Down the home stretch

Well, I learned a real lesson in saving your work while working on the internet! I typed a long, detailed description of the last 3 fun-filled days here, clicked “submit” and the whole thing disappeared, never again to be seen. This is now a repeat, this time typed on my laptop and saved first to flashdisc. Some of the details may be a bit “sketchy” since I’ll think that I already typed them. (I did)

We are really tired today. The combination of heavy schedule and ever-changing areas of responsibility has proved to be quite a challenge. Medical work in a densely populated village where basic medical knowledge is pretty much absent is very difficult as well. Reaching the houses of some of the sick people can be a real challenge. We walked probably 8 miles today, most of it uphill (I know, I know. We started and ended in the same place – so what if it doesn’t make sense, my legs tell me it was all uphill). We treated about 30 patients with a variety of problems – it is difficult to treat without any ability to test and barely the ability to do a decent exam. But the practical gospel of Jesus Christ was being preached in every act of kindness, and we had opportunities to pray in several houses on the way. While attending us and translating, I believe that the pastors are getting some firsthand training in handling certain of the common medical conditions here, and we will continue this for the rest of the week.

Saturday was amazing. We arrived at the property at 8:00 AM, and were amazed to find that, for once, every pastor was on time. I’m sure it was that the wives were involved, and were SO excited to be going to the Game Refuge together. All six pastors, their 5 wives or wives-to-be, one of the church elders, and 5 small children, with our family, all loaded onto a 3-to flatbed truck and headed south, down to Chicwawa for the day. The singing was constant for the entire 2-hour drive. We sang in town, in the country, sang our way down off the plateau, and kept the songs all the way to Longwe National Park. The animals were sparse and it was very hot, but spirits were high and it was a great time. The kids required hosed down a couple of times due to the heat (small kids, not Erika & Liz). A highlight of the trip was Frank Mine falling asleep with his head on the lap of Aubrey on the way back, while Aubrey was deep in conversation about his fiancée and the provision of the Lord. One thing is for certain, our 52-year-old tailbones were not well suited to 7 hours on a flatbed truck. We are SOOORE.

Sunday was a good day. We went to church, sang some powerful worship songs, Erika & Liz did a couple of special numbers by request while I played guitar and sang along a bit (my voice is still not back to normal yet); Frank Gama gave a mini-sermon on Jeremiah’s call and the need for listening to the voice of God when He speaks; Frank Mine gave a sermon on Lamentations 3, God’s mercies being new every morning, but he used the opportunity to move to an evangelistic message, then a message on the need for witnessing, then on the need for a renewed mind as a Christian. I was then asked to speak briefly – I thought that Frank pretty much covered it all… but gave a warning about overemphasis on one member of the Trinity to the exclusion of others – the tendency is to focus on Jesus, since he tends to be soft and warm; or on the Holy Spirit, since He is regarded as the source of power, a power desperately desired in this culture of disease, early death, and poverty. I tried to show how this emphasis on the 2nd and 3rd persons of the Trinity actually led to weakness and instability, since the concepts of the New Testament regarding the Son and the Spirit are firmly rooted in the Old Testament stories which describe the nature and character of Jehovah, God as a single entity, and that this forms the foundation on which Jesus’ teachings are built, and without which we cannot understand the love of Christ or the power of the Holy Spirit fully. When Christ is preached without this foundation, the tendency is for the hearer to accept Christ, simply to add Him to a pantheon of other beliefs, ending up with a powerless, syncretistic belief that does not change the lives of “believers” and therefore cannot change the culture. This offers an explanation for why the gospel has been preached here for 150 years, countless dollars have been poured into the country, but still the AIDS prevalence rate continues to rise, approaching 80% in Zomba! What the country needs is foundational teaching, similar to the NewTribes approach that Pastor Gianeskis taught to the youth last year – using Old Testament storytelling to describe God in an easily transmitted way, placing the gospel of Christ on the foundation of the OT.

I will be using the blog to transmit specific data over the next few days regarding details of the trip, as this seems to be a good way to save this data and disseminate it. We will be visiting a number of ministries here in the meantime.

More soon…

Rick & Wanda & girls