Meetings can be painful. Painfully looooong. Painfully tedious. Painfully unproductive. Can you relate? Ever walk away from a meeting with a question and a sigh: “What have we really accomplished?”  Or end it with an exclamation and a huff: “What a waste of time!”

Benches are hard and decisions are hard to come by. Emotions run high and energy runs low. Rehashing the same stuff, some people missing the point and others belaboring it. Resolutions controversial and outcomes debatable.

Yep, meetings can be painful. But then again, meetings can be powerful. Powerfully beneficial. Powerfully effective. Powerfully uplifting and inspiring.

Just like the 31^st Synod Convention in Zambia.

Pastor Alfred Kumchulesi and I were privileged to attend it. (Pastor Alfred Kumchulesi is a Professor at the Lutheran Bible Institute in Lilongwe, Malawi.  He is currently serving as the Synod Secretary.) Oh, sure, the hours stretched long and there were occasions of tension and frustrations, but all in all, so many good things took place. Oh, so many good things.

1. The Lutheran Church of Central Africa Zambia Synod (LCCA-ZS) declared fellowship with the Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC) in Kenya.
2. The Chairman of the LCMC in Kenya, Dr. Mark Enricho Onunda, attended the Convention. 
3. The delegates elected the new Synod Leaders.
4. Essayists presented thought-provoking papers.
5. The Convention attendees worshipped, communed and fellowshipped together.
6. The men who participated in the Convention showed love and patience when there were times of disagreements and differing opinions.
7. God graced us with His presence and leading and spoke to us through His Word and strengthened us in the Sacrament.
8. Men stand poised to undertake the important work at hand.    

The delegates were revitalized and they all rallied are the Convention theme: “The Time is Now!”

“The Time is Now!” was not only the theme of the Convention but the thread woven throughout and within the sermon, the devotions, the reports and the papers.  One of the pastors, Reverend Makowani,  even wrote an original song, entitled it, The Time is Now! and sang it before all the delegates.

The Time is Now!

The Time is Now to do what?

• To rebuke the erring,
• To repent of our own sin,
• To work and walk together,
• To trust God to lead our Synods,
• To preach and teach the true Word of God.

The out-going Chairman, Reverend David Baloyi, appropriately said in his report, “…the time is now to accept what God has for His Church.”

And indeed, God has a lot for us!

A Son who is our Savior,
A Love that is unconditional,
A Home that is eternal,
A Plan that is unstoppable,
Power unconquerable,
Wisdom unsurpassable.

With a God who has these things, imagine what He can do through a Synod like the one in Zambia!

And so we entrust the LCCA-ZS into the strong hands of God Almighty.   And we pray that the Lord works in the hearts of the leaders to direct the affairs of the church and in the hearts of the Lutheran members to work together with them.  May they all do so with faithfulness, finding their motivation, strength and joy in the Triune God.

Even when the benches are painfully hard and the discussions painfully harder.

Jesus one day said to His disciples, “As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me.  Night is coming when no one can work…I am the Light of the world” (John 9:4).

Interestingly the power (electricity) was out for a good share of the meeting.  After a full day of meeting we were still knee deep in discussions and it was getting extremely dark in the church; however, the last rays of the setting sun were shining through the glass cross in the back of the church.

The Cross is empty.
So is the grave.
Jesus is alive.
So are we.

It is still day.  But night is coming.

The Zambians and WELS Missionaries have done a lot of work in their beloved Synod and in the ripe Harvest Fields but still have a lot more to do.

Do you in yours? The Time is Now.

Missionary John Holtz

New delegates elected at the Synod Convention:

• Chairman: Rev. D. Mutentami
• Vice Chairman: Rev. J. Kangongo
• Secretary:  Mr. B. Zulu
• Treasurer: Mr. Z. Shoko

Papers presented:

• The Role of Women in the Historical     Development of the Christian Church.  Presenter: Pastor J. Kangongo
• The Love, Trust, Accountability and Transparency We Owe Each Other: The Time is Now. Presenter: Mr. Alisad Banda.
• Living By God’s time: What it is?  How? Presenter: Pastor M. Mulonda

What are you eating today?  We had a great opportunity to eat some Liberian food last week: Rice with greens mostly, with the “heat” left out for our stateside taste buds.

Much more than that, we had the unique opportunity to meet some Liberians who craved the truth of Scripture.  They had heard much through the filters of Reformed and Pentecostal teachers.  As they recognized the falsehood there, they invited WELS’ representatives to bring the truth.  Matthew Cephas is a Liberian from Holy Trinity Congregation in New Hope, MN, where he is currently taking the course for pastoral ministry through our Pastoral Studies Institute.  The PSI program is headed by Prof. E. Allen Sorum at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary.  Prof. Sorum worked through Pastor Dennis Klatt there at Holy Trinity to train Matthew for this unique opportunity for ministry.

Matthew organized the place and the food with his friends there in Buchanan, Liberia, so that Prof. Sorum and Pastor Klatt could accompany him to meet One Africa Team representatives John Hartmann and Dan Kroll for a solid week of teaching.

Who taught what subject is not important here.  What is important is the response of eager students, many of whom are already in leadership positions in congregations in Liberia.  My list says 33 in number, but some came later in the week, so I may have missed a few.  It’s the rainy season in Liberia now, so as many as 20 others were not able to make it due to the condition of the roads.  We understood the challenges of travel in Liberia during this time of the year after we got caught in one of the downpours on our afternoon walk.  Again, we were amazed to hear heavy rain each of the four nights we were in Buchanan.

But these people were hungry!  Seeing those who were able to dig into the Scriptures with us with many challenging questions reminded me of the words Jesus spoke in his Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matthew 5:6).  The people here at Buchanan were reminded that true righteousness is found only in the Word of God – in the substitutionary sacrifice of our precious Savior Jesus Christ.  They were happy to hear that salvation does not depend on their decisions and good works, but that forgiveness is their own through faith alone, and that good works are naturally produced after sins have been forgiven.  A young man named Chinyung Peygar commented with joy about our common foundation in the truth of Scripture: “You have given us the food of your eating.”

They could not get enough – they all want more.  Pastors Hartmann and Kroll from One Africa Team will come back in November to introduce the Liberian Christians in Buchanan with another group of Liberians in Monrovia this November.  It will be their job to unite these two groups, following God’s invitation found in the book of Isaiah: “Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare” (Isaiah 55:2).  In verse 6 of the same chapter Isaiah speaks to all of us: “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.”

We’ll be eager to see what the Lord will do here in Liberia.  Until then, we encourage all of you to continue feeding your own soul with the “richest of fare” – the truth of Scripture – and keep these people in your prayers as they continue in their quest for the truth, so that they find it clearly in the message of the Bible.

Dan Kroll serves as missionary to Cameroon and currently resides in Lilongwe, 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

I’m a nervous traveler. You only need ask my wife, Sue. She will roll with the punches of long lines, negotiating at the airline counter with overweight luggage and messed up children’s tickets or slow immigration/customs officials.  I’ll insist on being at the airport at three least hours ahead of time even if it means we end up spending two hours and fifty minutes of it sitting in the departure lounge twiddling our thumbs. You would think after 27 years of living overseas I would be more relaxed.  Sadly, experience has only left me worrying more about all the things I know potentially can go wrong in travel—particularly on the African continent side.

Take for example my first trip to Rwanda for One Africa Team (OAT) mission exploration almost a year ago.  The whole airport experience was carefully choreographed and went splendidly.  As my associate and I walked out of the Kigali, Rwanda airport terminal at around 5:00 a.m. There was even someone there Johnny-on-the-spot to meet us holding up a sign with my first name on it— “Philip.” We hopped into a waiting taxi and were wended off to a nice hotel in a very posh district of Kigali. We checked into our rooms, showered, and even took naps since we had both been up most of the previous night. By around 11:00 a.m., however, I began to wonder where the Rwandan pastor contact was I was to meet up with who had arraigned all of this. It was around noon I received a frantic call from him through the hotel front desk. He was asking why we were at this hotel!? I still don’t know how he located us in the multitude of hotels in Rwanda’s capital city of Kigali with a population of almost 750,000 people.  He had been at the Kigali airport since around 5:30 a.m. and we had not shown up.  Now it was revealed to me by the hotel desk that the hotel staff had realized they had picked up the wrong “Philip.” They had made another trip to the airport to pick him up.  Sadly, the staff had not bothered to mention it to this “Philip” until I asked what happened after receiving the pastor’s phone call.  180,000 RwF or $214 lighter, we checked out the hotel after a half day stay.  We had finally met up with our Rwandan pastor contact and were finally on our way, a half a day behind an already tight schedule.

