We have been traveling around Malawi for 2-4 day crusades for the past three weeks. Each day of the crusade, we have had different team members who speak. I volunteered this past Wednesday to preach in a village called Zomba. Although, this was not something I was thrilled to do, I agreed to speak. I close my eyes and tell myself that I am learning to exercise my faith and that God will give me the words to speak through me.
As I begin to tell you this story, I still laugh at how the day turned out. It was a draining day for me so I enlisted some ghost writers to help paint a picture of this typical day on the World Race.
Each village we have traveled to is a little different. Zomba isn’t as far as some of the other villages so we only went there for one day. Arriving at the site for our crusade, after four hours of dusty bus rides, you see a vast expanse of land with a lone straw hut. If there were tumbleweeds in Africa, one would be blowing down the road. We are told that we will be meeting in the open air. But the black clouds that are forming on the horizon may be making other plans for us.
We started the program with praise and worship as usual. But as the hallelujahs rose up to the sky, the sky replied by falling down. It began to rain. Hard. So we all bolted inside the hut for shelter. Imagine 13 clueless white missionaries, and about 130 drenched Africans in a small smelly straw hut, shoulder to shoulder in the middle of a lightening storm. The singing struck back up again, inside the hut! It was so loud. But when the rains stopped a little while later, we headed back outside to the open air and smell of wet clay ground. The singing ended about an hour after we started, and then it was my turn to speak.
Before I began, I was told not to worry about rain. I didn’t think much about the comment and definitely did not notice the dark clouds looming behind me. I was too focused on what I was going to try to say to this group of people in front of me!
I began my introduction with Watson translating for me. About three or four minutes into the message, I noticed several women and children just rose to their feet and started walking away quickly. I couldn’t be this bad at preaching, could I? After a few more moments, almost the entire audience was fleeing before me. Apparently I am that bad.
VIEW VIDEO:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IeQf7WvZzg
But then, as I turned around to search for the cause of this great migration, the rains came down.
I was left standing there for a minute unsure of what to do, in a torrential downpour that hit me like a wall of water. I turned and made for the shelter of the straw hut for the second time… in a half hour… in the middle of my sermon. But the good news was that the majority of the people ran for the same shelter. One problem – dry straw isn’t really a great roof, and what was raining outside, was now raining inside only with the additive of bits and pieces of grass.
It was crowded and people were holding umbrellas to try to prevent from getting wet. I had my rain jacket but water was streaming down my face. Now surrounded by the crowd of 100+ people who stayed, I shared my interrupted message.
And as the storm boomed and shook the hut, and the lightening flashed like paparazzi, I stopped for a second and realized something. This is my life. My wet, smelly, crowded, loud life. And I laughed. Because that’s all you can do when God makes you preach louder than thunder.
