Saturday, April 9

Thankfully I slept well and boarded my flight to Portland. Home at last. I’ll be preaching tonight and will need the energy.

What’s next? This seminar was very much teaching for the head. Our next seminar (January 2012?) will focus on teaching for the heart and will cover the Pastor’s spiritual life. It is our hope that we can find a way to include the Pastor’s wives on this one as it will be a great encouragement for the couple, as well as the individual. This will almost double the cost of the seminar, but it is very needed. Please pray with me about this next step.

Friday, April 8

Joseph came over after breakfast and we double checked our budget and John and I prayed with him. We talked about the nation of Tanzania and how to better pray for the Pastors. Tanzania is approximately 40% Christian and 40% Muslim with 20% comprised of various tribal religions. There is a growing Muslim influence with the President being a Muslim. He’s worked hard to use government money to build mosques every 5 kilometers on the main roads. With this they see Islam growing at a faster rate than Christianity and there is a subtle form of discrimination against Christian churches.

We said our goodbyes after lunch and John took off for Kilimanjaro on his way to Babati where he and Kathy served for the past four years. He’s going there to visit the ministry and bring back a few more items they left when they returned this past summer.

While waiting for my flight to Dar es Salaam, I met Paseal Williams who is trying to start Youth for Christ in Tanzania. He shared his ministry and we exchanged information. He is full of enthusiasm for reaching this generation of youth for the sake of the gospel. He was born in Zanzibar and hopes to establish a ministry on his home island.

My flight took me to Dar where I boarded a plane for an all night trip to Amsterdam. Here I am working on this blog with Baby Lion and a good cup of cappuccino to assist me:

Thursday, April 7

After a good night’s sleep we ate breakfast we headed up to the church. On the way as we entered Nysaka there were dozens of children gathered around the local water pump with buckets waiting for their turn to take home their day’s supply of water.

I had purchased 50 pieces of hard candy at the hostel and asked the driver to drop me off as we entered town. I always find it fun to walk along the streets handing out candy to children who are surprised to see a Mzungu (white person). I only know a few Swahili words, but “Jambo” (hello) goes a long way.

Once I arrived at the church I handed out the 25 WAPIs that were made for me by Jerry Josten at Sonrise. WAPI stands for Water Purification Indicator. It’s a simple device that allows people to have confidence their water (or milk) has reached the point of pasteurization. It takes considerable energy to heat water from 71° celsius to the boiling point. The WAPI has a small cylinder with an organic wax that melts at 71º, so once the wax has melted and run down to the bottom of the cylinder you can be assured that the water is safe to drink. This simple device allows people to both save energy (coal, wood, charcoal) and have confidence that they’re not ingesting harmful bacteria.

After chai and singing, (see songbook below) I began our teaching by talking about creation and the nature of mankind (both physical and spiritual beings). Here are a few of their questions:

Q: What does it mean when it says a person’s heart is “hard”? Is this literal?

Q: Where does the spirit dwell? Does it dwell in one of our physical organs?

John picked up by talking about the fall of mankind into sin (Genesis 3). Some of the questions were:

Q: Where is the garden of Eden?

Q: What color was the skin of Adam and Eve? They asked this because all of the films about Jesus show him as a white man and they often picture Satan as a black man. We explained that Adam and Eve were probably the same color of those in the Middle East today (Brown). How’s that for a middle ground. I apologized for all of the white Jesus actors…and for him being so serious…and for his British accent.

Q: Why were all snakes cursed because of Satan’s actions?

After a break we resumed by looking at the Bible’s teaching on Sin. We went through the reality of sin, the nature of sin, the results of sin, and how sin affects both believers and non-believers. Most of the followup questions were hypothetical ones about various sinful situations and how to respond to them. We quickly broke for lunch and ate another plate of rice and beans.

For the first time in all of my travels I almost “lost my lunch”. I was finishing my food and experienced a gag reflex. I had to stop several times to make sure I could finish my meal without throwing up. By the way, here is the church bathroom:

After lunch we launched into our last teaching. John began our study of salvation by looking at our need for salvation, and God’s provision. I picked up by looking at how God calls us to salvation, and the result of salvation in our lives.

We had a lot of discussion about election and predestination and our challenge was to make sure that we believe what the Bible says-even if we do not we fully understand how it all works.

Other questions were:

Q: What is the “eye of the needle” that Jesus spoke about in Matthew 19:24? I explained that it was a hyperbole (such as speck and log in Matthew 7). The wrestling point here is concrete thinking vs abstract thinking.

Q: What did Paul mean in 1 Corinthians 7:20 when he said, “Each man must remain in that condition in which he was called”? I took them back to our study of context. If you read the verses before and after the answer is clear. Look it up!

