I was flying for a second day from Lusaka, Zambia to Douala, Cameroon. Africa is so big that such trips mean an overnight stay. Two flights.

On African routes I fly I rarely hear an American accent. But next to me on the plane from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia was an American. She was born in New York City. Now she teaches at a school of design in Milan, Italy.

I did not get her name. Still, my cup overflowed (Psalm 23:5).

We found out we were both going to Cameroon’s biggest city for two-week learning events. She would help students at a major school of design, LABA (Libre Académie des Beaux-arts/Free Academy of Fine Arts).

At a more modest site in Douala, I was to meet with eight Cameroonian and Nigerian pastors. They teach at our sister seminaries in West Africa. They too would focus on design—learning design for future pastors.

The woman was inquisitive. Highly educated. Her undergraduate degree was from an Ivy League university.

I wanted to share a bit about myself. I wondered if the conversation might turn toward God and eternity. So I showed her Hebrew on my smartphone: Psalm 23.

I spoke the last verse to her in Hebrew, pointing at each word of 23:6. “Surely goodness and faithful love will chase me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD day after day after day.”

“You read Hebrew?” she said. “I’m Jewish.” She got excited. “Can I ask you a question about my bat-mitzvah verse?”

That turned out to be B’reyshiyt (Genesis) 33:4. On Jacob’s way home, after all he had done to his older brother Esau decades earlier, Jacob feared meeting Esau. “But Esau ran to meet him, hugged him, threw his arms around him, and kissed him. Then they wept.”

In New York City, when the woman next to me had been young, that was the verse she had been chosen to read to her synagogue. She had given a brief speech on it too.

She was still interested in it. She quizzed me about the extraordinary dots in the ancient text over the Hebrew word for “and kissed him.” She remembered asking her rabbi about those.

I asked her if she knew that Jesus had expanded that verse into a story about two brothers.

Another story? Yes.

There were two brothers, I told her. Estranged. One had been far from home for a long time. But the Father was waiting for him. When he saw him at a distance, he ran out to him, threw himself on his son’s shoulders, and kissed him.

Did she know that story? “No,” she said. “I’ve never heard it. Tell me more.”

The son in the story had tried to repeat the three-part speech he had prepared. “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired men.”

Do you know that story? The one about the Pharisees who disliked Jesus eating with notorious sinners? The one Jesus told about the prodigal son, the waiting Father, and the elder son? The one in which the Father interrupts the younger one before he can offer his bargain?

The woman and I had one of the best conversations I have ever shared with a stranger on an airplane.

Did she become a follower of Christ that day? Not that I know of. I have been praying for her. I still think Psalm 23:5 applies: “My cup overflows.”

That leads to the next photo.

In Douala, on the last day of our first week together, the West African seminary teachers played this game. Each took turns pouring as little water as possible into the glass dish. Whoever broke the surface tension and made the cup overflow would lose.

I wish you could have heard the laughs and jokes during that game. It wasn’t just that the dish overflowed when it ended. Our hearts did too.

Video of singing during devotions

We had sung, prayed, and heard God’s word together. We had talked about so many plans that week—plans to help other men in Cameroon and Nigeria shepherd God’s flock. Men had practiced teaching the Bible in front of their peers. New teachers had asked questions.

“My cup overflows,” David sang. We felt the same.

May I share one more way my cup overflowed during my last week in Douala?

It was hot there. We drank so much bottled water.

But on Thursday of the second week, we drank life itself. It was so unique.

Note this sign from the mission house where we stayed. In French: “Whoever has the Son has life. Whoever does not have the Son does not have life.”

Four of us saw that in a new way. Others had left. We had stayed a second week. That Thursday the four of us took part in the worldwide theological educators’ meeting of the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference.

Our cups overflowed. On a screen before us we saw the results of the Spirit’s gift of life around the world.

Pastor Orem and Pastor Johnson from All Saints Lutheran Church in Nigeria loved it. Other theological educators around the globe introduced themselves.

As in the photo above, Pastor Orem beamed. He told me, “My spirit has gone to faraway places and is so blessed.”

Missionary Dan Witte (far right) and his wife Debbie live in Lusaka, Zambia.

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

Immersion matters! Now wait, before you go crying “Heresy!” on me, understand what I mean. I’m not talking about baptism here. I’m talking about language immersion—in this case, French language immersion.

For 3 weeks in January, I left my home in Zambia to live in and study French in Lyon, France. I lived in the 21^st-century equivalent of a monk’s cell in a big apartment building. I rode the trams and the subway to and from my language school each day. In Zambia, it was summer, and (as always) it was blazing hot. Since I’m a Canadian, it was a pleasure to experience Northern Hemisphere winter again (although I didn’t have a coat to take along with me from Africa).

Food Immersion

Cheese is my favorite food, and France is pretty much the Valhalla of cheese. I would love to tell you about the many varieties of cheese I consumed along with slices of Lyonnaise rosette sausages or Corsican coppa ham on baguette. But this article is supposed to be about language immersion. Besides being a great place to be immersed in cheese, Lyon is also a great place to be immersed in the French language. The second-largest city in France, Lyon lies at the confluence of the Saône and Rhone rivers, and it has a standard metropolitan French accent.

