When I tell others that I live in Malawi one of the first
questions they ask me is, “What do you do there?  What is your job?  How do you spend your time?”

For many years my answer was, “I’m a housewife.”  Taking care of the kids, husband and home
took up most of my time (and still does, minus the kids).  In spite of our “exotic” location living in
Africa, the laundry, grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning has to be done here
as anywhere else in the world.  I get the
impression that some people imagine that my life is very interesting.  Perhaps it felt like that a little bit when
we first moved to Africa 22 years ago. 
But the novelty has long since worn off…

In 2014, I had a chance to add another role to my repertoire.  The mission offered me a job as Assistant to
the Financial Secretary!  I happily
accepted.  This gave me the opportunity
to help a missionary spend less time on paperwork and more time on gospel work.  In general, I like working behind the scenes (In
fact, I’m cringing right now even writing about what I do…).

The current Financial Secretary, Mark Panning, is a WELS
missionary who teaches at the Lutheran Bible Institute. He also has been given
the duty of overseeing the mission expenses of the Malawi field.  He is responsible to pay the bills, account
for the money, and budget for the future. 
As his assistant, I help him do all this.

Bill paying and record keeping for an average household in
the United States probably doesn’t take up too much time. In general, things
take longer to do in Malawi. I spend about 5-10 hours per week taking care of
mission finances.  Internet banking and electronic
bill paying are just starting to be available here, although paying a bill
online has not yet worked for me.  All
bills are paid with a check or cash and hand-delivered to an office.  There are phone bills, electric bills, water
bills, school bills, rent, security services, taxes and salaries to be paid.   There is fuel to buy for the trucks and
generators and maintenance costs for vehicles and properties. Sometimes I send
money to a pastor in a remote village. Almost every week I go to the bank to
get cash to pay for something.

Accounting for all the Malawian Kwachas spent is also
important.  I spend a lot of time
entering transactions in a computer program, choosing the correct account
category (out of 100+ options), making reports and filing away all the
receipts.  I’m always happy when the
accounts balance out!

Even though I’m an assistant to Mark Panning, I also have an
assistant!  He is a Malawian named Mr.
Lamson Chimaliro.  I rely on him a lot to
do some banking and running errands in town. 
Without him, my 5-10 hours per week might turn into 20!  Besides helping me, Mr. Chimaliro does a
myriad of tasks related to the running of the Lutheran Bible Institute
(LBI).  He is a faithful and talented
worker whose tasks range from driving an LBI student wife to the hospital to
deliver a baby at 2 a.m. to fixing electrical problems on our mission compound
to arranging meals when hosting pastors at the LBI guest house.

I’m glad God gives us different gifts and different ways to
serve as part of the body of Christ.  And
I’m thankful to God for being able to serve the mission in this small way.

How will you use your gifts to serve God today?

“Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve
others…” 1 Peter 4:10

Mindy Holtz 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. 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

Go in without expectations.  That’s a maxim I’ve found useful when I’ve had to cross cultures.  Many years ago as a seminary graduate, I moved to Malawi to serve as a missionary. I tried to go in “empty”, but it wasn’t easy to do.

It is difficult to go into a new place “empty” of expectations. People often want to find out everything they can so that they feel prepared. After graduating from seminary, it took five long months to wait for a visa so that we could move to Malawi.  I suppose I should have studied up on Malawi, gotten a head start on learning language, and talked to  many people to get advice. I didn’t.  Someone had told me not to build up expectations in your mind before moving to a new place.  They said that was a sure way to make the culture shock be worse. 

So I went in empty and uninformed. I learned what Malawians were like by talking to Malawians.  I figured out what it took to live in the country by living in it. I learned the language by using it.  That worked well for me. But in spite of my best efforts to be entirely empty going in, there was one expectation that I had built up in my mind. I had the picture in my mind that our WELS mission was huge in Malawi.  What I found was that there were many, many large Christian churches already well established in Malawi.  I was feeling disappointed.  Did we need to be here?

But my attitude changed when I started learning the local language.  I walked around the neighborhood and used what I knew, adding a new phrase or two every day.  After a few months, I had gotten to the point of asking things much more complicated than, Muli bwanji? [How are you?].  I was going around asking things like “If King David in the Bible was a murderer, then how do you think he got to heaven?”  Through thousands of conversations with Malawians, I became very happy that I had been sent as a missionary to Malawi. I found that no one I talked to (even the churchgoers) had actually heard the gospel.

I started to serve our Lutheran churches once I knew enough Chichewa.  I found that so many people were hearing the gospel for the first time.  During my ten years preaching in churches,  not a week went by when I did not see that eureka of the gospel in an adult’s eyes.  A few times I literally saw tears of joyous amazement over the grace of God in Christ.  And then there were over one thousand babies I brought the gospel to through baptism. 

