“The LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore” Psalm 121:8

This story is both late and early.

It is late because it is partly about the retirement service for Pastor Mutebele Chijoka (pronounced “moo-tay-BAY-lay chi-JOE-ka”) of the Lutheran Church of Central Africa – Zambia Synod on Sunday 27 November 2021 at Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Kabwata, a neighborhood in Lusaka, Zambia.

This story is early because the installation service for Pastor Chijoka’s replacement at Saint Matthew, Pastor Foster Soko, has just been announced for 27 March 2022.

Both men have been faithful servants of the Lord for many years. Pastor Chijoka was in church work for 47 years before his retirement. From 1995, when he was ordained, to 2021, his retirement, he shepherded the flock at St. Matthew.

Pastor Soko is younger. Born in 1975, he was ordained in 2006 and most recently was serving God’s flock in Nyimba, in Zambia’s Eastern Province. Now he and his family have moved to the Kabwata area of Lusaka.

So far details like these might fit many pastors in the States. What makes these Zambian pastors unique?

Both men are bilingual, for one. Pastor Chijoka is fluent in both his native Tonga and in English. Pastor Soko is fluent in both Chewa and English. (Both men are also somewhat familiar with other Bantu languages, such as Bemba. That’s how it works in Lusaka, Zambia.)

Both men are scholarly. For instance, in April 2002 Pastor Chijoka delivered an essay to the distinguished participants of the fourth triennial convention of the Confessional Evangelical Lutheran Conference in Gothenburg, Sweden: “The Work of Christ as Prophet.” He helped translated many LCCA-Z Tonga publications.

In December 2020, Pastor Soko graduated from Chalimbana University in Chongwe, Zambia. He received a bachelor’s degree in both education and English language, including English in literature, along with religious studies.

Pastor Soko is aiming at another both: He also is pursuing a bachelor of divinity degree through the One Africa Team’s Confessional Lutheran Institute, in conjunction with the Pastoral Studies Institute of Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary.

St. Matthew, the congregation both men now have in common, is unique too. Take its choirs.

PHOTO 6 https://www.facebook.com/LutheranChurchofCentralAfrica/photos/pcb.451139769774577/451133773108510

Here is a video in which St. Matthew’s youth choir joins with a choir from the LCCA-Z congregation in Kanyama.

But St. Matthew has more musical talents than just those, and their choirs can sing in both African and western ways:

Soon we hope to post joyful music and more from the celebration of Pastor Soko’s installation at St. Matthew.

In the meantime, it is fitting to conclude with words of appreciation both for Pastor Chijoka and for you.

So here is LCCA-Z chairman Pastor Davison Mutentami speaking at Pastor Chijoka’s retirement about the many ways Pastor Chijoka had served the Lord.

And truly, dear reader, thank you for your love, prayers, and financial support for pastors and congregations like these in the Lutheran Church of Central Africa – Zambia Synod.

I will say it both in Tonga and Chewa: Twalumba kapati. Zikomo kwambiri. (Thank you very much!)

Pastor Daniel Witte serves as a member of the One Africa Team 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

This week’s post is written by Missionary Dan Kroll, the One Africa Team liaison to Nigeria and Cameroon. He recently went back to Cameroon for a regional meeting with pastors from the Lutheran Church of Cameroon, Christ the King Lutheran Church of Nigeria, and All Saints Lutheran Church of Nigeria.

We’ve been pretty busy in Cameroon the past few months.  We were there in October to discuss the Lutheran Church of Cameroon’s ministry plan and consider some of the changes they might want to make in the near future.  There’s a lot of ministry happening there!

Missionary John Holtz also led a workshop on the topic of Dialogue Education, as a part of ongoing professional development courses that One Africa Team offers our mission partners in Africa through the Confessional Lutheran Institute (CLI). The course on Dialogue Education was eye-opening for the local pastors, many of whom had only rarely experienced anything other than learning by rote. In the midst of this workshop, somebody commented, “this changes everything!” 

Last month we went back to Cameroon to walk our partners through a Seminary Consultation, another branch of the CLI. The last few years have changed our partners’ worker training programs drastically. Because of security concerns, WELS professors are currently unable to visit Nigeria and Western Cameroon. Our Nigerian and Cameroonian brothers are the only feet on the ground. They receive support from OAT remotely.

The lack of face-to-face meeting time makes it more urgent than ever that their worker training programs are suitable to meet the needs of their church bodies.  All six Seminary teachers – Edward Obi and Michael Egar from All Saints in Nigeria, Aniedi Udo and Idorenyin Udo from Christ the King in Nigeria as well as Israel Mesue and Gervase Ngalame from Cameroon – were trained in a WELS designed and operated worker training program.  Our mission partners’ worker training programs now reflect a West African designed curriculum, tailor-made to serve people who are uniquely Cameroonians and Nigerian.  We have been talking about handing things over to our brothers for over half a century. Now we are giving them some space to take responsibility.

