Pastor Wisick Jeffrey is passionate about Sunday School for good reason. Not only is Pastor Jeffrey the School Coordinator for the Blantyre District of the Lutheran Church of Central Africa; humanly speaking, Sunday School is why he is a Christian today.

Pastor Jeffrey is a member of the Yao tribe, one of the
Bantu peoples who live in the countries of Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania.
This people group of 2 million people is predominantly Muslim, due to historic
contact with Arab slave traders, with whom they cooperated to enslave their
fellow Africans. At the turn of the 20^th Century Yao chiefs as a
whole resisted the efforts of Christian missionaries, who were seen as agents
of the European colonial powers, and embraced Islam because it accommodated
their traditional practice of polygamy. Today the majority of Yao people live
in isolated communities and maintain their cultural and religious differences
from their fellow Malawians, who are predominantly Christian. 

While Wisick Jeffrey’s extended family follow the teachings
and lifestyle of Islam, his father was a non-practicing Muslim and did not
force religion on his sons. While he was growing up, Jeffrey became friends
with children who attended Sunday School at a local LCCA congregation. He
accepted their invitation to go to Sunday School with them, but he did not
attend Sunday worship services. Over time, the Holy Spirit worked through the
Gospel message Jeffrey heard in class and he eventually began Confirmation
instructions. At about the same time his mother began to pressure him into
memorizing passages from the Koran. On the day of his confirmation Jeffrey told
his family his intentions to convert to Christianity, and as you can imagine
they were not pleased. His uncles refused to help pay for his schooling, or for
the schooling of his brothers who also became Christian.

It was very difficult for Jeffrey at this time in his life,
but God’s promises continued to sustain him. Eventually he continued his education
in the town of Zomba, where Deverson Ntambo, the first Malawian pastor of the
LCCA Malawi, was serving. Pastor Ntambo is also from the Yao tribe, and he gave
young Jeffrey the encouragement and Christian guidance that was missing in his
life. Pastor Ntambo encouraged Jeffrey to consider studying for the ministry,
and began taking him through the LCCA’s pre-worker training courses known as
T.E.E. (Theological Education by Extension). Pastor Jeffrey was ordained in
2008 and currently is serving at Kanyepa Lutheran Church, the oldest LCCA
congregation in Malawi.

Pastor Jeffrey’s wife is from his home village. She was a
Muslim when they married, but with great patience and diligence Jeffrey
displayed Christ’s love to her in his words and actions. The change that the
Holy Spirit worked in Jeffrey’s life must have also made an impression on his
father, who became a Christian and was baptized days before his death. To God
be the glory!

We can learn a lot from Jeffrey’s story. Christian Education
of young people is not only important for passing the truth of God’s Word to
the next generation, it is also a means for children to reach out to their
peers and change lives for eternity. We can also once again wonder at how God
works faith in the hearts of people according to his timetable, no matter how
improbably or unlikely it may seem to us at the time. Great patience and love
are needed to reach out across cultural and religious barriers, as our Savior
demonstrated during his earthly ministry. “For
God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the
world through him” (John 3:17). As Christ patiently called us out our
sin-darkened ways of thinking and acting, may we show the same patience with
those who are still in the dark and lead them to the light.

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. 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

“Be thou faithful unto
death, and I will give you a crown of life” (Revelation 2:10)

 I heard my pastor say
those words many times, specifically after he blessed a new confirmand.  A good reminder of the confirmands promise to
stay faithful to the word of God, even to the point of death.

“Faithful”….that is a word that comes of mind to describe Pastor George Mpule, who was my pastor for 11 years in Ndola, Zambia.  During times of growth, prosperity and joy in his church, he was faithful.  During times of difficulty, suffering and struggle, he was faithful then too.   His life is proof of that…

Pastor Mpule was not raised in a believing home, but when he
was 24 years old he was invited to the Lutheran Church and heard the preaching
of Missionary Mark Wendland.  The Spirit
was at work and George recognized that this preaching was different than the
preaching he had heard before. What he was now hearing was the pure gospel,
based on the Scriptures alone.  Not long
after he became a member of the Lutheran Church of Central Africa. 

