visit to a student's church (4)

This past Sunday we had opportunity to visit a student who has planted a church in the nearest village to the College...

This is a village still in the grasp of witchcraft, superstition, and a general apathy towards bettering themselves.  It is one of the poorest of the villages around -- the children are visibly unwashed, dressed in rags, and you can almost sense despair.  In the past there have been attempts to start a school in the village, but nothing has ever lasted - because none of the villagers were serious enough about it.

In the past there was a small Baptist congregation there which was under the leadership of a College student who has since graduated - at the time he was 'pastoring' 7 different congregations which essentially meant that he was never present at this one particular village and there was no one caring for them.  During this sad period of neglect the congregation fell away and although we visited several times, there was no leadership and it was evident that the church would not be in existence much longer.

For more than a year now there have not been services held in this village.  It has really been heavy on our hearts that these, our nearest neighbors, who pass through our Bible College every day, are without any place of worship in their village and are living in such spiritual darkness.  Of the small number of villagers who actually made an effort to attend 'church', some gravitated to the nearby mosque, while others had to walk for miles to attend church in other villages.  We have been gravely aware of the need for a Gospel witness in this place.

In light of this an evangelism program was begun at the College this year, which involves the College students walking into this village every Wednesday afternoon to share the Gospel.  Some weeks they preach to a gathered group, other weeks they do door-to-door outreach. We are thankful for the willingness of the village head-woman who gave us permission to have this program.  Next term we hope to expand this program into other nearby villages as well, once we get permission from the various village leaders.  In the meantime, the students are faithfully going to this village weekly.

Within one or two weeks of the evangelism program starting, one of our students came to us and said that he was going to start a church in the village and would be going there every week on Sunday to lead a service.  This was an answer to prayer, as we had been hoping that the Lord would lay it on the hearts of one of our students, or one of our staff members whose church would be capable of church planting, to start something in this village!

So this student, Levy (who is from a Pentecostal church) has been faithfully going to the village every week to lead a service.  Levy is one of our 'weekend students' - there are a few students who live more than 2 1/2 hours away from the College and cannot afford to travel home each weekend, so they stay at the College each weekend (often trying to do a bit of 'piecework' to support themselves). So Levy is in the unfortunate situation of not being able to go home and see his family and his church more than twice in a year!  But what this does mean, is that he has the opportunity to minister to this local village which doesn't have any spiritual leadership.  So we thank God for giving Levy the willingness and the compassion to be a 'missionary' in this way.

He asked us to come and visit, and David to preach this past week.  It's not too far to the village at all -- about a 15 minute walk through the 'bush', with two places where you have to cross streams on a very rustic bridge made of dead logs and mud.  :)  Our total group included our family (with the two kids in our fantastic double stroller, but Elijah walked part way -- he's just not quite old enough to walk BOTH ways in the blazing sun), Rev. Allan our visiting trustee from Scotland, our colleague Marjanne who often joins us when we visit students' churches because it's an opportunity for her to hear an English sermon since David is usually preaching, and Joseph the trustee from England.  We were told the service would start at 9:30 so we left the house around 9:15 to walk down to the village.

When we got to the village Levy was finishing up his time of Bible study with the congregation.  They were meeting in the open air, under the shelter of a tree. The men were all sitting on the right side on a collection of logs and rocks, and the women and children were all sitting in the grass on the left side.  There was a small assortment of chairs, stools, and small benches for our group because we were the special visitors.  David and the other two men, with Levy, sat at the front facing the congregation, and Marjanne and myself sat with the kids at the back of the women's section.

the men at the front -- Levy standing, David, Rev. Allan and Joseph

Unfortunately under the tree where we were meeting was grassy, and the grass had not been 'slashed', everything was quite overgrown, so it wasn't a very pleasant place to sit, even with a stool to perch on!  And what was even worse.... there were thornbushes everywhere with horrible sticky burs that were really painful.  So, I spent a lot of time picking painful thorns off myself and the children, and trying to protect them as much as possible from landing or sitting in a thorny patch.

the women and children sitting in the grass

This was not a typical village church service, in that there was virtually no singing, and it was almost just a sermon and hardly anything else to make it a service!  They welcomed us and introduced each visitor.  They sang one song while taking up an offering, and Levy (strangely enough) 'performed' another song as a solo, marching up and down at the front... And then Levy invited David up for the reading and preaching of the Word. David had chosen as his text Luke 16, the portion where Christ is sharing the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.  David's sermon was about the finality of death and what happens after we die -- that those who trust in Christ go to heaven, those who don't go to hell, and that there is no way that those souls or spirits can return to earth again.  He preached this because of the massive amounts of superstition and witchcraft present in this and many other villages.  They still believe in ancestral spirits which can affect your life for good or evil  -- that the ancestors can curse you or bless you, and whatever happens is a result of witchcraft in one way or another.  So David wanted to preach a very clear sermon about what the Bible has to say about death and the afterlife, to reach out to this villagers in bondage.

David preaching and Levy translating

I sadly didn't get much out of the service, because I was busy wrestling Elijah and Ketzia who were quite restless.  Ketzia in particular was really struggling - she kept crying, and I couldn't figure out why, and I had to take her out of the 'service' (which really just meant that I left the shade of the tree and went behind the nearby hut to deal with her) multiple times.  Still couldn't figure out what was wrong. It may have been teething related, or it may have been that she kept getting pricked by thorns and I just wasn't finding them. But anyway, the kids struggled to such an extent that I hardly heard a word of the entire sermon, which was really discouraging! 

little blond child on the mat with the other children

(On a positive note, Elijah is doing so very well with toilet training that for more than a month now, he's been wearing underwear on our outings to church and to town for our shopping, and we take along his little portable plastic potty so that he can use it even in the car, or wherever we happen to be!  So I brought it in the bottom of the stroller, and he used it during the service (behind the hut again, with a couple of village kids giggling at him) and I was very proud of him.  He only wears nappies when he sleeps now.)

After the sermon, Marjanne led the children in a few songs which they have learned at her weekly Children's Ministry on Saturday afternooons at the College, and that was the extent of the congregational singing!  And then that was the end of the service!  They ushered us out and everyone else stayed behind because apparently they were having some kind of congregational meeting.  So that was it... we walked back home in the blazing sun.

proof that I was there, too :)

It was kind of a funny anticlimatic ending to a service, which to be honest, really wasn't a proper service at all.  You can tell that the villagers still don't really have the wherewithal to arrange things properly, even when they have faithful leadership.  The fact that the service wasn't very organized, and that the grass hadn't even been slashed to provide a decent place to be seated...  But it was encouraging to see Levy's desire to make a difference in this village and to provide them with faithful Gospel preaching.  We pray that the Lord will give him much wisdom and grace in his leadership, and that the Lord will be working in the hearts of the villagers to make them more receptive to and more desirous of the truth of the Scriptures!  Only the Truth will set them free.