Those thoughts and others crossed my anxious mind as I sat my usual two hours and fifty minutes in the departure lounge of the Lusaka Airport this past August waiting for our Rwandair Express flight to arrive. This would now be my second trip to Rwanda to visit Lutheran groups.  Playing on one of the airport’s waiting room TVs was an English Premiere League football game (“soccer” to most Americans).  This is some of the most topflight professional sport you can watch this side of the world.  It is big time stuff, bigger and far more popular than American “football” (the misnamed sport where they carry the ball and only rarely kick it).  Most any African male, be they from Angola, Rwanda or Zambia, know well the English Premiere League standings as good as or better than any American male can cite the American NFL standings. The teams playing this game were two of the top-flight teams in the top tier English Premiere League, Arsenal and Manchester City.  It was a good diversion.

Then something caught my eye in the game.  I asked Pastor Simweleeba, an LCCA Zambian pastor accompanying me this time on my trip to Rwanda, if he saw it.  It was a pink armband all the Arsenal players were wearing.  I thought my eyes were deceiving me but it looked like the words “Visit Rwanda” were on the armbands.  A couple of slow-motion replays later it was really there and I was seeing what I thought I was seeing.  “Visit Rwanda,” wow!  Rwanda is trying to become an international tourist travel location and here I am at the airport flying off to Rwanda!  Some of my travel tension immediately eased.

To put this into perspective let me again tell you a little about my first trip a year earlier to Rwanda.  One of the big impressions of Rwanda of a year ago were all the police out and about.  Obviously, you can see police in every African country but the Rwandan police looked particularly serious and there were a lot of them.  These guys were carrying the newest and state of the art automatic weapons while walking around their regular street beats.  In Zambia most all police carry automatic weapons as well, very dilapidated and antique AK-47s. In Rwanda it’s only the lowly traffic cops stuck carrying AKs to police traffic stops.  In Zambia our traffic police use orange cones to do the same thing. Not surprisingly Rwandan AKs, even though they are not orange, do seem to catch your eyes better than the orange traffic cones Zambian traffic officers use.

It is less than 25 years ago, 1994 to be specific, that Rwanda suffered a terrible genocide throughout the country.  A strong police presence is a remnant of that bitter piece of Rwandan history.  On a positive note the Rwandan government is doing all in its power to mitigate the country’s terrible tragedy and try to bring back a level of normalcy to its citizenry. Among them is reducing or at least keeping more out of the public eye its very serious looking police force.  This trip I did not notice them nearly as much if at all.  Rwanda is a lovely place. “Land of a Thousand Hills,” they call it.  It has at least that many hill and valleys and they are green and lush even in the driest part of the dry season when we were visiting Rwanda in August between its two rainy seasons.   It makes sense to publicize this beauty and encourage tourism.

I had a chance to speak with my wife on the phone my second full day in Rwanda.  Interestingly we both had stories to share about Rwanda.  I wanted to tell Sue about how I saw the “Visit Rwanda” armbands on all the Arsenal players and how happy it made me feel.  She wanted to tell me about how Rwanda was in the news for their new advertising campaign encouraging Rwandan tourism, since I had just taken off to the place.  It seems as though the campaign was creating a bit of controversy.  Advertising like this doesn’t come cheap.  Rumors were the Rwanda Tourism Ministry spent in the area of $33 million dollars for a three-year “sleeve sponsor” advertising program with the Arsenal Football team.  Certain British Members of Parliament particularly were incensed at this campaign as it was revealed that Britain gave Rwanda $65 million in education aid this past year. Now it appeared, at least to some disgruntled British MPs, $33 million dollars of that aid was being spent supporting an English Premiere Football team whose home stadium is just down the road from the English Parliament building (Arsenal is a London based football team named after the famous Tower of London’s old government arsenal you can still view which is stored in the Tower).

The Arsenal football team is Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s favorite team.  It also happens to be everyone else’s favorite football team in Rwanda. Over 30% of the English Premiere League is made up of players from Africa.  It is every African kid’s dream to make it in the big leagues of European football and every Rwandan kid’s dream to be an Arsenal “Gunner.”

My informal poll among Rwandan Lutherans was they all liked the idea of being promoted so nicely on one of the world’s stages. It made everyone whom I spoke with in Rwanda feel very positive about their country. I know it did for me.  It was rather coincidental that the first day of this trepid traveler’s trip to Rwanda, they would begin a tourism promotion, as it seemed, for my personal benefit.  I won’t quite call it a sign from God but another indicator that God’s gracious goodness is always present even when some don’t necessarily act that way.

Missionary Philip Birner

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