After those ten years, I began teaching at the ministerial school.  I’ve had the blessing of teaching dozens of men who are now pastors or will be pastors.  They are now going out and seeing the eureka of the gospel, baptizing, preaching, teaching, and giving the comfort of the Lord’s Supper.

In the past four years, I’ve also been blessed to lead our team of Africa missionaries. Our focus is on building up the 125+ African pastors in our sister synods in Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Malawi, and Zambia.  We offer advanced classes and workshops and we also still support the training of new pastors.  On top of this, we’re finding new places to bring the gospel. There are groups of pastors and their congregations that have called us in to teach the Word in countries like Liberia, Rwanda, and Uganda.

It’s been a wonderful blessing to be a missionary in Africa. It has exceeded expectations!  Now we’ll be moving.  My new job will be to support all our world missions worldwide as a missionary advisor.  We’ll be living in the United States again.  After 27 years away, that’s almost a foreign country to us.

I’m already trying my best to go in empty, without expectations.  I know the USA and culture has changed hugely since 1993.  We’ve had a dozen long visits back to the USA and seen some of it, but we haven’t lived in it.  It will be a big adjustment, but one we trust God will bless.  We will try not to build up certain expectations about how people act, what traffic is like, or how great the pizza is.  We’ll wait, and live it, and learn it as it comes.  But we do have one big expectation. We expect we’ll keep on being surprised by grace in our own lives and seeing how powerful and effective his Word is in the lives of others around the world.

Paul D. Nitz will continue to serve WELS World Missions as the One Team Counselor

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

የሱስ እረኛዬ የሚመራኝ

በሕይወት ጎዳና የሚወስደኝ

እርሱን አገኘሁት የማይተወኝ

ጓደኛ ዘመድ ሲከዳኝ

(English translation)

Jesus, my Shepherd

The One who guides me on the way of life

He found me who never leaves me

While all my friends and relatives deny me.

Christianity’s roots run deep in Ethiopia, yet the Gospel is struggling to make purchase on this rocky soil. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church enjoys a privileged position in society, and the pews are filled at the high festival days – but the people are told that their salvation is an ongoing process and not a completed fact. Many large Protestant churches of the charismatic variety are also gathering many converts through promises of prosperity and healing to those who are worthy.

The Lutheran Church of Ethiopia (LCE) was registered with the Ethiopian government in 2013 by Dr. Kebede Getachew Yigezu and 56 founding members. By the grace of God, the LCE opened Maor (Hebrew for “light”) Lutheran Theological Seminary as a Christ-centered, Bible-based and Reformation-driven confessional Lutheran theological seminary, which is authorized to offer bachelors and masters degrees and also doctorate programs. In 2017 the LCE and the WELS declared fellowship and since then have been collaborating to advance the Gospel in Ethiopia.

Last December, the LCE held its 6^th annual General Assembly meeting in Bishoftu, Ethiopia. The delegates who had gathered gave thanks to God for the many blessings he had poured out on their small but dedicated church body over the past year. One of those blessings was the third historic graduation of students from Maor Lutheran Theological Seminary on October 27, 2019. The ceremony took place in the midst of political unrest that Ethiopia was experiencing at the time. (https://wels.net/unrest-in-ethiopia-affects-wels-sister-churches/)

Delegates also gave thanks to God for the construction of a new five-story multi-purpose building on the campus of Maor Lutheran Theological Seminary. Thanks to the oversight of LCE Assistant Deaconess Werknesh Negash Degefa and Brother Wondirad Balcha WoldeSemayat and the generosity of WELS donors the building reached the finishing stage in one year’s time. It is the LCE’s ardent prayer that this new building will help bring the Gospel light to the people of Ethiopia.

The LCE also celebrated its partnership with WELS Multi-Language Productions, which hosted an Africa region workshop in Lusaka last summer. Dr. Ernst Wendland, who has served WELS World Missions for over 50 years and also participated in translating the Bible into the Chichewa language, shared his considerable experience and insight into the translation process. Using that knowledge, the LCE was able to translate the evangelism tract, “God’s Great Exchange” into the Amharic language.

In an email Dr. Kebede writes, “We were surprised that getting the right wordings with the right meaning in our language for words like “Exchange” in the literary context of the tract on “God’s Great Exchange” was not easy. Indeed,  the lessons we received at the MLP Translation Workshop and  Publication Expo under the instruction of Professor Ernst Wendland in Lusaka have helped Brother Shambel and me a lot to lead our team so that we reached at the best translation which  communicates the right meaning clearly both theologically and linguistically.” The LCE sent the translated Amharic text side by side with the English text to WELS MLP graphic design artist Michele Pfeifer, who completed the final layout.  

Looking ahead to the future, one of the most pressing tasks the LCE faces is to renew their church body’s registration with the Ethiopian government. The current registration was good for six years (2013-2019). Please pray that God continues to let the light of the Gospel shine in Ethiopia through the work of the LCE and Maor Lutheran Theological Seminary.

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