Immersion Matters

Immersion matters! Now wait, before you go crying “Heresy!” on me, understand what I mean. I’m not talking about baptism here. I’m talking about language immersion—in this case, French language immersion.

For 3 weeks in January, I left my home in Zambia to live in and study French in Lyon, France. I lived in the 21^st-century equivalent of a monk’s cell in a big apartment building. I rode the trams and the subway to and from my language school each day. In Zambia, it was summer, and (as always) it was blazing hot. Since I’m a Canadian, it was a pleasure to experience Northern Hemisphere winter again (although I didn’t have a coat to take along with me from Africa).

Food Immersion

Cheese is my favorite food, and France is pretty much the Valhalla of cheese. I would love to tell you about the many varieties of cheese I consumed along with slices of Lyonnaise rosette sausages or Corsican coppa ham on baguette. But this article is supposed to be about language immersion. Besides being a great place to be immersed in cheese, Lyon is also a great place to be immersed in the French language. The second-largest city in France, Lyon lies at the confluence of the Saône and Rhone rivers, and it has a standard metropolitan French accent.

So, why was a standard accent important for me? My job as a missionary takes me to many French-speaking countries of Africa: Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Benin, for example. I also work with French-speaking Lutherans from countries that I’m currently not able to visit, such as Togo and Burkina Faso. Having lived in Ottawa, Canada, for 9 years, I can tell you that the African French accents are much closer to a standard metropolitan (i.e., European) French accent than anything I ever heard in Canada. So, I went to France to study and practice French for 3 weeks because it has the variety of French that all the African forms are based on.

immersion — *Five Guys (“Cinq Mecs”?) in Lyon. What a blessing*

Linguistic Leap Forward

In Lyon, I did not only study all morning and afternoon in a French school. I also went out and used my French around town. Going to board game clubs and shops. Eating at a traditional mom-and-pop style restaurant called a “bouchon”. Helping several French people locate different books they were looking for in the big, huge FNAC bookstore. Joking about the strange, spaceship-like public toilets with folks waiting for their family members to come out. Shopping for a coat in the mall at the Superdry store. I’m figuring out how to get my cell phone working at the Orange shop.

Immersion was a great experience. I’d never been to France before, so it was amazing to hear French all the time and to get used to listening to and speaking nothing but French. My ear has picked up the pace since my immersion, and so has my ability to express my own “very deep” thoughts—JK!—in French. I think it will be a big benefit if I can go back for another round of immersion sometime next year. But my best French immersion is coming up in March—with a trip to visit Lutherans from Benin and Burkina Faso—and in April—with a trip to teach a workshop on Luther’s small catechism in the Congo. For then, I will truly have great content to communicate in French: the true message about Jesus Christ! I can’t wait to take along the cool new bible I picked up in France.

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

Swahili Camp

The first day of camp is always a bit awkward. A beautiful park-like setting offsets the discomfort of sleeping in a strange bed. You tour the campus. You settle on a place to sit in the cafeteria. You recognize old familiar faces, and you introduce yourself to new friends. You bid your established routine farewell and embrace a new lifestyle, at least for a little while.

A Widely Spoken Language

For the last two weeks, I was a guest on the campus of the MS Training Center for Development Cooperation. Located near Arusha, Tanzania, MSTCDC has been operating a Swahili language immersion school since 1967. According to Wikipedia, over 200 million Swahili speakers live in the East African countries of Kenya, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Mozambique, and Tanzania.

As One Africa Team’s liaison to the LCMC-Kenya, I have been picking up Swahili words and phrases every time I’ve visited over the last two years. In addition, I’ve downloaded a Peace Corps Swahili language course and I listen to the audio recordings on my daily walk.

Until now, I’ve never taken a formal Swahili language course. Our mission team set the goal of missionaries acquiring the ability to work in two new languages. We identified French and Swahili because these are two of the most widely spoken languages on the continent of Africa. One Africa Team’s long-range vision is that in ten years, among our partners there will be over 200,000 communicants who regularly gather around Word and Sacrament and are shepherded by well-trained leaders.

swahili camp class — *me, my Swahili teacher, and my fellow student*

That’s how I found myself in Swahili camp. I enrolled myself in the intermediate level because I reckoned I was past the stage of learning greetings. Still, I found myself swimming, or drowning, in a strangely familiar yet different tongue. Swahili belongs to the Bantu family of languages. Grammatically and linguistically it is very similar to Chichewa, the language many people speak in Malawi.

However, during the Middle Ages, Arab traders interacted with the natives living in coastal cities of East Africa and Zanzibar. Between 20%-35% of the Swahili language is of Arabic origin. Every once in a while I stumble across a word I recognize from the time I spent on the Balkan Peninsula half a lifetime ago. I smile when I hear Swahili words like “faida,” “mzeituni,” and “bakshishshi” – these are words of Arabic origin that also entered Bulgarian conversational usage via the Ottoman Turks.