Q: In the parable of Jesus in Luke 16:8 why did Jesus praise the dishonest manager?

Because of a lack of time we had to skip the teachings on the Church and the Future (Missionary Steve Van Horn has done an excellent job teaching about the Church in past seminars so I felt they could get all of the other material easily). They will have to read these on their own in the coming months.

In all, there are 25 pastors in 14 different churches from the Lake Region who have banded together to form their Fellowship. Most of them lead churches of 50-75 and are very dedicated to their people. Only three of them have any sort of formal training and none of them receive any kind of income from their church work. Most of them are supported by their wives who have small businesses run from their homes. They are a great group of men and I’m proud to be able to work with them. We closed our seminar by praying together.

Joseph was a great sport acting as our interpreter for the week. He’s quite good at this!

Here are a few of the children that were in and out of the meetings:

Wednesday, April 6

I woke up early to a thunderstorm and the Muslim call to prayer. I stayed in bed and watched a video on my iPad that I had made of the family on a past trip to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk called “Wonder Wheel”. Our kids are growing so fast. I’m so thankful for photos and video to remember these years. It won’t be long before we’re packing their cars for college. Stop me one day and I’ll show it to you. You might not shed a tear like I did, but I’m sure you’ll think it’s cute.

After breakfast we headed out to the church and was greeted with singing and a message on “The Sin that Leads to Death” by one of the brothers.

Right away we had the following questions:

Q: If a Christian is crying while they are praying is it the Holy Spirit within them that is crying?

Q: Someone asked the same question again about baptizing in only one of the “names” instead of all three. I tried to explain that Jesus didn’t say to baptize in the “names” of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but to baptize in their “name.” I talked about the issue of praying “in Jesus’s name” and how that Jesus was not giving us a magic formula that obligates God to grant every selfish request that we make. To pray in Jesus’ name doesn’t mean we have to end our prayers with, “in Jesus’ name, Amen.” It mean that we pray according to how Jesus would want us to pray–pray according to his will and purpose in the situation. I explained that it was the same with baptism. To “baptize in the name” means according the their will and plan.

Q: When does a believer receive the Holy Spirit? We held this question off until our study.

After chai, we jumped into the study of the Holy Spirit. As I began to teach on the Holy Spirit, a dove flew in to the church and landed in front Joseph and me. We all stopped and laughed at the irony of it all and then someone asked, “Could that be the Holy Spirit”?

After a few hours on the person and work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, the life of Christ, in the book of Acts, and in the early Church, I turned it over to John who taught about the present and future work of the Holy Spirit.

People often ask about the food we eat in Africa. Here it is:

Here is the “Kitchen” where the ladies are preparing the food:

There were many questions about tongues and each time I urged them to ask, “What does the Bible say”? Questions of drinking wine and it’s abuses came up. In many ways, the Church in Tanzania is wrestling with the issues that the Church in America wrestled with last century: What about alcohol? What about movies, etc…?

Just before lunch the entire group attended a funeral of a neighbor lady who had died the day before giving birth. It’s hard to describe the wailing and mourning that goes on in an African funeral. Western funerals are quiet and subdued. We rarely appreciate outbursts of painful wailing. The Pastor spoke on Philippians 1:21, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” That’s the same passage I spoke about in Bob Ray’s funeral last week. The funeral service ended with a terrible downpour and we ran back to the church for our lunch.

Lunch has been rice and beans but today we were treated to “ugali’. If you’ve never had it you don’t know what you’re missing. It’a kind of thick mashed root (like a potato) that is served on your plate in a ball. You use you’re fingers to tear off pieces and dip it in the juice of the meat that accompanies it. Yes, you eat with your hands.

Amazingly enough, we were able to look at the study of Angels, Satan, and Demons in two hours-complete with a myriad questions!

Here are a few of the questions that came up:

Q: What do you do with demon possession? Everyone of these Pastors has experienced a person in their community that was possessed by a demon. That’s typical in Africa. I turned the question back to them and ask them what they do. One Pastor responded, “I look for the door!” We all laughed, but he went on to explain that the demon came in through a “door” in the person’s life. If we could find that door we could make sure it doesn’t happen again. Fair enough!

Dinner took us to the same place we’ve eaten the last three nights. It’s the only thing we can find in town that’s open at night. This is the second largest town in Tanzania and we can’t find more than one restaurant for a meal.

On our trek through Mwanza looking for a meal I spotted a young man following us. As we waited to cross the street I mentioned to John that we had a pick-pocket on our tail. John had seen him too, so I just turned around and stared at him. He didn’t know what to do and wouldn’t make eye contact with me. We just crossed the street and he left us.

