It has been a joy and privilege to spend a month in Zimbabwe. It’s challenging to summarize and fully describe the many experiences I had and to illustrate the incredible impact my new friends in Zimbabwe had on my life. Our purpose in spending a month in Zimbabwe was to share about our faith and we did spend many hours developing relationships with locals and people we spontaneously came in contact with. During our time in Zimbabwe over 200 people came to know the Lord and it was an incredible honor and privilege to be able to share our faith with so many people hungry for truth. We spent the past two weeks in the remote village of Binga in the middle of nowhere. Despite being in a remote village we had remarkably great accommodations at a guest house owned by the ministry we were partnering with.
Our days in Binga were all unique, no two days were ever the same, and each day was a new adventure acclimating to a new culture. We learned about “Africa time” and how a lot of times when we are given a start time for ministry it means it is the time you can start getting ready for the day not when the day actually begins. Our first day in Binga we met the chief of the village to get his blessing to share about our faith and he did indeed give us his blessing. We crashed a wedding for an hour of the chief’s daughter and people were so honored to have white people attend their wedding that they seated us directly behind the head table and we had not even met the bride or groom. There was even an announcement made over the loud speaker in the local language, “These are our guests and this is clearly a white person wedding.” Everyone at the wedding erupted in laughter and we laughed along pretending we knew what was said. One day my teammate and I got asked to do children’s church for the few kids who may show up and we ended up having 50 kids for an African church service which lasted over three hours. We got to be a part of a feminine pad making workshop where local teenage women were taught how to make reusable pads because store bought feminine products are very expensive in town. We learned many women in the area will stay home for many days during their cycle because they cannot afford feminine products and this reusable pad can hopefully open up opportunities for women to continue going to school or work. We helped with a local pastors conference for four days and the conference speaker was a retired pastor from Texas named Wayne. Wayne has been doing short term trips to Zimbabwe and does not believe retirement is in the Bible. We really enjoyed getting to know Wayne better and it felt like a piece of home to talk to him.
There is something incredibly special about spending time with people on the other side of the world and it changes you in a way words cannot begin to describe. Our hosts Pastor Douglass and Pastor White cared for us as though we were their own kids and they had a great impact on our lives. Today I am giving thanks for the friends I am developing all over the world and for the ways my views of the world continue to broaden from spending 11 months “in the real world.”
New friends in Zimbabwe
Church service in Zimbabwe
Some of our hosts in Zimbabwe; Pastor David, Pastor Douglass, and Pastor White
Adventure day in Victoria Falls was INCREDIBLE
After a soccer game with kids in the area
Making new friends in Zimbabwe
