First Mission Trip

Jerry and Barbara Schlieff were missionaries to Zimbabwe and a part of Fisher Street. While stateside Jerry invited me to come to Zimbabwe on my first trip overseas. If I had known what we were going to do, I probably would not have gone. So I am glad that I didn't know because the trip radically changed my life and my understanding of missions and the church. It was one of the most important times in my life.

When I arrived the war that changed Rhodesia to Zimbabwe had been over for about a year and the country was in the throes of a great transition. The day after I arrived we loaded up Jerry's van and along with a journeyman and a young African student who would be my translator we headed out on a two day drive. We drove along the plateau, which until the implosion of Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabbe, had been the breadbasket of Africa. We turned off the plateau and headed down into the bush. The first day we drove to the end of the paved road and spent the night at Sinyate, the missionary hospital where one of our missionaries had been murdered by rebels during the war. The next morning we headed out on the sand road and drove for about three hours and then took a right and started driving overland. Jerry and Barbara had worked in this area until they were forced to evacuate because of the war, because it was a center of rebel activity. We drove overland until Jerry saw two young men and we stopped and he told them we were there to help restart their church.

As background, when the rebels took control of the area they razed the home Jerry and Barbara had lived in along with the little church building and the medical clinic. They would enter the villages, confiscate Bibles and hymnals and burn them in front of the people. They forbade the people to be involved in any type of Christian worship. In one village they gathered the people and called out the Christian elder. They covered his head, hands and feet with oil soaked burlap bags and then sat him on fire. As he died an agonizing death, the rebels told the people that this was the way they would treat Christians. When we arrived the people had lived five years in fear and intimidation with no church, no worship, no teaching, no Gospel.

As Jerry talked to the two young men they said they wanted three training session each day and an evangelistic service at night and to travel from village to village in between. With that we sat up camp in a dry river bed, which I would discover was a strategic location. When we put the tent up we discovered that the last person who had used the tent has torn the zipper at the bottom of the entrance and it left a gaping open space. This would be a point of deep consternation. We had no weapons (Jerry said that if we had guns it would invite danger) and no way to communicate with the outside. All we had were two flash lights. Every night when we would come back to the tent we had take long sticks and move everything to make sure a snake hadn't crawled in and then when we bedded down for the night we would line our shoes across the opening to try to keep snakes out. That first night, we sat around the campfire with the sounds of drums in the distance, total darkness around us and I kept thinking, "What in the world am I doing here." I asked Jerry what he expected to happen that week. He responded with by questioning if I was talking about us being in danger or if we would see much happen spiritually. I replied that I guess that I was asking about both. He said that he didn't think we were in danger from the rebels left in the area, but he didn't know for sure, and that he thought we would see real responsiveness from the people. We turned in for the night, the four of us lying side by side with little room between and nothing but a think blanket and the canvass tent bottom between us and the hard ground. As the other went to sleep I began what was a nightly vigil for me of staring at the opening at the bottom of the entrance to make sure that a mamba or cobra didn't slither in and listening the sounds of animals outside the tent. I was sacred to death and I don't think I slept more than two or three hour a night the entire time we were there.

The next morning we stared the training sessions. The only one's there were the two young men and their families. We sat in high weeds and started with basic discipleship. It was the dry season and hot, dusty and dirty. The weeds provide a little shade as the people sat and listened. It was such a small group and I wondered why were we doing all of this for so few. Little did I know what the next days would hold.

We gathered other people in two ways. First, about 100 feet from the tent a hole had been dug in the dry river bed where the women from the surrounding villages would come and laying prostrate on the ground would dip water with gourds to fill their large buckets with water which they would carry on their heads back to the village. This gave us a point of contact to bring people in. Then between the teaching sessions we would travel to from village to village. One of the men would go in and ask permission from the village elder for us to enter. The the woman would sing and dance to draw the people of the village. When they were assembled Jerry or I would preach. It was a unique experience for me to use topless dancers to draw a crowd to preach to.

