WELS Multi-Language Publications sponsors the TELL Network which offers online Bible courses to students around the world. One Africa Team missionaries are involved in teaching some of the courses, as well as pastors living in the United States. This week’s post features testimonials from two WELS pastors who are volunteering their time to teach students, due to a large number of new students.

Awakened Interest

Rev. Paul Spaude serves St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church in Niles, IL.

Recently Elizabeth joined my Zoom TELL class and asked for a prayer request: sleep. For whatever reason, it had evaded her. We prayed and God quickly answered.  I asked Elizabeth a question; we heard deafening silence. Hours later WhatsApp dinged, “Pastor! I’m so sorry! I fell asleep in class!” Sleep may have found Elizabeth because she had been awake for over thirty hours – or her teacher was a bit boring. I  am not going to seek out an answer. Regardless, Elizabeth has been back for more lessons because she loves studying the Bible with TELL.

Each class that I teach with TELL follows a logical pattern. To study the Bible, we Think about an interesting topic or question. We Evaluate a Bible story to bring more meaning and context to the lesson. Then we Learn that sin is the problem and only God has the answer. We Lead our brothers and sisters in Christ by telling what we have studied.

Elizabeth (from Trinidad) attempted to fight sleep to study the Bible with TELL. Enno (from South Africa) found time while driving to study the Bible with TELL.  Farooq (from Pakistan) postponed an anniversary date with his wife to study the Bible with TELL. Benard (from Kenya) fought a poor network connection to study the Bible with TELL.  They keep coming back because they love studying the Bible with TELL.

Despite obstacles, these students gather with me to study the TELL course, “The Work of the Savior.” In eight lessons, we are learning about Jesus’ work around the sea of Galilee and in Jerusalem. This is the beginning of their TELL instruction. God willing, they will enroll in more TELL courses. They might even go to their own communities to think, evaluate, learn, and lead their way through a Bible story with friends and neighbors. I hope they do; they are energizing people. I doubt they will put anyone to sleep.

TELL-ing Legacy

Rev. Paul Kolander serves The Springs Lutheran Church in Sparks, Nevada.

When I was young, I wanted to be an African Missionary. My great-grandfather was one. I remember watching slideshows narrated with exciting stories. There were pictures and tales about driving a caravan throughout Africa to tell Africans about the Love of Jesus. Bumpy roads, exotic wildlife, and adventure around every turn gripped my attention. Then, the awesomeness of God’s power and blessings held it for years. The commission to go and make disciples by baptizing and teaching in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit stuck with me. 

I serve as a missionary in my own community by baptizing and teaching Nevadans. I have never been to Africa. But now through a WELS program called TELL, I get to share the message of the one true God to the same countries that my great grandfather did. I don’t have to travel by barge for weeks on end, nor do I have to navigate across hippo-infested rivers. I just need to connect online with people in Africa and worldwide who want to learn more about the God of the Bible. 

God asks his prophet Jeremiah, “ ‘Am I only a God nearby,’ declares the Lord, ‘and not a God far away? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them?’ declares the Lord. ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth?’ declares the Lord. “

I am truly blessed to have this opportunity to share God’s love with those who are both near and far away. I get to serve as a missionary. There is one God and one way to heaven. Thanks belong to Him alone for these and all other blessings. 

Visit www.tellnetwork.org or download the TELL app to enroll in free online courses and share on your favorite social media channel! If you are interested in teaching courses use this form to submit information about yourself.

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

Oh, the hills. How striking they were as Howie Mohlke, his wife Leslie, and I drove east from Lilongwe, Malawi down toward Lake Malawi.

So were the sloping tea fields and the hills and valleys in the Sondu area of western Kenya when I saw them a few weeks later with Anariko Onunda: stunning.

Why tell you about hills?

From Flatlander to Hill Runner

For years I was a flatlander. I had not lived among hills since I was a vicar in Marrietta, Georgia (1990–1991), whether our family was in Illinois (1992–2001), Florida (2001–2015), or Minnesota (2015–2019).

Since December 2019, though, my wife and I have lived in Lusaka, Zambia, 4,200 feet above sea level. For exercise, I run hills.

I recently picked up my new U.S. passport from the U.S. embassy here in Lusaka. The complex sits atop one of Lusaka’s tallest hills. On many runs I look for it, gleaming in the morning sun.

Lusaka’s hilltop embassy makes me think of friends and family I miss in the States, as much as I enjoy serving the Lord and you here in Africa.

True Stories, Well Told

September 20–29 I had the privilege of traveling from Lusaka to Malawi. There I met with six pastors of the Lutheran Church of Central Africa – Malawi Synod. Pastors Chumba, Macharenga, Mandevu, Mitengo, Mukhweya, Mulinga, and I studied African church history biography together as part of their formal continuing education.

Since that week, each Malawian pastor in the course has sent me a story suitable for a 7–12-year-old, a story about a figure in Malawian church history.

In part, those projects are to help that pastor’s own family and congregation. In part, they are to help pastors in other countries in our Bachelor of Divinity (BDiv) cohort—pastors in Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, and Zambia. And in part, all the pastors’ efforts to research and communicate “true stories, well told” (our motto for the week) about fascinating figures in their country’s church history are to help me.

Receiving the Crown of Life

It is not just that I am new to African, as well as African church history. More importantly, stories about important believers from different parts of Africa, once we collect and distribute them all to all our BDiv brothers, will allow them to teach each other about real-life faith and love. 

Due to Covid-19 related issues, the twenty pastors in our cohort have not been able to meet yet face to face, though we began classes over a year ago. Pray with me that face-to-face classes for us all begin in 2022.