So, why was a standard accent important for me? My job as a missionary takes me to many French-speaking countries of Africa: Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Benin, for example. I also work with French-speaking Lutherans from countries that I’m currently not able to visit, such as Togo and Burkina Faso. Having lived in Ottawa, Canada, for 9 years, I can tell you that the African French accents are much closer to a standard metropolitan (i.e., European) French accent than anything I ever heard in Canada. So, I went to France to study and practice French for 3 weeks because it has the variety of French that all the African forms are based on.

Linguistic Leap Forward

In Lyon, I did not only study all morning and afternoon in a French school. I also went out and used my French around town. Going to board game clubs and shops. Eating at a traditional mom-and-pop style restaurant called a “bouchon”. Helping several French people locate different books they were looking for in the big, huge FNAC bookstore. Joking about the strange, spaceship-like public toilets with folks waiting for their family members to come out. Shopping for a coat in the mall at the Superdry store. I’m figuring out how to get my cell phone working at the Orange shop.

Immersion was a great experience. I’d never been to France before, so it was amazing to hear French all the time and to get used to listening to and speaking nothing but French. My ear has picked up the pace since my immersion, and so has my ability to express my own “very deep” thoughts—JK!—in French. I think it will be a big benefit if I can go back for another round of immersion sometime next year. But my best French immersion is coming up in March—with a trip to visit Lutherans from Benin and Burkina Faso—and in April—with a trip to teach a workshop on Luther’s small catechism in the Congo. For then, I will truly have great content to communicate in French: the true message about Jesus Christ! I can’t wait to take along the cool new bible I picked up in France.

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

The first day of camp is always a bit awkward. A beautiful park-like setting offsets the discomfort of sleeping in a strange bed. You tour the campus. You settle on a place to sit in the cafeteria. You recognize old familiar faces, and you introduce yourself to new friends. You bid your established routine farewell and embrace a new lifestyle, at least for a little while.

A Widely Spoken Language

For the last two weeks, I was a guest on the campus of the MS Training Center for Development Cooperation. Located near Arusha, Tanzania, MSTCDC has been operating a Swahili language immersion school since 1967. According to Wikipedia, over 200 million Swahili speakers live in the East African countries of Kenya, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Mozambique, and Tanzania.

As One Africa Team’s liaison to the LCMC-Kenya, I have been picking up Swahili words and phrases every time I’ve visited over the last two years. In addition, I’ve downloaded a Peace Corps Swahili language course and I listen to the audio recordings on my daily walk.

Until now, I’ve never taken a formal Swahili language course. Our mission team set the goal of missionaries acquiring the ability to work in two new languages. We identified French and Swahili because these are two of the most widely spoken languages on the continent of Africa. One Africa Team’s long-range vision is that in ten years, among our partners there will be over 200,000 communicants who regularly gather around Word and Sacrament and are shepherded by well-trained leaders.

That’s how I found myself in Swahili camp. I enrolled myself in the intermediate level because I reckoned I was past the stage of learning greetings. Still, I found myself swimming, or drowning, in a strangely familiar yet different tongue. Swahili belongs to the Bantu family of languages. Grammatically and linguistically it is very similar to Chichewa, the language many people speak in Malawi.

However, during the Middle Ages, Arab traders interacted with the natives living in coastal cities of East Africa and Zanzibar. Between 20%-35% of the Swahili language is of Arabic origin. Every once in a while I stumble across a word I recognize from the time I spent on the Balkan Peninsula half a lifetime ago. I smile when I hear Swahili words like “faida,” “mzeituni,” and “bakshishshi” – these are words of Arabic origin that also entered Bulgarian conversational usage via the Ottoman Turks.

Boot Camp is Hard

Maybe you’re wondering why a fifty-five-year-old man is learning to speak a new language. Yes, it’s connected to my work responsibilities, but honestly, that is not adequate motivation. In most instances, I can get by with English or use a translator. Why have I invested so much time in learning to speak this foreign language (or any other)?

People open their hearts when they hear you struggling to string five words together in their native tongue. They recognize the effort you are making to understand their language, their culture, and their worldview. And when you speak through a translator, you lose the ability to connect to another human being directly.

God has given me both the ability and the interest to learn foreign languages. To whom much is given… I am putting myself in the uncomfortable position of talking at the level of a three-year-old. I dedicate my Swahili camp experience to God’s kingdom and glory.

Whether or not you speak a foreign tongue, the same principle is true. Sharing the good news of Jesus’ salvation with another human being requires humility. It requires us to listen before speaking. It means we strive to understand where someone is before we point him in the right direction. And it takes time.

These two weeks I’ve spent at Swahili camp is just another small step towards the realization of St. John’s vision of people from “every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” (Rev. 7:9) I don’t know what language we will be speaking in heaven, but God will have no trouble communicating his love for us all.

Amani ya Bwana nanyi (may the peace of God be with you)

Missionary John Roebke lives in Malawi.

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