a day off before we headed to Matombo-Tawa – the small mountain village where
our pastor had grown up. We arrived after a long, dusty, windy, 4 hour
mini-bus ride into the mountains with about 25 of our closest friends.
I’m not really sure how to best describe the mini-bus experience (probably
because I’ve blocked most of it from my memory) but it was cozy. I think
if I had video taped it it would make a pretty decent audition tape for the
contortionist act in Cirque du Soleil. But we made it – a little sore,
mostly numb, but we made it.
We spent three nights in Tawa
preaching, teaching, walking around the town, going from house to house,
meeting with people, and praying with people. The small 25-member church
that hosted us was situated on the side of a hill, and up there, I couldn’t
help being reminded of Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:
cannot be hidden. 15Neither do people light a lamp and put it under
a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the
house. 16In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they
may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”
The people of Tawa live very
differently than I do. I can stay with
them for a few days, but I will never know what it is like to be them. The thing I continue to learn is that we are
all unique in God’s eyes, his promises are the same for all of us. He loves all of us. He died for all of us. And for everyone who chooses to follow him,
we have died with him.
“2We died to sin;
how can we live in it any longer? 3Or don’t you know
that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his
death? 4We were therefore buried with him through
baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead
through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” Romans 6:2-4
He loves all of us.
So we should love “all of us.”
After returning to Morogoro, we had
a couple days to rest and prepare before another day of teaching and
preaching. This time we spent a day with the Maasai in a village not too
far outside of the city. We pulled up to a lone house. It’s dark
mud walls appropriately fit the monochrome landscape of barren gray trees, dry
tan grass, and hard brown earth. In sharp contrast, the trees filtered
the deep blue of the empty sky – which we learned was the traditional tribal
god of the Maasai people. The sky is so vast and appears to encompass
everything, so it must be God.
greeted by the local pastor and his family. They showed us their cows
which is their main source of livelihood and their source of wealth. For
the Maasai, a herd of cows is like a bank. They convert their money to
livestock and then take care of it. When they need money, they sell a
cow. The cows breed and produce babies and their investment grows.
Traditional Maasai belief states that god sent cattle to the earth for the
Maasai alone, and their traditional rituals consist of drinking the cows blood
mixed with milk. Now most live a life balanced between holding on to the
traditional values, practices, and way of life (including dress), and a more
modern, assimilated lifestyle.
They took us to their church and slowly
but surely they filed in, one or two at a time.
We stayed with them at the church for the day teaching, praying, and
worshipping with them. They sing to God
with all that they have – from the depths of their being. It’s truly amazing to be a part of.
Sometimes I struggle with going into a place, teaching for a couple hours, and
leaving. I’ll probably never see any of
these people again – what am I doing? If
that’s all we are doing, showing up, talking, and leaving, then it is
pointless. If God isn’t in it, if it’s
not rooted in love, we are all just wasting our time. But if we are going in love then what we are
doing is much more significant than we will ever understand. What we are talking about is spiritual – it’s
beyond this “life” and this world.
This is tough for me to fully express – in anything less than a book – but Kathryn
did a good job in a recent blog, so check it out.
http://kathryngironimi.theworldrace.org/?filename=living-a-dead-life
God’s love. Pray that we are constantly
reminded that anything we do without love is worthless. Pray that we remember that what we are doing
is bigger than ourselves.
