WELCOME TO SAHWIRA ARTICLES
Christian greetings. These articles start as part of an e-circular among some brothers and sisters in Christ who are real friends (sahwira in Shona) of Brian Rensford (from Holroyd New Life Church, Sydney, Australia). We have had a growing burden on our heart to circulate from time to time a longer article designed to raise discussion among the many dear brothers and sisters we have come to know and love in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and lately, South Africa (and a few others who have an interest in what is happening in that part of the world). They get posted here for general publication after they have been circulated (slightly amended for public consumption).
Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa's biggest problem - the crushing passivity of the people's mindset. Matthew Parris Dec 2008
Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it's Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work. It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I've been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I've been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.
Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good. I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It's a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith. But this doesn't fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.
First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall. At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi. We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission. Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers - in some ways less so - but more open.
This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. “Privately” because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service. It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man's place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.
There's long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs” and therefore best for “them”; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours. I don't follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.
Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.
How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds - at the very moment of passing into the new - that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it's there,” he said. To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It's .well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary's further explanation - that nobody else had climbed it - would stand as a second reason for passivity. Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosophical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to, to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates. Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.
And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.
Sahwira #5 - Maintaining Hope and Faith in Hard Times
1. A meditation for the New year from Denis Plant – Principal of Vision Bible College, Australia.
Those things in which we have placed our hope have failed us. The stock market has crashed, jobs are disappearing, and family homes are being lost. Families are falling apart; for many their health suffers in spite of great strides in medicine and on and on the list goes... (and this is just Australia, not Zimbabwe!)
But the message and hope of Paul is clear, there is hope. There IS a hope that does not let us down nor bring despair. There IS a hope that lifts us to a place of coping. There IS a Hope that does not bring shame.
That hope, according to Paul, is born out of the Love of God. This hope will sustain us in the face of any issue. It will not always protect FROM the issue but will always sustain us IN the issue. That hope is in the reality of our relationship with Jesus. It is nurtured and developed with our understanding of Him grows. Interestingly, almost every prayer for security, prosperity, or health for you in the New Testament is also linked to knowing God and His Kingdom in greater measure.
These are difficult times in which we live, and 2009 will (continue to) be a challenge; we are foolish to think otherwise. But these are times to know Jesus and His love for us, and (to know) the hope that is poured out by the Holy Spirit into our lives. That hope will bring a better year in every sense.
2. And for our madzi sahwira, we add a Bible meditation to start another New Year – with the intention that it also adds HOPE to everyone, regardless of their current immediate circumstances.
(Hab 1:2-4) How long, O Lord, must I call for help? But you do not listen! “Violence!” I cry, but you do not come to save. Must I forever see this sin and misery all around me? Wherever I look, I see destruction and violence. I am surrounded by people who love to argue and fight. The law has become paralysed and useless, and there is no justice given in the courts. The wicked far outnumber the righteous, and justice is perverted with bribes and trickery.
(Hab 1:5-7) The Lord replied, “Look at the nations and be amazed! Watch and be astounded at what I will do! For I am doing something in your own day, something you wouldn’t believe even if someone told you about it. I am raising up the Babylonians to be a new power on the world scene. They are a cruel and violent nation who will march across the world and conquer it. They are notorious for their cruelty. They do as they like, and no one can stop them..
God sometimes uses secular means to execute judgment on the lawless who abuse God’s justice. And on those who deceive, cheat, lie, steal, are unfaithful, and sexually immoral. But, His plan is always to convict, cleanse, heal, and restore…. Never to leave His godly people smashed to the ground….
(Hab 1:12-13,17).… is your plan in all of this to wipe us out? Surely not! O Lord our Rock, you have decreed the rise of these Babylonians to punish and correct us for our terrible sins. You are perfectly just in this. But will you, who cannot allow sin in any form, stand idly by while they swallow us up? Should you be silent while the wicked destroy people who are more righteous than they?.... Will you let them get away with this forever? Will they succeed forever in their heartless conquests?
(Hab 2:1-14) I will climb up into my watchtower now and wait to see what the Lord will say to me and how he will answer my complaint. Then the Lord said to me, “Write my answer in large, clear letters on a tablet, so that a runner can read it and tell everyone else. But these things I plan won’t happen right away. Slowly, steadily, surely, the time approaches when the vision will be fulfilled. If it seems slow, wait patiently, for it will surely take place. It will not be delayed. Look at the proud! They trust in themselves, and their lives are crooked; but the righteous will live by their faith. Wealth is treacherous, and the arrogant are never at rest. They range far and wide, with their mouths opened as wide as death, but they are never satisfied. In their greed they have gathered up many nations and peoples. But the time is coming when all their captives will taunt them, saying, ‘You thieves! At last justice has caught up with you! Now you will get what you deserve for your oppression and extortion!’ Suddenly, your debtors will rise up in anger. They will turn on you and take all you have, while you stand trembling and helpless. You have plundered many [peoples]; now they will plunder you. You murderers! You have filled the countryside with violence and all the cities, too. How terrible it will be for you who get rich by unjust means! You believe your wealth will buy security, putting your families beyond the reach of danger. But by the murders you committed, you have shamed your name and forfeited your lives. The very stones in the walls of your houses cry out against you, and the beams in the ceilings echo the complaint. How terrible it will be for you who build cities with money gained by murder and corruption! Has not the Lord Almighty promised that the wealth of nations will turn to ashes? They work so hard, but all in vain! For the time will come when all the earth will be filled, as the waters fill the sea, with an awareness of the glory of the Lord.