The number of people coming grew daily. Because the elephants were moving they were afraid to travel at night and camped out just above us. We would teach during the day, eat lunch with the people. Their staple diet was shasa which was a pile of a solidified type of grits. Everyone would reach out with dirty hands to get a handful and dip it into a common bowl of sauce. I learned the important lesson of eating whatever was set before you so as not to offend the people you are trying to reach.

At night we had the evangelistic services under the trees. The people sat on logs around a fire. I used one of the flashlights to read the Scriptures and Reggaz, the student translator, used the other. God moved mightily. Some repented with tears and broken hearts for denying the faith during the time of great persecution. Others were converted. One hundred came to faith. While we rejoiced over the immediate results, little did we known that from that little spark some 10,000 people would be converted in that region of the bush over the next two years.

On the humorous side, one evening a young man tripped in the dark and broke his collarbone. The next day Jerry and the others drove him to the hospital at Sinyate, leaving me alone at the camp. That day a large group of women came to draw water. Before I knew it, I was surrounded. They were all talking and laughing and would reach out and rub my white skin and then look at their fingers and laugh harder. All I could do was stand there for hours and grin foolishly.

There were so many hardships during those ten days. We didn't have water to drink and lived off but hot Cokes. Eating with the people left my stomach swollen and I felt like a million amoeba were swimming around inside of me. There was the constant fear of snakes and wild animals. One day we came across a weapons stash that had recently been dug up and knew there were armed rebels in the area. But, the moving of God was remarkable and the preciousness of the people and their plight captured my heart. After those days in the bush, I would never be the same.

Upon returning from the bush I had a very different experience of African. First, I went to the seminary in Gwelo. To my dismay they were teaching the African students Criswell's "Guidebook for Pastors." I couldn't think of anything more irrelevant to their context. This was confirmed by the fact that none of the students were interested in going to the bush to work. Instead they all wanted to come to America.

The folly of westernization through education was evident as I went to work in one of the townships outside of Gwelo. The pastor was a graduate of the seminary. He was a kind and gentle man, but was isolated from the people by his westernized way of doing church. Walking into the his church was like walking into any church in America. There was a piano and organ, and a Sunday School and Training Union attendance board on the front walls. Only a hand full of people gathered. Jerry would drive me out in the mornings and drop me off and picked me up late in the evenings. The townships were wicked places characterized by drunkenness and immorality. The pastor and I walked all day to witness to people. But instead of being receptive they spoke harshly to the pastor, with women saying the most vulgar things. He was separated from the people because the church was totally out of thier context. We were not able to reach anyone that week.

I was not sophificated in my understanding of missions. I didn't know anything about contextualization and indigenization. All I knew was that this model was all wrong.

While in Gwelo the most frightening experience of my life occurred. I had walked downtown and went into an African shopping area. It was an area surrounded by a wall about five feet high with only one entrance/exit. I was at a stall at the back of the shopping area when suddenly I found myself surrounded by a group of angry men. They were former rebels who had spend the past five years killing any white person they could. I could not understand what they were saying, but I could understand the anger and hate of their words as they yelled at me and poked me in the chest. The situation grew more tense. There was a bucket of machetes behind me and a reached back and had each hand on one. Then suddenly I released my grip and walked and pushed my way through the shouting mob. When I got outside the shopping compound I thought my knees would buckle from the fear. When they didn't, I ran as fast as I could.

The experiences in Africa were many and varied. When I returned home, it took some time to pray and think through all that had happened. As I reflect back, there were four major changes in my life as a result of this first trip.
1. A passions for missions and the nations was lit in my heart.
2. I became a serious student of missions.
3. I made the commitment to be involved in traveling to the nations.
4. I came to understand that a true New Testament church is a missionary church. God did not create missions for the church. He created His church for missions. From that time on this would be an essential and focal part of my pastoral vision for the church, my preaching, my leadership and my understanding of the purpose of the church in giving, praying, sending and going.

It would not be long until those lessons would be critical in the local context of Fisher Street.