I didn’t know what he meant.

I heard his words but I didn’t grasp his message.  I wondered what he was really saying. What was the meaning behind the words?  Was he even talking to me? Or to someone else? Or was he just talking to himself?  Three times he repeated the same thing:

“Now I believe.”

I was a bit uncertain about his words because I had just walked up to him.  His name is Bright Pembeleka. He is the pastor of Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church in Blantyre, Malawi.  He’s been serving in the public ministry for 13 years. 

We both had come to the same place:  the mortuary. We were collecting the body of a Lutheran Church member.  Pastor Pembeleka has been there before. Many times.

As a pastor he knows the routine all too well when someone dies: visiting the family, preparing the sermon, leading the worship, saying the prayers, conducting the burial service. But this time was different.  Powerfully different. Life-changingly different.

This time he would not wear the robe of a preacher but the cloak of grief.  The Lutheran member who passed away wasn’t just a church member, the person was his own daughter.  Edina was twenty-one years old. Just… twenty-one!

It’s not supposed to happen this way! But it did.

Watching one coffin after another being carried out of the mortuary and being placed into waiting vehicles reminded me once again: The old must die.  The young can.

We waited while the embalmers did their job.  Sensing an opening in the conversation, I risked asking Pastor Pembeleka what he meant by what he said, “Now I believe.”  His explanation came freely though heavily; it didn’t just land in my ears it settled in my heart:

I have officiated at a lot of funerals. I did so because it was my job.  It was part of my work. But now it is happening to me. Now is really the first time I know what it means to grieve.  Now I am the one experiencing the pain. Now I know the heart-ache that others have talked about.

Now.  I. FEEL.”

His eyes were reddening with tears.  His voice was cracking with sorrow. His heart was breaking with pain. The cloak he wore was both dark and heavy.

Now I believe.

Grief seized him and gripped him.  He and his wife and children would now be the ones to weakly stand, then kneel beside the pile of fresh dirt.  Even fall upon it.

Maybe you’ve been there.  Waiting at the mortuary. Visiting at the funeral home.  Walking the path to the grave. Placing a wreath of flowers. If so, you understand.  If not, you likely will. Because sooner or later death touches the ones we love.

The cloak is dark and heavy.

Pastor Pembeleka would be at the funeral, but this time he wouldn’t be leading the service.  Others would: His brothers in Christ. Fellow servants. Seasoned preachers. A band of disciples who gathered, supported, encouraged, prayed and rallied around their grieving brother and family.

Some of whom have buried their own children. They know.  They have experienced. They understand. They FEEL. They believe.

They gave what they had and what they had was what was needed most:  the Word of God. After all, it had something to say to Pastor Pembeleka, his wife, his children3 and everyone there.  It has something to say to you who weren’t:  At a Christian funeral, GRIEF isn’t the only cloak worn on such days!  So is the robe righteousness. The mantle of God’s grace. God has draped his people with a love that seizes and grips and doesn’t let go.

In death there is life! (John 11:25, 26)

Most fittingly, Pastor Eliya Petro chose and preached on the assuring words found in John’s first letter: ”God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.  He who has the Son has life…” (1 John 5:11, 12) Edina has life because the Son has her!

A chorus of Lutheran women, uniformed in purple and white, confidently sang that truth again and again as they walked in a long double line to the funeral house, “She’s in the hands of God, yes, she’s in the hands of God.”

She is… because Jesus has conquered death!

She is… because Jesus lives!

She is… because Jesus has taken away her sin!

Pastor Pembeleka, you and your brothers have taught your congregations well.  The people, whether sitting in the pew at church or sitting on the ground in a graveyard or kneeling close to the pile of dirt, have heard the life-giving gospel of Jesus Christ from you.  Week after week. Sermon after sermon. Service after service. Funeral after funeral. Look around, dear brother. The gospel has done miraculous and marvelous things!

The people are expressing the very faith that God has given them.  They are sharing the good and comforting news of Jesus with you and your family when you are the one grieving, the one paining, the one sorrowing, the one experiencing.  They are serving you, standing with you when you are the one feeling.

Thank you, Pastor, for showing your humanness.  Your frailty. Your need. Thank you for sharing your pain and your sorrow and your tears.  When we are weak, then we are strong. (2 Corinthians 12:10)

Now I believe.

In my weakness and God’s strength,

Missionary John Holtz, 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

 

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bia-vt_kjWQ]

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAPgYjhGxE0]

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zedeJhBrg0I]

*Disclaimer: This guide was written by a person who has only lived in Zambia for about 21 days, so minor (or major) inaccuracies may exist.

HOW TO….

…survive the minibus.

Step 1: Find a minibus. Or a regular bus. It doesn’t really matter—they’ll be equally as crowded and will both have wheels.

Step 2: Make sure that the minibus is pointed in the direction you want to go. If the minibus turns off on a side road, don’t be alarmed! The minibus driver probably noticed that you look lonely and wants to put a person in your single seat along with you.

Step 3: Pay the person who convinced you to get on the minibus. If you look like you may be a tourist, consider watching the amount that other people pay before coughing up a few extra kwacha for the opportunistic payment collection person.

Step 4: Observe your surroundings. You may notice visual gems such as stickers of Jesus and Justin Bieber next to one another on the front dashboard!