May I beseech you to resist the temptation to “cut corners” (don't go haulume!) while God prepares to execute His judgment on the unrighteous, on those who oppress the poor and disadvantaged! Remain a man / woman of integrity, even if it means you might appear to be disadvantaged in the immediate future. Hope always has long-term goals in view – that is true “success”…. And such a stand requires true “faith” in Jehovah-Jireh, the LORD our Provider. Truly Mwari anopa zvose, but the timing may not yet be revealed to you. As Habakkuk was told, “wait patiently for the change, and in the meantime, live by faith. The God of the Old Testament who literally supplied the widow and her son with enough food to not starve, is the same God we serve and hope in today!
An extensive discussion on what is true “faith” appears on our website (click here). It covers the Biblical meaning of the word, “faith”, and how it applies to us today, wherever we may live and minister, and whatever circumstances we may find ourselves in. Very relevant right now-now especially to our madzi sahwira in Southern Africa….. Mwari akuropa fadzei!
Sahwira #4 – Strengthening our Personal Tent!
My dear brothers and sisters. A young brother in Christ and I are flying next week once again to our second home – beloved Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Takafara kushanya muZimbabwe. The thought of coming back again brings to my mind the many, many precious saints of God who have helped in so many ways to make us feel “at home” even when we are so far from Sydney, Australia. People who have sacrificed in many ways so we can connect with God’s people and their leaders.
In returning to Chinhoyi, Gweru, Mkoba, and the Beira Corridor, we are missing many of the places we have been to in the last few years, but our time is shorter (after spending six weeks only four months ago, I am grateful our church has released us to come again). If you are near these areas, we hope to see you somewhere face-to-face. After all, that is what a sahwira is for!
Moses drew his strength from his times with his God face-to-face in what I call his “tent of intimacy”. There he was alone with God in a small tent away from the tabernacle, where he performed much public ministry. And there God spoke with him “face-to-face, as a man speaks to his sahwira!” [Exodus 33:7-11]. How those words have stayed in my heart for many years… From that place of personal friendship with God, Moses was able to bear the burden of ministry without failing or collapsing.
Our Lord Jesus also picked up this emphasis, when He revealed to His disciples that the goal of His earthly ministry was not just about completing the work that the Father had given Him to do (our redemption), but also to draw these very ordinary men (and women who supported Him) into a circle of friendship, where their relationship with Him (and later with one another) was as important as the work they were called to do [John 15:1-16]. I want to live in, and minister out of, such a circle of godly, biblical friendship…. And I hope you do too.
Research has shown that the most common factor that people in ministry who fail, and fall into sin, share is that they neglected their personal devotional life with God – away from the crowd! And this rarely happens in a moment. It is usually a gradual process – eaten away by other demands. Truly, they that wait upon the Lord WILL renew their strength (continually!), and rise up with Holy Spirit power to serve on and on, without falling or failing!
Tiri vashandi vaKristo tose. Can I urge you as a fellow mushandi to keep your personal “tent” strong, so you can continue for many years to serve God and His people without fear of failure or falling away? In good and in hard times. The Thessalonian church knew great hardship, yet Paul commended them for their perseverance in times of adversity. We will be ministering further on some of these things during our coming visit.
In the meantime, sahwira, muropa fadzwe! Ticha zo onana, mukoma Brian.
SAHWIRA #3 - greeting before returning
Vakoma. Tinokukwazisai! Amai Elizabeth and I are returning to our beloved Zimbabwe and Mozambique next week. We are so looking forward to seeing again many of our dear brothers and sisters in Christ, who have taken up such a part of our hearts over the past 25 years - since our church began to support the work in 1982 of Ron Davies (Global Literature Lifeline) and since 1993, Loxley Ford (Lifeline Ministries). Tafara kuuya muZimbabwe zvakare….
It is only 8 months since I was last there, and this time, Elizabeth and I are being accompanied by Gavin Watts. He is an elder from our home church (Holroyd New Life Church) in Sydney, Australia. Gavin has been a strong supporter of our missions’ ministry into Southern Africa over many years. He and his dear wife (and four children) have been members of our church for 31 years now! They are reliable, trustworthy people – the kind we all need in our local churches! Akazvipira kuna Mwari, akazvipira kuhama munaShe!