 After serving as a
faithful member for several years, in 1977 he was recommended by Pastor Mbulo
to train for public ministry at the Lutheran Bible Institute.  It was during this time that he met his wife
Rose and they married in 1979.  Their
faithfulness to one another has been an example to countless young people in
the last 40 years.

In 1980 Pastor Mpule was assigned as an Evangelist at Mwiimba
and Sibbaba Congregation in Monze District. 
His quiet faithfulness caught the attention of Pastor Jeff Gunn, who in
1985 recommended Pastor Mpule for studies at the Lutheran Seminary.  After studying for 3 years he was sent to
Shabasonje Congregation, followed by the congregation at Seven, where he served
as a Vicar for two years.

In 1990 Pastor Mpule saw the rewards of his hard work and
faithful dedication, when he graduated from the Lutheran Seminary and was
assigned to the congregation at Seven, where he had vicared.  In 1992 Pastor Mpule accepted a call to Mt.
Sinai in Ndola, where he served until 2003 when he accepted a call to Matero
Congregation in Lusaka District.

Faithfully every Sunday, Pastor Mpule would literally point
to the cross during the sermon and remind us that our sins are forgiven through
faith in Jesus.  It’s been 16 years since
I was a member of Pastor Mpule’s congregation, but my husband and I recently
had the opportunity to attend his church for his farewell/retirement from the public
ministry, after faithfully serving his Lord for 39 years.  Faithful…that is the word that sums up Pastor
George Mpule.  Blessings on your
retirement, Pastor.

Karen Kroll and her
husband Dan serve as missionaries to West Africa and are currently based 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

Our mission team has a guiding motto, “Christ for All, Great News for Africa.” That battle cry inspires me. For twenty-five years, I have seen first-hand how little Christ is known in Africa. Church is too often about laws and customs, not Christ. But in our Lutheran churches, the gospel of Jesus is heard every Sunday in sermons our African brothers preach.

Our WELS Mission team in Africa (the One Africa Team) plays a key role in training those African preachers. Much of our resources and manpower is devoted to helping sister synods in the effort.

African pastors are far better equipped to preach to and teach in their own culture. But it’s also true that African professors are much better able to teach future African pastors. We’re making some newsworthy progress in this.

These past two months I’ve had the pleasure of working side by side with a cheerful new colleague on our Lutheran Bible Institute campus. Pastor Stanley Daile has joined us on the faculty. His focus will be to teach Biblical Greek. For the rest of this school year, he and I are working together to teach the Greek course. After next school year, he will take over the Greek instruction.

We have an aggressive schedule for bringing him up to speed. We meet for an hour, one on one, three times a week. Together, we are team teaching Greek to the students five class hours a week. In addition, after each class Rev. Daile and I chat for ten minutes, only in Greek. It’s great fun teaching and learning Greek together, but our best hour together comes on Fridays. On that day, we read the New Testament in Greek with our colleague Rev. Kumchulesi. The three of us dive into the Word using the original language and come out of those waters refreshed with the gospel.

The Wisconsin Synod has been training men for the pastoral ministry in the United States since 1865, teaching them to read the Scriptures in Hebrew and Greek. One Africa Team desires to give future pastors in Africa the same advantage and blessing of being able to read the Old and New Testament in their original languages. When pastors are steeped in the Word and understand it well, the gospel wins. Their sermons and teaching and counseling will reflect the love of God revealed to us in the Word.

Philip Melanchthon wrote, “If we are to be devoted sons to our Father, surely we should eagerly strive to study and even emulate our most devoted parent’s language” (De Studiis Linguae Graecae, 1549). Pray blessings on Rev. Daile as he works at taking over teaching African pastoral students the language our Father used to tell us the good news.

Paul Nitz lives in Malawi and serves as the Principal of the Lutheran Bible Institute. He also serves as the Integrator of One Africa TeamPlease 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