Tiptoeing: it’s something my cat Magic does when she wants to go outside. She tiptoes to the threshold, noses around, and then suddenly bounds through the doorway and dashes off on the hunt.

For the past year, the One Africa Team (OAT) has been “tiptoeing” around the Democratic Republic of The Congo (DRC). I was called to Africa to connect with French-speaking church groups. As soon as I arrived in Africa, I was given an interesting French-speaking contact: a Lutheran pastor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This pastor soon put me in touch with his church group’s secretary-general.

For a year, we texted and talked on WhatsApp and email and eventually held regular bible studies on Zoom, along with the pastors and evangelists. This year, they formed their own synod, la Mission Évangélique Luthérienne au Congo (“Evangelical Lutheran Mission to The Congo”—MELC).

A Country with a Painful Past

Although Zambian and WELS pastors have made occasional, brief visits to The Congo, this hasn’t happened since the 1990s, and it has never happened using French. As the MELC began the process of exploring the path to church fellowship with the WELS, we at OAT felt it was important to visit our friends. After getting approval for the trip and taking some special precautions, Missionaries Howard Mohlke and Keegan Dowling (me) flew to Lubumbashi, DRC, for face-to-face meetings with the leaders of MELC.

What do you know about The Congo? It suffered terribly for generations under the brutal, exploitative rule of Belgium’s King Leopold and then of Belgium itself. In the 1990s, it was flooded by refugees from the Rwanda genocide, which led to an international African war that killed millions in the DRC. Today, The Congo is famous for its rich deposits of “rare earth metals”—scarce elements essential for the manufacture of advanced electronics, such as phones, missiles, and computers. Warlords still exploit the mines for these—and other—precious minerals, causing much turmoil and pain. If you follow current events, you probably wonder why anyone would dare to go to The Congo.

Spoiler alert: it wasn’t dramatic for us at all. The DRC is a huge country (the world’s 11^th-largest), and Lubumbashi turned out to be a sea of tranquility while we were there. We went because we have Lutheran friends there who want to walk together with the WELS. Face-to-face visits show honor and respect, which is why OAT missionaries live in Africa: so that we can regularly visit WELS’ many partners and prospects throughout the continent.

Evidence of God’s Kingdom at Work

In The Congo, we visited MELC worship services at a house church and a large meeting tent. The people of MELC use both French and Swahili, two languages that are mushrooming in their significance for OAT’s current outreach efforts. The pastors of MELC have a heart for sound doctrine and a heart for evangelism. At the end of the visit, OAT and MELC shared a traditional Congolese meal in celebration of our friendship. Our goal is to see each other—and as many people as possible—at the Lamb’s ultimate, eternal feast in heaven!

The Democratic Republic of The Congo: been there… done that… going back. God willing, OAT missionaries will return in 2024, after the DRC’s elections, to conduct a doctrinal workshop with MELC. Over the following months and years, we hope to grow in our understanding of God’s Word and each other. We are tiptoeing no longer, but taking the plunge. Diving into ministry in a land of people Jesus loves.

Missionary Keegan Dowling lives in 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

“Port is where the heart is.” If you’re stitching a saying onto a pillow or a quilt for a sailor, maybe you can use that one. Port is important: It’s where a sailor reconnects with land and with all the comforts to be found there—if only for a short time, until the ship is ready to sail again.

I was once a sailor on the M/V James R. Barker, a thousand-foot-long freighter ship hauling coal and taconite pellets back and forth across the Great Lakes of North America. (Did you know that we have a system of Great Lakes here in Africa, too?) My favorite port-of-call was Duluth, Minnesota. I enjoyed the beautiful book and music shops, as well as Erbert & Gerbert sub sandwiches. However, I had been hoping for more. I had hoped to find a WELS pastor who could visit me and give me Communion. But there was a vacancy: a situation far too familiar to many of us in today’s WELS, some twenty years later.

The Port of Douala is one of the greatest port cities on the continent of Africa. In fact, it is the largest city in the country of Cameroon. When it comes to WELS mission work in West Africa, the Port of Douala actually functions like a spiritual port. When several of us missionaries met with pastors in September, only one of them was from Douala. All the rest of us were “ships”, so to speak, coming to Douala simply for the purpose of meeting around the Gospel of Jesus Christ! Douala—for WELS mission work—is nothing more and nothing less than a “port of calling”.