God has put in my heart and mind an emphasis for this visit on the “Priesthood of Every Believer” – that great New Testament truth that the church fathers and then the Protestant reformers fought and died for. When all the grace giftings God has placed in His church (and that is primarily through the local churches) function properly – when they are given room to operate and training is made available for all the believers - then there is a wonderful balance between spiritual and practical activity. And in these days we live in, the second is as greatly needed as the first! May God’s abundant grace be further released as we do serious time in His Word, with the aim of establishing solid, reliable, anointed local people and churches that will still be functioning in 30 years time and beyond – should Jesus’ Second Coming be delayed!
PS. If you are groaning at the use (or misuse!) of Shona in this letter, you have to blame Kefas Makava (my dear mwanakomana and mudzidzisi from Chegutu who has been living with us in Sydney since he came back with me in August 2006)! Kefas was a Lifeline Ministry Training Program student in 2000, and trained in children’s ministry under Alan Graham at CEF, Harare. He has been given a visa by our Government for two years to help with Religious Education among the growing number of African students (from many countries) in the schools in my township area here in Sydney. He is a credit to the Zimbabwe education system, and the ministry of CEF and Lifeline!
SAHWIRA #2 - the New Emerging Spirituality in the West
Makadini. We have looked occasionally over the past couple of years at developing notions of “spirituality”. It was a word we sekuru rarely heard expressed in secular society – either in personal conversation or in the media. But now the media in the West regularly embraces it! People talk about their “quest for spirituality” in positive, life-affirming terms. Isn’t this wonderful!?!? After decades of being told that in polite society one never discussed politics, sex, or religion….
Here’s a recent quote. In Africa, the name Paul Roos will mean nothing to you. In 2005, he coached our local Sydney Australian Rules football team (of which we are humble members!...) to their first (national) premiership in 72 years! It was amazing!
Then, in 2006, he took them to the Grand Final again – to lose by ONE POINT. In a game where an average score can be 110 to 80, that’s the narrowest margin. Players fell on the ground, exhausted and stunned by how close they had come to a (rare) double premiership. Over the years, other coaches who experienced such a narrow loss in a Grand Final wept, got angry, stumbled for words, and left depressed….
Not Paul Roos. He congratulated his losing players, said, “there’s always next year, boys”, and then went on holidays with his wife and children… The Media remarked on his calmness of spirit, and lack of agony (the kind that makes football coaches age prematurely).
What was his response to the Media? He said he gets his inner calm from his “spirituality”. But, before Christian football supporters sing hallelujahs, here’s a quote from a very recent article…. Read the language carefully… Selah….
…(Paul) Roos is a thinker. The football code ... has also given us a man who meditates, does yoga and ponders the meaning of life. He and (his wife) Tami discovered meditation in 1999 when they went on a course run by guru Deepak Chopra. "It's an extension of who we are as a family," says Roos. "It's about trying to get some balance in your life. It's about spending time with yourself, clearing your thoughts and putting things in perspective."
He meditates five days a week, typically in the morning, for about half an hour. It's a personal thing and a spiritual one. Is he religious? "No body's ever asked me that before," he replies, a reminder that he's more accustomed to questions about goals that come off a player's boot than the personal ones that swim around his head. He and Tami are both Catholics but that doesn't define them. "I believe in an afterlife," he says. "I believe there's a creator. I'd be interested to read the Bible, to be honest. I've got a real interest in spiritual things but we're not as a family locked into any particular belief system."
That book he's reading on the afterlife is about the experiences of people who believe they have died and come back - gone part of the way to the other side. "If somebody suggests a book, I'm happy to read it. There are some fascinating books to read that put footy and life in perspective. It does give you some really good balance, particularly when you're getting beaten.” - Neil McMahon, the Sydney Magazine Feb 2007
What are these words with such vague “content”?? Spirituality that is “Catholic”, yet “undefined”??? Hinduism in Western terminology? “I’d be interested to read the Bible”…. In a land where there are more Bibles available than people!?!? And you don’t get burned or beheaded for reading it?? Words with meaning??? The language is confusing. This is something like announcing in Zimbabwe, that a well-known n'anga gave you advice that brought you to the true God!
At the other end of the spectrum, we have American commentator Charles [Chuck] Colson saying…
The results [of a survey conducted] reflect the shift away from traditional religion, like Christianity, to what Americans have come to call vaguely "spirituality." This shift enables people to enjoy the emotional and psychological benefits of religion without any restrictions on personal freedom. The problem is that's there no evidence that this kind of religion can build the kind of society for which the respondents [of the survey] yearn. On the contrary, the "firm line" they desire between good and bad comes from people subordinating their own opinions and desires to the requirements of their faith. As James Davison Hunter points out, it's this submission and accountability to religious tradition that is the real source of morality.
