Two months down, seven more to go!
(Rare picture of myself looking super fly in the back of a truck in Zim.)
Photo credit to Nick Hebert…you should totally read his blog too!
I am here in Africa in the lovely country of Zimbabwe, and have been here for about two or so weeks since Nepal. I figured it would be a good time to let all know about my experience and adventures here in Africa thus far, and what God is doing in this country.
First let me tell you about my so so enjoyable flight schedule just to get to where I am. (that was sarcasm)
We were in Kathmandu, Nepal, and from Kathmandu we flew to the Dehli airport in India, had a small layover, and then flew to Mumbai airport, also in airport for a enjoyable ten to twelve hour layover (during the night) before flying out to the city of Addis Ababain Ethiopia, (this is where another group flew to Kenya instead), and in Ethiopia we had to spend much time in the airport, then had a mix up of flights and ended up leaving the airport and staying at a quite beautiful hotel for the night (with real beds!!!), and then we flew out the following morning to Harare, Zimbabwe, but first making a small pitstop in the Zambia Airport, though we never left the plane. From Harare Zimbabwe we stayed in a hostel in the area for a short time, and it was at this time I tasted maybe most incredible burger in the world, and the following morning we all (the whole squad) got into a bus and drove for 8-9 hours to the other major city of Bulawayo, which brings me to now.
Wow.
So that was just all the things needed just to get here, now let’s talk about what I am doing here.
We, The Becomers, met our host and his son upon arrival in Bulawayo, Warren King, who is the head pastor of The Rock Church in Bulawayo, a growing church that I have come to love. We stay at the Kings house where I and the rest of my team become apart of the King family, which is Warren and his wife, Tez, Davin the oldest, Barron the second, Callum the third, and Heinz the youngest, and there is a sister who is older than Davin, but she is not with us. I have started to feel quite apart of this family, as they are so hospitable, loving, and willing to do just about anything for us. They are a blessed family with a most comfortable home, a separate guest house for us, a pool, which we have used once, and best of all…..AN ACOUSTIC PIANO! …. I actually just now finished jamming on the keys for a solid hour or so, and I could not be more happy and thankful for my sweet sweet instrument back underneath my fingertips. Wow, you should have seen my face when I fist noticed it in the far corner of the room; it was one of those moments where you simply cannot believe what you’re seeing.
The the first couple days here with the Kings we did some small work for people. The girls, Hillary (squad leader) , Emily, and Maddie, would go work at a Horse rehab place, which I still don’t know quite what it was for, but I do know it was some pretty hard work, and then Tanner, Alex, Davin and I would go to one of the King’s mechanic garages and work on a car (which I did little cause I know so so little about cars and mechanics), and I learned quite a bit. After that we would head to the house of Mr. Shultz, who was once Mr. Zimbabwe from his body building days, and we would go help him build a Crossfit gym in his backyard, digging numerous holes, carrying bricks to and fro, and moving large pieces of lumber around. Did we get paid? Actually, yes we did! But not with money…. Our lovely payment was the opportunity to use his gym thereafter working. The hard thing was, A) we were already exhausted, B) neither Alex, Tanner, or I had worked out in over 3-4 months, I being the longest. C) we knew we would be broken for the next couple days thereafter, and D) Davin is a workout machine who we knew would break us by the end of the gym time.
I was broken. Tanner was broken. Alex was broken…. and then we did it again the next day. (but always with a positive attitude (:
But aside from the brutal workouts, Davin has been an incredible friend thus far and its been so fun talking to him and getting to know him, as he is 18 years of age as I, and he is full of strangeness and laughter to compensate for the inability to lift our arms for the next few days.
So after those few days we worked, Warren drove the team out with a truck full of foodstuffs and water to last us a week, and we were driving to the bush of Zimbabwe, out in the middle of nowhere in the rural village areas. We were located on the outskirts of the small and poor town of Tsholotsho, and it was there where we worked with a man named Ndaba, and his wife for the time. Ndaba was a missionary who I believe lived in South Africa for the majority of his life, and maybe was born in Zimbabwe… I’m not clear on the details, but he is now living on mission in this village area with his wife, and our duty was to work with him for the whole week.
I thought India was hot, but this… well this is where I understood the wrath of the African sun! (hence my now peeling sunburns)
It was such an enjoyable and formative week for the team and I, as we loved Ndaba and his wife so so much, as they did us, and we had some beautiful fellowship together, in worship, in church, and in the enjoyable manual labor we had. We spent some time working in the garden, readying the soil, planting seeds, and laying hay over it among other things. This was the time to plant since the African wet season is just now beginning. We also helped pump and carry water from the well, which is harder than it sounds, and we spent time making benches out of some nice mahogany wood for the church that Ndaba planted.
(In case you’re wondering, that’s me on the far right)
Ndaba was also quite the man of God, as he clearly had his dependency on the Lord for all he did, and through all things he did he would always say, ‘Thank you God.’ And I mean it when I say through all things. If we got rain: ‘Thank you God’, If a chicken healed: ‘Thank you God’ , if he got a stuck thorn out of his toe: ‘Thank you God.’… it goes on and on, and I don’t believe you can ever thank the Lord enough for all his blessings upon us. One thing I learned and took to heart from him was that of the Lord’s timing of things and how faith can lead where we ourselves cannot. He moved to this village not because he wanted to, but because he had faith in the Lord’s timing of things, and the Lord called him, and he went because he had faith in The Lord’s timing. Easier said than done, as I can recount many of the times I found my own way to do things or blatantly rebelled against what the Lord was actually calling me to do. So it is easy to rest upon our own logic and thoughts, but how hard it is to surrender and rely on the Lord’s thoughts and his plan for us. The phrase: ‘Let Go and Let God’ has much more depth to it than I realized, and I pray that the Lord will continue to grow me in that faith, for with it, mountains will move for me.
So that was a bit of the time I’ve spent here in Zimbabwe, or Zim for short as the locals say. I thank you for your prayers, support, and kind and encouraging words I read below each post, as they mean so much to me. If you have any questions of more depth, feel free to email me, message me on Facebook, or just comment below and have a hope that I will respond to that, as I can’t promise anything. I will try my best to get more blog posts out, but time is tight, wifi is limited, and the power keeps going out… like on and off it keeps going away and its not fun when that happens. So yeah, till my next post!
Peace and Grace be with you,
Garrett Stoecker
Also our team had thanksgiving together and it was so much fun, I got a bit sad thinking of home during the holiday, but I talked to my family and then I was fine. We had chicken, mashed taters with gravy, vegetables, apple crisp, and macaroni! So all was well. Happy belated Thanksgiving(:
