Peter Hammond + Frontline Missions

Today we had Peter Hammond from 'Frontline Missions' come to speak to us. This is a mission agency he began that goes into warzones to evangelise to the soldiers and brings relief aid in. He was there in Monzabique during the communist reign, in Rwanda during the genocide, Angola during the war and now has been working among the persecuted Christians of Sudan for the last 15 years. There are a Christian tribe, the Nubians, who have been living in the mountains and holding out against the Arabs and Muslims for 14 centuries. Sudanese Christians are quite regularly bombed, landmined (most churchgoers on crutches) and killed by the majority muslims as well as starved of medicine, food and the bible by the UN occasionally.
Interestingly, because of the war on Iraq, Sudan has declared peace because it's afraid that it will be next targets by the US.
Anyway, a great answer to prayer is that his agency also happens to have a lot of resources in the native languages of Botswana and Zimbabwe like the Jesus film and discipleship books e.t.c so we go on Monday to pick them up and have lunch with his organisation.
While listening to him speak, I realised that I will probably work with unreached people groups and the persecuted church. There's so many people wanting to hear the gospel, they just need Christians willing to risk themselves to take it to them.

Evangelism through the arts

Oh this week looks like physical torture. Today Matt opened his big mouth and somehow volunteered me to be a solo dancer in one of the dances we are learning this week. I have to 'do my thing' for a 2 counts of 8, which doesn't sound like much but is torture by humiliation basically. Then we went ice-skating as part of our Zimbabwe team bonding and I pulled a muscle while trying to rescue everyone else in 'freeze-tag'.
Last week a group of us wrote a song because our study was 'Worship'.

Building Completed!

So on Saturday we rocked up bright and early to rebuild Mama Zola's roof. Soon neighbours of hers arrived and we pulled off the plastic sheet that had been waterproofing her roof and started ripping up the current rusted corrugated iron. There were about 10 people on the roof, which I would have said couldn't support even a child on it!

Then we sat around in true African style and discussed for over an hour about where the new timber should go! We had only collected enough money to buy timber to replace one half of the building so we had to make do with re-inforcing the other side with scraps.

That's Lindsey playing with the kids. the neighbourhood turned out to watch.

Amazingly the roof was nearly done by midday, so we had lunch all together in one of her neighbours house.

This is Kari on the roof siliconing it. She cut her thumb and bled all over it soon later.

This is everyone who worked on it, except for Andrea and Chiye who went home early. Mama Zola is in the middle and she is ecstatic.

Mama Zola's Roof

This Saturday, we are going to rebuild Mama Zola's roof. Mama Zola is a warm and lovely African lady of about mid 40's who cooks here at Beautiful Gate. She has been living in her house for 5 years while waiting for the government to reassign her to the promised government housing - which is nothing, some families have been waiting 20 years! She has a son of about 18 and also lives with her cousing and till recently, her sister.
Anyway, she was mentioning that she wasn't looking forward to winter because her roof leaked so she was wet and cold throughout it. So Beth thought that we should have a look at it.
We walked through the township, Darby, Beth, Chiye, Jenny and I till we came to her house. The total size of it is 7 x 6 metres, which is actually fairly large for a township house. No wonder the roof leaked though, it was made from the left over peices of corrugated iron that they use on construction sites here. Green soap had been used to try and stop the leaking and a plastic tarpaulin over the whole roof, but the tarp also had holes.
So we drew up some plans, measured carefully (after the original African measurement that Chiye did using his feet!) and asked for donations. People have nearly enough to recover the whole roof in zinc, whichI worked out last night it should cost about $1800 rand (approx $300 Australian). So this saturday we bring ladders and hammers and hopefully can redo it in a day.
Some of Mama Zola's friends are also coming to help apparently. Hopefully it all goes well, because I've never built a roof before and I'm the one who worked out the construction plans.

Picnics and Storms

In case I didn't mention it before, this week we're being taught by Padraig Twomey, a reconciliation worker between Catholics and Protestants in Belfast, Ireland. Today we had a pretty cool mini-sermon from him.
In John 6, It's passover time, a time to share meals traditionally, and Jesus just happens to share one with 5000 people. When the other disciples don't know what to do, it's Andrew, the litle brother who notices the small details, who mentions 2 fish and 5 barley loaves - traditionally the harvest offering to God, also the poor man's bread. It mentions that the crowd is on the green grass - unusual for Israel, especially around that time of the year. It's like Eden again - God is walking around feeding men and all around is green and lush.
But then Jesus leaves and straight after this picnic experience, it's storms and darkness for the siciples as they try to cross the lake in their small boat.
It's like the Christian life - great picnic experiences where everything is lush and life is great, church is great e.t.c. But you have to leave sometime and go through the darkness where you may not see your way and there's nothing solid beneath you and you may feel the absence of God. Yet Jesus is on the shore and he sees them (without judgement or annoyance because they left him behind). He walks out to them on the water, which is like arecreation of Genesis 1 where the Spirit of God hovered over the waters and chaos, now the Son of God walks over the waters.
When he reaches the boat, it says that they made to let him in, and found they were already at their destination. Like on our journeys when we think we're aiming for somewhere, even if it's a good goal like being a missionary, when we encounter Jesus, we're already at our real destination.
If we carry our crosses in life we meet Jesus more than at the picnic, he will walk out to us.

Zimbabwe + Botswana comedy team!

Yes, yesterday the teams were announced for outreach and I am going to Botswana then Zimbabwe for about 2.5 months. True, it's not all comedy, but the motto of this outreach is "Bringing laughter and those who are flexible will not be broken." The places we are going to have very little to laugh about, and not surprisingly, my team has quite a few of the natural comedians on this DTS. Also for almost all the time we will have no beds, running or drinkable tap water, electricity or contact with the outside world. The outreach is based in villages and we go by Combi.
We leave on April 21st for Botswana. There we are linking up with a local pastor and running a 4 day conference. He also wants us to do some teaching about AIDS/HIV. Apparently the church is mostly of girls, because many house-holds there have no parents due to aids e.t.c and are run by older kids taking care of younger ones.
Then we go to Bulawayo Zimbabwe. There we join a orphan/foster care program that has about 100 kids. We will visit their houses, run bible studies for families, teach the kids, play sports with them, visit schools and hospitals and feed them if we can - Zimbabwe currently has no petrol and food is scarce. The govt. doesn't allow people to give away food either because they think it makes them look bad or that the food comes with an agenda behind it.
The last three weeks the team is still praying and working out where to go from there on.
And I have to dance and do dramas! Yuk! Apparently, it's the best way to reach this culture. We begin getting out camping gear, medicine and putting our dance routines together soon. At least, if I have to dance in public it will guarantee laughs.