Back to Africa

A week from today I'll be in Africa again. A year ago, two teams from our fellowship traveled to Africa because we had been invited and because we felt led to go. One team led by Troy, an elder at our fellowship, traveled to Kenya and stayed with a pastor and his wife who minister in one of the slums of Nairobi. The other team led by Randy, another elder of our fellowship, traveled to Uganda and ministered in Kampala, Jinja and several other communities. I was part of the Ugandan team and as I look back on that 12-day trip to the “Pearl of Africa” my biggest joy was meeting the people we did and my biggest fear was that we would not return. It is not that we wouldn't want to; it would be matters of time and money as it always seems to be. So, I'm thrilled to be going back.

John at our home in 2008

Our foray into Africa really began in the summer of 2008 when I received a call from a friend of mine who pastors in Minneapolis. He relayed to me that he had a Ugandan pastor staying at his cabin about twenty minutes outside of Chetek and wondered if he could come and stay with us. Hailing from the noisy, bustling city of Kampala that is never at rest, he found the quietness of a cabin in the woods of northern Wisconsin downright terrifying. And this is how I became acquainted with John. He stayed the weekend with us, preached at the weekly worship gathering and that evening our mutual friend from the Twin Cities picked him up and drove him to his next ministry assignment. A couple of families in our fellowship began to support the ministry to orphans that John's fellowship was involved in at the time but I did not hear from him again.

John at Refuge in 2011

In January 2011 the closest thing we have to a missions “committee” met to plan our spring missions “event”. They informed me that the Lord had laid Africa on their heart and that whatever we did it had to be about Africa. So, we began to make plans and a logical thought that emerged from that planning was that we needed to have a man from Africa present at our African missions event. Some phone calls were made and emails sent all of which came to naught. In the mean time, the other plans for the weekend – ethnic dinner and prayer gathering – continued to be made. Our event was slated to begin on a Friday night in late April. On the Monday morning before, I received a call. It was my friend from Uganda, John. “Hello, Pastor Jeff. I am in Chicago and I am looking for accommodations.” The association our fellowship belongs to hosts an annual convention and that year it was held in Chicago. Like a lot of Africans, John had flown in early in hopes of having opportunity to share his ministry with interested fellowships. Of course we were interested – and, providentially, in need - and so that is how a man from Africa happened to end up at our missions event that was focused on, specifically, the countries around the horn of Africa, Uganda among them. As part of his opening remarks on Sunday morning at the worship gathering, in his rich Ugandan accent, he invited us all to “go to Africa and serve the Lord!”

Bishop Success of Nigeria

Our missions event was, from our perspective, a success. Not only was it well attended but the three main components – dinner, prayer and message – came together better than expected. On Monday morning, I took John to Eau Claire to catch the Greyhound and send him on his way with the hope that sometime in the near future I would come and visit him. But something greater than we knew was in process. Two weeks later I received a call from another friend of mine in the Twin Cities area informing me that he had a pastor from Nigeria who was looking for a venue to share his ministry. And that is how another African man found Refuge. A month later, I received a call from a pastor in Duluth who informed me that he had a pastor from Liberia who was wondering if he could share at our weekly gathering. So in three successive months, three men of Africa had stood in our sanctuary, prayed in their local dialect and extended the same invitation for some of us to go and visit them in theirs.

Me at Namutumba

In 2012, two teams did just that and on Sunday, March 18, 2012, I finally stood in Pastor John's pulpit and returned the favor of preaching at their worship gathering just as he had done so twice before in ours. Of course, there was far more to our trip than just that. We met so many other wonderful people both of Ugandan – Pastor John and Sylvia, Pastor Deason of Gospel Messengers Church in Kampala, Charles and Susan of YWAM, Judith of Divine Holistic Ministries, Susan, Godfrey, Nixon, Kirabo, and high school students Rhodah and Ronald – and American – the students of the Discipleship Training School at YWAM-Hopeland (especially Rebecca and Jessica) and Katie Davis of Amazima – descent. With any missions journey, it is very easy to get caught up in the logistical and financial side of things to the point that having gone you never go again. But one of the purposes of the journey, other than the Lord's leading to make the trip in the first place, is to connect with people and build relationships. Impoverished as so much of Africa is, their knee-jerk reaction to the presence of Americans is often the money we might bring with us (that certainly isn't true of all Africans.) But that's not why we went. We went to find and make a few friends and we were fortunate enough to find some.

