What do you imagine when you think of Africa?
Crazy wildlife from the Lion King? Hippos, crocodiles, baboons, and snakes?
Tiny, straw, circular huts?
The bare feet of children in over-sized, donated clothes with holes and dirt stains all over them?
I saw all of these things this past week when my team spent five days at Love’s Door Ministry.
Love’s Door is located “in the bush” along the Zambezi River, within hiking distance of 5 or 6 small villages, which have maybe around 70 people each. The villages are dirt paths connecting a few small straw-roofed mud hats. There are patches of gardens and tall grasses (home to a variety of poisonous snakes), and as you walk along you feel like you’re passing through what would be people’s backyards, if that existed. Women sit outside under the shade of a tree or the shadow of their house on straw mats while they cut vegetables or crack peanuts or weave baskets. Children run around barefoot, playing with anything and everything they can use their imagination to make into a toy. Many of the men are nowhere to be seen, as they are inside the local beer holes getting drunk before 10 in the morning.
The compound Love’s Door is on is literally right next to a huge river that separates Zambia from Zimbabwe. It is a beautiful location! At night sometimes you can hear lions roaring from the wildlife preserve on the other side of the river. During the day you can glimpse hippos and crocodiles in the river or along the edge. We were quickly told not to walk within 15 feet of the river without being on full alert for crocs. There is no electricity on the compound, except for two small solar-powered homes that work for a few hours each day. Our kitchen was set up upon our arrival: a hotplate on a wooden table under the church pavilion. This is where two lovely Zambian women prepared our meals each day. We ate lots of Shima (spelling?): a corn-based, tasteless mush the consistency of thick mashed potatoes. We would mix cabbage or beans or eggs with it to give it flavor. I thought it was good, but after just 5 days of it I realized it would get old really really fast if it were all you ate every day.
Love’s Door has a small children’s home currently housing nine local African children with three “home moms” who care for them. Their education can be sponsored as long as they participate in certain programs, and they are raised with consistent teaching about Jesus and attend church every week. I was blessed to be able to tutor the children a few of the mornings we were there and was so impressed with how eager they were as learners. Even though they were on school vacation, they were excited to participate and were proud of what they knew.
On the compound itself, we also spent an hour or more in community worship and prayer every morning to start off our day. We debriefed every evening to share what God showed us that day, and what our highs and lows of the day were. It was a great time of community and reflection.
Several times during the week, we were able to do “hut to hut evangelism”. Sounds a little intimidating. And it was for some. But I was much less intimidated this round of evangelism ministry and was mainly eager to get out there and share Jesus with people who had literally never heard the gospel story before! English is much less frequently spoken in the villages, so we had to use translators this week. Let me share two of my favorite stories from evangelism in the villages.
Our first day out, my group of five Racers and two Zambians ended up sitting down with a family of 3 generations of women. The grandmother wove a beautiful basket while we sat down on their mat with them and helped the two mothers and their eldest daughters shell peanuts while the youngest children chewed on sugar cane. After some small talk and laughter that made us feel right at home with the ladies, I felt the Holy Spirit prompting me to tell them a story about myself, so I asked if I could tell them something Jesus has done in my life. I gave a testimony of how, in the past, I often didn’t trust God with my future very well, but how He has shown me over and over that His plans have my best interest in mind and I can trust Him to care for me. Some of the other girls also shared stories and the women seemed captivated. They had such soft hearts ready to accept the good news of the love of Jesus. We prayed for their family and asked them to think of their own stories to tell us the next time we came to visit.
Another time, I was in a group with 4 Racers and 1 Zambian translator, and we sat down with an older woman and her grown daughter. It was Good Friday, so I told the women the Easter story, which they said they had never heard before, although they claimed to be Christians. You see, there is a strong spirit of religiosity in Zambia. So many people go to some sort of church and claim to be Christian by name, but they may not even know the salvation story or have ever heard or read from the bible. It is about belonging to a group that is spiritual by name, not about having a real relationship with Jesus.
So I went on for quite a while telling the Easter story to these women, and when I finished and asked if they had any questions, the older woman responded with such understanding and acceptance! She confessed that what I said was good and true and how she believed the most important parts were about forgiveness and how she needed to trust God with her life. It was such a beautiful moment to see someone comprehend, for the first time in their life, the message of hope and love that the Gospel of Jesus is. I explained how she could accept this message by praying and repenting and accepting God’s love for her, and together we all prayed for the woman.
After we had finished, she stuck out her leg and showed us a big bruise on her ankle. She explained that she had been bitten by a snake the day before. She thought she should be dead from the snake bite, but acknowledged that God had saved her in order to keep her alive so she could hear the message we brought her that day. I almost cried out of wonder of God’s perfect plan for that woman’s life.
The message we brought to those villages as we fumbled through retellings of the Easter story, as we spoke encouragement through ways we have seen God’s faithfulness through our own lives, and as we prayed for complete strangers, was a message of power and love. We didn’t have to tell it perfectly. We didn’t have to say exactly the right thing. It wasn’t our words that made the impact, it was the power of the Holy Spirit moving through the scriptures we spoke and the prayers we prayed. If sharing the Gospel is something hard for you to do, I encourage you to stop putting the pressure on yourself! Trust God’s word that says the Holy Spirit will give you the right words to say at the right time. Remember, all throughout the bible God used unexpected people to do great things. Be proactively available to be used by God to share His love with the people around you.