Step 5: Get off at the right stop! For example, there might be two Engen gas stations: one before a roundabout with a giant chicken statue and one after it. If you use the wrong Engen gas station as a visual cue, you might end up walking for 40 minutes to your house and obtaining an excellent sunburn. Not that we’d know from experience…

…tie a chitenge.

Step 1: Learn what a chitenge is.

Step 2: After learning that a chitenge is a 2 meter piece of colorful fabric used by Zambian women to—among other things—carry babies on their backs and cover their clothes from dirt, purchase a chitenge that you like. It should not match your clothes in any way. There are too many great patterns for you to pick something boring.

Step 3: Pick up your new chitenge and marvel at it.

Step 4: Try to wrap the chitenge around your waist and tie it. If you don’t look like you accidentally woke up with your bed sheet wrapped around your legs, that’s a good thing.

Step 5: When the chitenge inevitably looks terrible on you due to your inadequate tying skills, ask one of your wise, motherly English students to help you tie it.

Step 6: The chitenge will come untied. When this happens, you may want to cry because you cannot make the knot as tightly as your wise, motherly English student. However, it will be easy for you to keep practicing your tying and wrapping because the chitenge will keep falling off until you are good at putting it on!

…make a perfect sorbet!

Step 1: Search around your kitchen until you find a discontinued Cuisinart ice cream/sorbet maker.

Step 2: Thoroughly wash the sorbet maker.

Step 3: Create a simple syrup using sugar and water. When cool, add the zest and juice of lemons, limes, and oranges.

Step 4: Put the mixture into the ice cream/sorbet maker.

Step 5: Plug in the machine and turn it on.

Step 6: Listen for a loud popping noise and look for a puff of smoke. This means that you have successfully destroyed your sorbet maker’s motor capabilities because you forgot to use a transformer for an American-made device.

Step 7: Fan away the smoke and terrible smell. Then, crank the sorbet by hand for twenty minutes.

Step 8: Enjoy with friends in front of an episode of your favorite network drama.

…make preschoolers ready for a nap.

Step 1: Sing lots of songs that involve jumping.

Step 2: Repeat.

…say “Stop throwing rocks at your friends and come learn about letter sounds” in Nyanja. 

We have no idea.

 

This concludes our first installment of “Zambia: A How to Guide”. Stay tuned for more helpful tips and tricks for survival in the country that starts with a Z and isn’t Zimbabwe!

 

Lydia Harbach and Jenny Tenyer currently are volunteering with the Zambia mission. Lydia and Jenny both recently completed their student teaching and undergraduate programs through Wisconsin Lutheran College. Jenny is a secondary education, broad-field social sciences, and history major and Lydia is a wide range music education major.

In their third year of college, Lydia and Jenny were approached by their college professor about the opportunity to go to Africa to teach English to women and children at their church synod’s compound in Zambia where men go to become pastors. It seemed a bit crazy to think about something so far in the future, but they both knew it was something they wanted to do. Since Lydia and Jenny would both finish their student teaching in the Fall semester of 2017, it would leave them with a smaller opportunity to find a job. However, the opportunity to live in Zambia for four months would bring so much into their future classrooms: perspective, experiences, and stories to share with their students.

Leading up to their journey, Lydia and Jenny have been fundraising in order to pay for traveling and living expenses. This trip would not have been possible without the gracious hearts of the family, friends, and church groups that donated to help them pay for their trip!

To keep family and friends up to date on the latest and greatest from Zambia, they have created a blog at https://zambiamissiontrip583865213.wordpress.com/  Allow us to share one of their recent posts about adapting to life in 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

“Prepare for the real world in the real world.” That was a thought I had as leadership of the mission trip program passed over to my office this last year. For years students of Wisconsin Lutheran High School have been traveling all over the country and even all over the world to serve their Savior and their neighbor. Most trips have been in the United States, but every year there were also a few international trips to places in the Far East, Mexico, and elsewhere.

One of my goals was to increase the opportunity for mission trips—both the total number and the international trips. Students have always been eager to go on trips and do mission work of some kind. What better way to train them for future service in the real world though than actually going out into the world? Those kinds thoughts led to some new destinations for our students this year such as Alaska, Thailand, Columbia, and Zambia.

While thinking about a trip to Africa, we also tried to consider how we could unite the student body around the important work in Africa. That led to selecting Zambia as the destination again for our annual Our Hands for His Service project. The Student Council saw it fit to create a goal of raising over $30,000 to support the work of Zambian pastors and a local school. The mission team will then go to see first hand how the gifts will impact the ministry and to help in any way possible.

Nine students were selected to go on the trip (one missing in the picture). There are two current seniors, six juniors, and one sophomore. I will chaperone the trip along with my wife, Becky.

These students are beyond excited to go on this trip. Of course there is the excitement of travel to a new and unique destination (for Americans, at least). But they are also so excited to learn. They are eager to learn about the ministry and the needs of the people in Zambia and to learn about people very different than they. While they are eager to serve in any way, it is understood that as American teenagers we will probably get the most out of the trip by learning from the missionaries, the pastors, and the people in Zambia. We only hope we can somehow be a blessing while there.

I know I speak for the group when I say that we are all thrilled with the opportunity to go out into the world and live the words of Jesus’ great commission.

Phil Huebner
Campus Pastor
Wisconsin Lutheran High School

Please pray for those working in fields that are ripe for harvest. Share their story, engage with future news and receive updates. Follow 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