Best Reformation Ever

The Lutheran Reformation continues to bear fruit all over the world and especially in Gambella, Ethiopia today. Gambella Evangelical Lutheran Church (GELC) started in 2018 with a few men who had become frustrated with the false teaching of their other denominations. In 2021, the One Africa Team of the Wisconsin Synod directed their leader, Opiew Okugn to investigate the TELL Bible Study program from WELS’ Multi-Language Productions.

Learning About Baptism

One Africa Team member first met the church leaders face-to-face in March of 2023. The congregation had the common misunderstanding: “Since we don’t have an ordained pastor, we cannot make use of the sacraments.”

OAT representatives Joel Hoff and Dan Kroll taught about the sacraments in 2024. Any Christian who has a true understanding of the three persons of the Trinity can and should baptize. GELC leaders requested a baptismal liturgy from OAT. They even organized baptismal certificates for the fifty-seven who were baptized on that weekend.

More than a year later, the members of GELC are still baptizing. Four infants were brought into God’s kingdom through baptism just the week before Missionary Kroll arrived in mid-October. We praise the Lord for growth in this understanding. We also thank God for the growth of his kingdom amongst the Anuak Tribe living in Gambella!

Teaching the Lutheran Confessions

In some inhospitable weather (i.e., hot and humid), Missionary Kroll studied the Lutheran Confessions with GELC members. Everyone took notes on the historic Confessions of the Lutheran Reformation contained in the Book of Concord. These are the Augsburg Confession, the Apology (Defense) of the Augsburg Confession, The Smalcald Articles, The Power and Primacy of the Pope, and The Formula of Concord.

Missionary Kroll used this opportunity to review the foundational teaching of Scripture – salvation by grace alone – with GELC members. He explained the concept of the opinio legis. This is a false idea that we can gain God’s favor by obeying his law. Missionary Kroll also warned GELC member about the Roman Catholic false teaching on the Sacraments. Namely, it is impossible to merit God’s favor by virtue what the priest is doing ex opere operato (from the work done), without regard to the faith of the person receiving the sacrament. The Bible urges us to receive God’s blessings with faith in Jesus’ salvation, as promised and delivered by the Sacraments.

The theological terms themselves are not important. We do however encounter the concepts they express often. We find them in the Lutheran Confessions, in our own communities, and even in our own hearts. With trust in God’s Word we look forward the battle against false teachings, wherever they may be found.

Discussing Church Practice

GELC members and Missionary Kroll discussed how traditions can interfere with worship when people focus on what they like. Our Anuak brothers recognized that they could be flexible about the number of hymns in a worship service. They acknowledged that desire for authority and honor can lead to conflict in the church. GELC currently utilizes only those offices of ministry that are necessary for good order.

Missionary Kroll and GELC members tackled these subjects with a lot of interactive homework and discussions. There was much laughter, a little spirited debate, and much time spent enjoying good meals together. It was a week of building relationship based on the true Word of God.

The week’s meetings ended with a Reformation Festival on Sunday. Worshippers enjoyed plenty of singing and a strong message about freedom. They listened to readings from Jeremiah 31, Galatians 5 and heard a great gospel sermon on John 8:31-36. David was the “moderator.” Mataya played the keyboard. Okwori delivered the sermon. Omod Ochalla, Opiew Okugn and Omod Otong read the Scripture lessons. In other words, every GELC leader had a role to play. A key theme of the Lutheran Reformation is that in the Church, everybody has a job to do.

Please offer a prayer for this congregation to hold firmly to the gospel they have learned. “We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end.” (Hebrews 3:13).

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

Blessed be the Tongue that Ties

On Pentecost, the Holy Spirit gave each of Jesus’ disciples the ability to speak in a foreign tongue instantly. God tied three thousand people to Himself in one day through the message they proclaimed in their listeners’ mother tongues. Would the results have been similar if the disciples had preached in Greek or Latin? On Pentecost, God did more than perform a miracle. He displayed his love for people of every tongue and tribe.

Speaking to someone in their heart language does more than convey information. If you speak three sentences to someone in his native tongue you will instantly establish trustworthiness. You show that you are committed to your listener’s culture and language. Your tongue ties you to his community.

Time to Teach the Tongue

Over three thousand languages are spoken in Africa. People speak some of them within their ethnic group. Other languages like English, French, Arabic, and Swahili cross tribal boundaries. Most people speak at least two or three languages. There are some similarities between languages of the same family (like Bantu, Nilotic, or Khosaian) but it still takes time to learn any language.

God has given me an aptitude for picking up foreign tongues. My experience speaking Chichewa for seven years in Malawi has helped me speak Swahili at a basic level. Swahili is spoken primarily in Tanzania and Kenya, and some parts of the DRC and Uganda.

Before my last trip to Kenya and Tanzania, I found a Swahili-speaking Malawian who teaches at a local language school. My wife and I met with him in January. We have both studied some Swahili independently but made significant progress with our teacher’s instruction. And this helped us immensely the next month when we traveled to Kenya.

Home Advantage

WELS Central Africa Medical Mission sponsored a rural health clinic near the town of Sagana in central Kenya. My wife’s job was to weigh patients and calculate their Body Mass Index. I sat with the local pastors who shared Jesus with visitors in both Swahili and Kikuyu, a Bantu language spoken by people in central Kenya.

I am thankful for my brothers in Christ who shared the Gospel in their native tongue. At one point I was left alone, and I struggled to communicate with our camp visitors. Local Kenyans will always be able to connect with their fellow Africans more easily than I can. I am glad that God gave them the desire to share Jesus’ love with others.

The week after the medical camp my wife and I traveled to western Kenya. We offered a preaching workshop near the town of Kisii. The participants were laymen who lead worship services and laywomen who are leaders of small group Bible studies. Few of them had received formal ministry training in an academic setting. These people serve congregations of the LCMC-Kenya. Due to a shortage of ordained pastors, the church relies on laymen to lead worship services in many of its congregations.

My class led members through the process of preparing a sermon from beginning to end. I presented my material in English, and they worked through various learning tasks in their local tongues. My prayer for these men and women is that they proclaim Christ’s love to their fellow Kenyans no matter what tongue they are speaking.

Tongue Twisters

At the end of our two weeks in Kenya, my wife flew back to Malawi. I continued to Tanzania to meet with pastors from the Africa Mission Evangelism Church (AMEC). The WELS and AMEC intend to tie themselves together in fellowship at this summer’s WELS Synod convention. Along with my fellow Missionary Ben Foxen, we presented topics of special interest to AMEC pastors. As English is not used as widely in Tanzania as it is in Kenya, Ben and I did our best to teach our lessons in Swahili.

Ben held up his end of the communication well, partially a result of the two months he spent studying Swahili in northern Tanzania. For my part, I communicated at a Kindergarten level. It wasn’t pretty, but you do whatever you can and leave the rest to God.

On Sunday morning our hosts asked both Ben and I to preach in their churches. It is an expression of the ties that bind our two church bodies together. We eagerly embraced the opportunity, even though I relied on Google to translate my sermon from English into Swahili. I know enough Swahili to recognize and change the mechanically translated parts. I twisted my tongue around familiar and unfamiliar words as I read the sermon to my listeners. An occasionally shouted “Amen!” indicated when they got my point.

Now back in Malawi, I have a plan to meet with my Swahili teacher. I hope to visit our friends in Kenya and Tanzania in the upcoming months. I want to move from being tongue-tied to having a tongue that ties others to Christ.

Missionary John Roebke lives in Malawi.

My Cup Overflows

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.