Boot Camp is Hard

Maybe you’re wondering why a fifty-five-year-old man is learning to speak a new language. Yes, it’s connected to my work responsibilities, but honestly, that is not adequate motivation. In most instances, I can get by with English or use a translator. Why have I invested so much time in learning to speak this foreign language (or any other)?

People open their hearts when they hear you struggling to string five words together in their native tongue. They recognize the effort you are making to understand their language, their culture, and their worldview. And when you speak through a translator, you lose the ability to connect to another human being directly.

swahlli camp — *we interviewed this farmer to learn how coffee is grown on the school campus*

God has given me both the ability and the interest to learn foreign languages. To whom much is given… I am putting myself in the uncomfortable position of talking at the level of a three-year-old. I dedicate my Swahili camp experience to God’s kingdom and glory.

Whether or not you speak a foreign tongue, the same principle is true. Sharing the good news of Jesus’ salvation with another human being requires humility. It requires us to listen before speaking. It means we strive to understand where someone is before we point him in the right direction. And it takes time.

These two weeks I’ve spent at Swahili camp is just another small step towards the realization of St. John’s vision of people from “every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” (Rev. 7:9) I don’t know what language we will be speaking in heaven, but God will have no trouble communicating his love for us all.

Amani ya Bwana nanyi (may the peace of God be with you)

Missionary John Roebke lives in Malawi.

Tiptoeing into the Congo

Tiptoeing: it’s something my cat Magic does when she wants to go outside. She tiptoes to the threshold, noses around, and then suddenly bounds through the doorway and dashes off on the hunt.

For the past year, the One Africa Team (OAT) has been “tiptoeing” around the Democratic Republic of The Congo (DRC). I was called to Africa to connect with French-speaking church groups. As soon as I arrived in Africa, I was given an interesting French-speaking contact: a Lutheran pastor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This pastor soon put me in touch with his church group’s secretary-general.

For a year, we texted and talked on WhatsApp and email and eventually held regular bible studies on Zoom, along with the pastors and evangelists. This year, they formed their own synod, la Mission Évangélique Luthérienne au Congo (“Evangelical Lutheran Mission to The Congo”—MELC).

A Country with a Painful Past

Although Zambian and WELS pastors have made occasional, brief visits to The Congo, this hasn’t happened since the 1990s, and it has never happened using French. As the MELC began the process of exploring the path to church fellowship with the WELS, we at OAT felt it was important to visit our friends. After getting approval for the trip and taking some special precautions, Missionaries Howard Mohlke and Keegan Dowling (me) flew to Lubumbashi, DRC, for face-to-face meetings with the leaders of MELC.

tiptoeing — *if it’s a precious mineral, chances are that it’s mined in the DRC*

What do you know about The Congo? It suffered terribly for generations under the brutal, exploitative rule of Belgium’s King Leopold and then of Belgium itself. In the 1990s, it was flooded by refugees from the Rwanda genocide, which led to an international African war that killed millions in the DRC. Today, The Congo is famous for its rich deposits of “rare earth metals”—scarce elements essential for the manufacture of advanced electronics, such as phones, missiles, and computers. Warlords still exploit the mines for these—and other—precious minerals, causing much turmoil and pain. If you follow current events, you probably wonder why anyone would dare to go to The Congo.

Spoiler alert: it wasn’t dramatic for us at all. The DRC is a huge country (the world’s 11^th-largest), and Lubumbashi turned out to be a sea of tranquility while we were there. We went because we have Lutheran friends there who want to walk together with the WELS. Face-to-face visits show honor and respect, which is why OAT missionaries live in Africa: so that we can regularly visit WELS’ many partners and prospects throughout the continent.

Evidence of God’s Kingdom at Work

In The Congo, we visited MELC worship services at a house church and a large meeting tent. The people of MELC use both French and Swahili, two languages that are mushrooming in their significance for OAT’s current outreach efforts. The pastors of MELC have a heart for sound doctrine and a heart for evangelism. At the end of the visit, OAT and MELC shared a traditional Congolese meal in celebration of our friendship. Our goal is to see each other—and as many people as possible—at the Lamb’s ultimate, eternal feast in heaven!

tiptoeing into Congo — *After worship and introductions at a MELC house church*

The Democratic Republic of The Congo: been there… done that… going back. God willing, OAT missionaries will return in 2024, after the DRC’s elections, to conduct a doctrinal workshop with MELC. Over the following months and years, we hope to grow in our understanding of God’s Word and each other. We are tiptoeing no longer, but taking the plunge. Diving into ministry in a land of people Jesus loves.

Missionary Keegan Dowling lives in Zambia.