After making it back to our hostel I was able to wash some clothes in the sink for the next few days. I’m tired tonight. It was a long day of teaching. I’m so glad that John is with me. He’s doing an excellent job and is a natural at this (plus he knows able to use his Swahili).

Tuesday, April 5

Today we began at 9:30am with John teaching about the Deity of Christ. I picked it up from there and took the men through the humanity of Christ and his ministry while on earth. After lunch we were supposed to move to the study of the Holy Spirit, but it ended up taking all day to cover the life and ministry of Christ. We’ll have to move quickly in the next two days.

Sometimes the questions come out of left field but since they’re important to the Pastors we have to give them time to address the questions that they’re facing back home.

Here are a few of today’s questions:

Q: What kind of shoes was John speaking of when he said he was not worthy to untie Jesus sandals? Strange question, but Africans, as a whole, tend to over spiritualize everything and work hard at finding a “deep truth” in the strangest places!

Q: Am I lacking faith if I pray for one who is sick and then give them herbs? The issue of causing weaker believer’s to sin then came up. What if they were saved from witchcraft? Can they take the herbs that God gave and use them-even if they previously used them in their witchcraft?

Q: What do you think about the faith healer near Arusha who claims that a cup of his special juice will heal the five worst diseases (including AIDS)? 52 people have died so far just standing in line waiting for this magic elixir. Crowds are gathering all throughout Tanzanian and Kenya planning to travel to this faith healer. How do we encourage our people to not get involved in this?

Q: What exactly will the “Object of Desecration” that the Anti-Christ will put up in the restored Temple?

Q: What happens if you baptize only in the name of the Father…or of the Son…or of the Spirit? What if you don’t use all three names? Apparently several churches do this and it causes division among churches.

Q: If God never tempts anyone to sin, what about Adam and Eve? What about Abraham with Isaac? The problem here is that in Swahili there is only one word used for both “temptation” and “test.” Their Bible translates both words as “tempt” bringing confusion.

By the way, we had a few children coming into the meetings to see what was going on. No problem. But when the chickens started walking up toward where I was teaching I knew it was a first for me!

We ended the day by walking into Mwanza to find dinner (below). Another hot night awaits.

Monday, April 4

After a quick breakfast of eggs, bread, and tea we were off to our first day of teaching.

We’re meeting under the church roof that Sonrise provided with $1,500 of our Advent Conspiracy offering. The church is just north of Mwanza in a little community called Nyasaka. Here are picture of the town:

As always, we began the day with “chai’ (tea and pastries). This is a strong tradition in Tanzania where all activity ceases for 15-30 minutes for tea and fellowship. This occurs in both sacred and secular situations.

John and I traded teaching the study of God and the study of the Bible. We looked at the essential nature of God (He is Spirit), covered twenty-seven of the attributes of God (holy, transcendent, self-sufficient, etc…), and described the Trinity of God. We moved on the the study of the Bible by looking at the nature of the Bible as God’s revelation, looked at the origin of the Bible, and examined the inspiration, inerrancy, illumination, authority, reliability, and transmission of God’s Word to us.

We ended at 4:30pm with general questions about issues the Pastors were dealing with such as:

Q: Is it okay to worship on Sunday or is Saturday still the Sabbath?

Q: How much of the Law did Jesus fulfill? Is there more we have to fulfill?

Q: How should we deal with those who worship cows and then their cow dies?

We had a lot of discussion about those who worship the circumcision gods, and stories of when an idol asks for so many sacrifices that it uses up all of the families resources and then asks for human sacrifices.

Overall it was a good day with the pastors. So far 23 of them have shown up with two more coming tomorrow. We took the taxi back to town and grabbed a bite in town. It was extremely hot and humid and the electricity was out when we returned to our rooms so there wasn’t much to do but call it a night. Here’s my new roommate. He’s keeping far away from me…and I’m fine with that.

 

Sunday, April 3

After a great breakfast at the KIA Lodge, we headed back to the airport and boarded our flight to Mwanza. Musuma “Joseph” Marwa (the leader of the Pastor’s group) met us at the airport and we took a taxi to our lodging at St Dominic Pastoral Centre (a Roman Catholic guest house).

After an hour rest we headed up to Joseph’s Church in Nysaka where John preached-in Swahili. Here’s John greeting with children after the service:

After church we walked back to Joseph and Esther’s house and shared a meal of bananas and pineapple. By the time we arrived back at St Dominic’s it was dark and the electricity was out. A storm had knocked the power out and it was time to find my flashlight. Sleep was on again off again as the heat and humidity made it almost unbearable. There was not a breeze to be found that night. No one believes in fans or air conditioning in this country. Here’s a shot of my bed for the next week. The mosquito net is a life-saver!