Missionaries Dan Witte and Dan Kroll were studying and meeting with pastors from three West African synods: Christ the King and All Saints, of Nigeria, and the Lutheran Church of Cameroon (LCC). Because of the multi-dimensional security threats present in the region, for the moment WELS missionaries are not able to travel to Nigeria or to Cameroon, apart from just one city in Cameroon: Douala. Because we couldn’t meet them where they were, our brothers came to meet us in port. Missionary Joel Hoff flew in from Zambia, to give a presentation about the very successful TELL online outreach program, which pastors can use both to teach their congregations and to discover new prospects in their own country. Director of Missions Operations, Stefan Felgenhauer, also flew in from Wisconsin.

I (Missionary Keegan Dowling) also ended up in Douala, our port of Gospel calling. I met with yet a different church body: Holy Trinity Lutheran Synod. They hail from a distant part of Cameroon, where there is a violent and dangerous conflict. Yet, a group of leaders trekked down to Douala, so that we could study the Bible together and talk about Holy Trinity’s mission plans. Holy Trinity is not yet in fellowship with WELS, but this is their desire. So, my job is to work with Holy Trinity along a pathway of studies and discussions that the One Africa Team uses to bring church bodies into fellowship.

An interesting thing about Holy Trinity Lutheran Synod is that many of the leaders and members speak French! In fact, they are our first French-speaking partner church body (although God is blessing our efforts in other parts of francophone Africa, too—stay tuned for future blog posts!) When we “drop anchor” in our “port of calling”, we read the Bible together in French. We discuss the issues in French. And outside of class, walking around the Port of Douala, guess what? Missionaries like Pastor Kroll and I get to practice a lot of real-life French! Each trip adds to our capabilities. It further increases our ability to call: to call our fellow sinners to our common Savior, throughout French-speaking Africa. This is why the Port of Douala is our “port of calling”. And, God willing, it will be joined by more ports of calling, too.

Missionary Keegan J. Dowling 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

Missionaries Benjamin Foxen and John Roebke received a warm welcome to Tanzania last month, as part of One Africa Team’s Four-Stage Outreach process.

We landed just south of the equator and felt the heat immediately. Visiting Tanzania at the end of its dry season is not the thing to do if you’re looking for cool weather.

Missionary John Roebke and I came to Tanzania to continue discussions with a local Lutheran church body, the Africa Mission Evangelism Church (AMEC). We want to see if our church bodies share the same Scriptural beliefs and practices. We hope that one day we will be able to work together united in faith.

AMEC’s leader, Bishop Baltazar Kaaya, met us at the airport late at night and showed us to our lodgings. The next day he gave us a tour of a couple of congregations up in the foothills of Mt. Meru. As we drove, he explained how the lack of rain had been starting to affect their crops. “We’re praying for rain so that our people will have food to eat,” he said. Eventually, though, the dry areas began to give way to more green. Bishop Kaaya explained, “As we get higher on the mountain, we find areas that receive more rain.” It was quite a contrast.

Later in the day, we had the opportunity to witness an interesting piece of culture. The elders of a village recognized a man as the new leader of his family. This was a celebration somewhat reminiscent of a new pastor’s ordination or installation. All the other family heads gathered to speak their blessing upon this man in the presence of the entire clan. Many people were gathered. Though we felt a little out of place at this event, we were treated as honored guests. We were even asked to speak blessings of our own as if we were part of the clan.

Throughout the week, the Tanzanian people continued to show us their warm welcome and hospitality. The church members gave us places of honor at their worship services. They made us feel at home with them, and that feeling increased. As the week progressed we saw familiarity in how the people approached the Word of God. In our daily workshop sessions, we explored that Word together. We used Luther’s Small Catechism as a guide to see whether we were on the same page. We found a group of people committed to the truth and zealous to put it into practice.

AMEC is a group of almost 100 Lutheran congregations in northern Tanzania. Most of the congregations are concentrated near Mt. Meru, with a few more around Mt. Kilimanjaro to the east. They are reaching out to other areas as well. AMEC’s newest effort is in the coastal business center of Dar es Salaam. Islam is the dominant religion in this area, but the pastor there is working to bring the soothing peace of the gospel to the city’s people. It is living water for thirsty hearts!

At the end of our time together, the workshop participants surprised us with another warm gesture. They presented us with shukas, the traditional garment of the Masai people. Many of the people in this area of Tanzania belong to this ethnic group. It was a wonderful gift that expressed a profound truth: they wanted us to be part of their “tribe.” This is something that we want too! And what a blessing it was to see all the things on which our churches agree!

The weather isn’t the only thing keeping Tanzania warm. The faith of these people is a warm welcome in this cold world. It is faith in the same God we serve and worship. We pray that our visits with the people of AMEC will continue to bear the fruit of a common faith watered by God’s Word.

Missionary Ben Foxen lives in Zambia and coordinates One Africa Team’s Outreach efforts across the continent.

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