Steve and Jan have lived in Africa a long time

Strengthening those friendships is why we're now going back. Every relationship requires regular deposits and while social media allows a person like myself to remain connected with any number of people around the globe there's really nothing quite like being there. We fly out of Chicago on Monday and will spend the first half of our trip in Kenya. Pastor Evanson Gitu is the pastor of Calvary Chapel in Ongata Ronga as well as the overseer of Imani Yako (see Imani Yako). We will stay with he and his family during our stay there. Of course, I have a friend from St. Paul – Steve Rasmussen of the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology – who has lived there for many years and I hope that it works out that I can go and see him.

How we get from Kenya to Uganda is a plan that has yet to be worked out but we will be staying where we stayed last year at the YWAM-Hopeland campus outside of Jinja. From there Charis hopes to see her former roommate from her DTS – Susan – who lives literally right around the corner, Sheryl hopes to connect with an American woman who ministers in that neck of the woods, I hope to see Judith and Fred and the high school student I befriended last year – Ronald – and we all hope to pay Katie Davis and the folks of Amazima a visit for good measure. I know it's not a statement of faith but I'm gonna keep my fingers crossed.

                                         Amazima is a place I hope to get back to someday

I have a memory. It must have been '96 or '97 and it was a Friday. It was warm and on a lark, we packed up the van and drove up to Amnicon Falls State Park a little less than two hours from here. The Amnicon River flows through this small but beautiful park. It's a popular place during the summer months as lots of people like to swim in the hole underneath the big falls. What's more, it's usually like swimming in bath water. We sat atop the little falls - about 35 yards downstream from the “big” falls – all afternoon long as the kids enjoyed climbing all over the rocks and played in the gently flowing water. When it was time to get out, we changed and drove up Highway 2 to Port Wing and found a restaurant where we enjoyed a hearty fish fry. When we drove home that night we basked in the afterglow of a wonderful day spent together as a family.

Amnicon Falls (the big falls)

But the challenge with wonderful moments comes when you try and recapture them as we did – with a lot of pushing on my part – the following year. But there were different variables in play. Whereas the year before it had been dry, this year we had had a very wet spring. Consequently the usually placid Amnicon River was moving pretty fast and the water level was up. What's more, the year before it had been an unusually hot day so to sit in the warmish waters as they flowed past you had been positively refreshing. The day we chose to return to Amnicon was gray and overcast and the water just a little bit on the chilly side. But I was insistent. “It'll be fine,” I told Linda even though her maternal instincts were nearing alarm status. Even I could see that it would not do to sit atop the little falls so we chose to walk up stream and dabble at the edges of the river, outside of the current. But we had little children who had us outnumbered 4 to 2 and I had Emma in my arms. And just like that Ed got caught in the current. It's one of those slow-motion like memories that I can still recall how suddenly he was being dragged from us toward the little falls his eyes wide in fear with Linda, tripping over the myriad of basalt that peppers the bottom of the Amnicon, in hot pursuit. While he was caught with plenty of yards to spare from the top of the “little” falls our pleasant afternoon was abruptly over. The kids were scared and Linda was more than peeved that I had not heeded her gut feeling about getting into the water. This is the risk one takes when you try and recapture a wonderful memory – like a siren it may lure onto the rocks of disappointment and cost bodily harm to yourself or someone you love! So, having gone to Africa last year and enjoyed myself so capitally my biggest concern is resist the urge to repeat or replay that journey this year. There may be people we do not get to see and things we do not get to do but it'll be okay. This is this year's trip and the Lord has a different purpose for it – and for me – altogether. My challenge is to stay in step with him and see where he leads me. 

It was a great day the first time around...