 4:13,14a)

He gave her a drink and she thirsted no more.

Another thankful, happy heart.

Jesus didn’t leave her high and dry.  You neither. He values life and shows that He does. He even inscribed it in blood.

He knows how to quench thirst.  His Water is living. The Well is deep.

 

Your Malawi Mission Partner,

John Holtz

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