Starting in September of 2022 our mission partners in Nigeria and Cameroon will be teaching classes they have chosen for themselves, based on their experience and their own needs.  They will be following their own schedule, and they themselves will have determined how to use the funds available to train their men well.  It’s an exciting time for us here.

As we say in West Africa, “God is good…all the time.”  We pray for God’s blessings on these men and those they will train. Until we come back to Cameroon, they will carry the gospel forward.

Missionary Dan Kroll 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

Oh, the hills. How striking they were as Howie Mohlke, his wife Leslie, and I drove east from Lilongwe, Malawi down toward Lake Malawi.

So were the sloping tea fields and the hills and valleys in the Sondu area of western Kenya when I saw them a few weeks later with Anariko Onunda: stunning.

Why tell you about hills?

From Flatlander to Hill Runner

For years I was a flatlander. I had not lived among hills since I was a vicar in Marrietta, Georgia (1990–1991), whether our family was in Illinois (1992–2001), Florida (2001–2015), or Minnesota (2015–2019).

Since December 2019, though, my wife and I have lived in Lusaka, Zambia, 4,200 feet above sea level. For exercise, I run hills.

I recently picked up my new U.S. passport from the U.S. embassy here in Lusaka. The complex sits atop one of Lusaka’s tallest hills. On many runs I look for it, gleaming in the morning sun.

Lusaka’s hilltop embassy makes me think of friends and family I miss in the States, as much as I enjoy serving the Lord and you here in Africa.

True Stories, Well Told

September 20–29 I had the privilege of traveling from Lusaka to Malawi. There I met with six pastors of the Lutheran Church of Central Africa – Malawi Synod. Pastors Chumba, Macharenga, Mandevu, Mitengo, Mukhweya, Mulinga, and I studied African church history biography together as part of their formal continuing education.

Since that week, each Malawian pastor in the course has sent me a story suitable for a 7–12-year-old, a story about a figure in Malawian church history.

In part, those projects are to help that pastor’s own family and congregation. In part, they are to help pastors in other countries in our Bachelor of Divinity (BDiv) cohort—pastors in Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, and Zambia. And in part, all the pastors’ efforts to research and communicate “true stories, well told” (our motto for the week) about fascinating figures in their country’s church history are to help me.

Receiving the Crown of Life

It is not just that I am new to African, as well as African church history. More importantly, stories about important believers from different parts of Africa, once we collect and distribute them all to all our BDiv brothers, will allow them to teach each other about real-life faith and love. 

Due to Covid-19 related issues, the twenty pastors in our cohort have not been able to meet yet face to face, though we began classes over a year ago. Pray with me that face-to-face classes for us all begin in 2022.

Back then to true stories, well told. Such stories not only have the potential to build up brotherhood, by God the Spirit’s power. They can break down super-tall hills, hills which so easily divide those whom God wants united: hills like time, distance, and cultural misunderstandings. These are stories where brothers can see trials our Father has sent in the past. These stories can connect us to believers in distant places and times.

 Be faithful, even to the point of death,” good stories remind us—stories like those of some of Africa’s first martyrs for Christ, Perpetua, and Felicity, remind us. In our classes, we watched a video about them. “Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Revelation 2:10). Jesus promises this to persecuted believers in ancient Smyrna and to us too.

Across the Rift

October 8-18 I traveled to Kenya to teach my BDiv level course. In both Malawi and Kenya, the pastors and I did not just talk history. We also discussed being faithful today, even to the point of death. We conferred about the confirmation classes which the pastors supervise and teach, and the steep hills young people climb as they learn to follow Christ.

One difference between the church history biography course in Malawi and the one in Kenya was that on October 10, before the class in Kenya started, I had the honor of preaching in Kenya for the consecration of the new building of St. Peter Lutheran Church in Ramba parish, served by Pastor Samwel Omondi. He translated my sermon from English into Luo. It was a joyful Christ-centered service, complete with the Lord’s Supper.

It was my first trip to Kenya, so I had much to learn. The pastors and I met in the shade of the center brick-and-grass open-air hut.

After the week’s class, Pastor Onunda drove me back up to Nairobi, a city even higher in elevation than Lusaka, and three times bigger.           

On October 17 Pastor Onunda introduced me to part of his city congregation, a much smaller group than the rural congregation the previous Sunday. In Nairobi some Christians Pastor Onunda serves are starting to meet separately as a daughter congregation. Elders were leading the service of that new congregation the morning I visited.

The King of the Hill

Such outreach efforts, even for an experienced pastor, get bumpy. Make that hilly. Sometimes we all feel as if we are barely able to put one foot in front of another, trudging uphill. Demons, this dying world, even our own deadly flesh whisper “give up” when hilly slopes get steeper.

But our Lord said, “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden” (Matthew 5:14). That’s true of both Nairobi and wherever you gather with other believers for word and sacrament.  Someday even the mightiest mountains will fall. But not God’s promises of mercy to us in Christ crucified.

 Jesus lives. We have been baptized into him.

 “Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you (Isaiah 54:10).

Missionary Dan Witte lives in Lusaka

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