Back then to true stories, well told. Such stories not only have the potential to build up brotherhood, by God the Spirit’s power. They can break down super-tall hills, hills which so easily divide those whom God wants united: hills like time, distance, and cultural misunderstandings. These are stories where brothers can see trials our Father has sent in the past. These stories can connect us to believers in distant places and times.

 Be faithful, even to the point of death,” good stories remind us—stories like those of some of Africa’s first martyrs for Christ, Perpetua, and Felicity, remind us. In our classes, we watched a video about them. “Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Revelation 2:10). Jesus promises this to persecuted believers in ancient Smyrna and to us too.

Across the Rift

October 8-18 I traveled to Kenya to teach my BDiv level course. In both Malawi and Kenya, the pastors and I did not just talk history. We also discussed being faithful today, even to the point of death. We conferred about the confirmation classes which the pastors supervise and teach, and the steep hills young people climb as they learn to follow Christ.

One difference between the church history biography course in Malawi and the one in Kenya was that on October 10, before the class in Kenya started, I had the honor of preaching in Kenya for the consecration of the new building of St. Peter Lutheran Church in Ramba parish, served by Pastor Samwel Omondi. He translated my sermon from English into Luo. It was a joyful Christ-centered service, complete with the Lord’s Supper.

It was my first trip to Kenya, so I had much to learn. The pastors and I met in the shade of the center brick-and-grass open-air hut.

After the week’s class, Pastor Onunda drove me back up to Nairobi, a city even higher in elevation than Lusaka, and three times bigger.           

On October 17 Pastor Onunda introduced me to part of his city congregation, a much smaller group than the rural congregation the previous Sunday. In Nairobi some Christians Pastor Onunda serves are starting to meet separately as a daughter congregation. Elders were leading the service of that new congregation the morning I visited.

The King of the Hill

Such outreach efforts, even for an experienced pastor, get bumpy. Make that hilly. Sometimes we all feel as if we are barely able to put one foot in front of another, trudging uphill. Demons, this dying world, even our own deadly flesh whisper “give up” when hilly slopes get steeper.

But our Lord said, “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden” (Matthew 5:14). That’s true of both Nairobi and wherever you gather with other believers for word and sacrament.  Someday even the mightiest mountains will fall. But not God’s promises of mercy to us in Christ crucified.

 Jesus lives. We have been baptized into him.

 “Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you (Isaiah 54:10).

Missionary Dan Witte 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

This week’s post is written by guest author David Kamwata, who is a pastor in the Lutheran Church of Central Africa – Zambia Synod.

Personal Background

I was born on 1^st November 1969, in Kaoma, a district in the western part of Zambia. I was the second-born in a family of five. My parents were members of a certain Pentecostal church, but they were not very strong Christians. They used to take us (their children) to church once in a long while. As a result, I had the freedom to go to many other different churches in the company of other boys provided there was fun.

It was in 1984 that I joined the Lutheran Church of Central Africa through a friend who invited me to church. That was at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church. It was at this congregation that I was to meet my future wife. And it was at this congregation that I would be encouraged to go into the public ministry.

Family

God has graciously blessed me with a lovely family. My wife’s name is Eness Mulando. Her father, Pastor Timothy Mulando, who is now a retired pastor in the Lutheran Church of Central Africa, inspired me to go into the public ministry. I have four children whose names are Clive, Beatrice, Alice, and Faith. As I look at my children, I confess with Solomon: “Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from Him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them,” (Ps 127: 3-5).

Public Ministry

I was ordained in 2009 at Mount Sinai congregation where I had been serving as a vicar under the supervision of Pastor Daniel Kroll and the then visiting pastor of the Copperbelt, Pastor Samuel Kawiliza. After my ordination, I served Mount Sinai Congregation up until 2015 when I received a call to teach at the seminary.

Teaching

When I arrived at the seminary after accepting the call in 2015, I started teaching Isagogics and Church History. Sometime later, I got involved in team-teaching the Biblical languages with Dr Wendland to prepare me to teach these courses in the future. When the seminary opens with a new class this year (2020), I will be teaching Hebrew and Greek.

Continuing Education

In 2010, I was privileged to be part of the first class to undertake a Bachelor of Divinity (BDiv) program offered by what was then called the Greater Africa Theological Studies Institute (GRATSI) under the auspices of the Pastoral Studies Institute (PSI). I completed this program in 2014.

Shortly after completing my BDiv program, I applied for the Master of Theology program which is now offered by the Confessional Lutheran Institute (CLI). God willing, I should be able to complete this program by the end of this year (2020).

My desire for higher education is not motivated by prestige, although this is an ever-present temptation that comes from our sinful nature. I desire to pursue higher education as long as there is breath and ability in me in order that I may “teach God’s Word with excellence.” There has been an outcry from the general Lutheran membership that although the LCCA teaches God’s Word in its truth and purity, the low level of education of our pastors is becoming a barrier to that Word in an educated society, especially in urban congregations.

Conclusion

As I look back at how the hand of God has directed the affairs of my life, I hear God speaking to me: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; before you were born, I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations,” (Jer. 1: 5).

I wish to thank our brothers and sisters in Wisconsin Lutheran Synod whose financial and material support has made it possible for me to be a pastor in the LCCA. It is also my prayer that support for formal education for pastors will continue under the CLI so that God’s Word may be taught with excellence in the LCCA.

To God be the Glory.

Rev. David Kamwata teaches at the Lutheran Seminary in Lusaka, 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