Colson spent time in prison in the USA after the 1972 President Nixon Watergate scandal, so he ought to know….. Interestingly too, Islam is Arabic for “submission”!
True spirituality MUST be informed from outside our own circle of understanding and subjective values. This is a crucial issue in any society conditioned to set up its own gods (idols) – gods that have been shaped from “within” the same system - that seemingly (short-term at least) satisfy the God-created thirst for spirituality, yet make few demands on the people for change, repentance, commitment for “forsake everything and follow”. The sects in Africa thrive on this spiritual language without external, Biblically-defined content.
No wonder Jesus’ core message is so unpopular today.
(Matthew 10:32-39) "Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven. Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law-- a man's enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
(Mark 8:34-35) Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.
To be continued... Tirikuropa fadzwa! Feel free to send in any comments on modern spirituality as it affects your area of ministry, and we will circulate them at later date.
SAHWIRA #1 - Reflections on why Western churches are generally weaker than African churches in exercising faith for healing and deliverance
My visits to Zimbabwe and Mozambique have helped sharpen my perspective on this problem. I believe that it is strongly connected to the level of quality health care that is so available at close hand in our societies. It has led to a fallback position in prayer for healing in Western churches – one that you simply do not and cannot see in the Third World. The overall general result of this is a much sharper faith in expecting God to heal – because if He doesn’t, you could die! It’s a wonderful way to focus your real level of faith on breaking through to God’s promises....
In Australia, if we don’t press through to the power of God, we can go tomorrow morning to a doctor nearby, and get treatment (at very reasonable cost too), so, we can easily get “Plan B” up and operating - if God doesn’t come through and heal us, the medical system will deliver a satisfactory, beneficial alternative.
There’s a lack of spiritual violence in this too (as in – “the Kingdom of God suffers violence and the violent take it by force”). I have also observed that wherever English culture has been the dominant factor in shaping a society, then in the religious aspect, you will regularly find a conservatism that leads to a paralysis of expressions of faith (“we don’t do that here!..”). There will not be much crying out to God in abandonment; little weeping publicly before God, etc, etc. And little emotional, publicly-expressed, jubilation either (let alone dancing!). How sad. That’s one thing I love about going back repeatedly to Africa – I can be myself in loud and emotional expression of gratitude to our great God, and no one will stare me down with a disapproving look!
Some years ago, an Australian Anglican graduate of Wheaton College, Illinois, USA, came to see me before returning there for post-graduate study. He said, “I know I just HAVE to be baptised in the Holy Spirit before I leave next Tuesday!” It was late Sunday night, so he came to my house. He prayed for a long while, and nothing happened - prayers of thanks, salvation, dedication, etc, etc. He went on and on with a genuinely earnest heart. But nothing happened.
In desperation, I got a word of knowledge as I laid hands on him, and prayed loudly, “I rebuke in Jesus name the EYE that is staring at John right now!” Suddenly, he manifested a full-blown demonic reaction, his face twisted as I cast the spirit out; it left out of his mouth in a very loud exhalation. And he was immediately baptised in the Holy Spirit – fluent, instant tongues – immediate abandonment of his oh-so CONTROLLED conservative Anglican praise and worship! The neighbours must have heard him shouting his praise to God in old-time Pentecostal fashion! He didn’t care anymore what anyone thought! He had broken through to the freedom God promises!
When he came back to Planet Earth, I asked him what the “eye” thing was all about. He said he had been an architect from a non-Christian, well-to-do, North Shore family. When he announced to his father he was leaving the profession to take up Christian study for ministry, the father simply STARED at him a powerful DISAPPROVING stare, and said nothing. Only now had he realised that for years he had been paralysed in areas of will by that “eye of disapproval”. What a terrible thing FEAR of disapproval can be when it is abused….
Six months later he contacted me from the USA to say there hadn’t been a day go by that he didn’t thank the Lord for the freedom he had experienced that glorious night. And was still experiencing. How good is God?
This reminded me of my old high school in New Zealand, where I grew up. It was a church school – religious, but spiritually dead. I went to the first-ever reunion put on in Australia in late 2006 (a week after returning from Africa! What a contrast!). It was dead, fairly boring, lots of alcohol flowed, and it was funds-seeking. I thought of the power of Freemasonry that still operates quietly and controllingly behind the scenes in my old school’s Board, and its ongoing effect in deadening any potential spiritual vitality.
Yes, to be free of the “eye of disapproval” is so important for Western Christianity, before breakthroughs come for healing, deliverance, and engagement in our God-appointed calling. I suspect I would never have learned this if I had stayed home in New Zealand (or in Australia only, for that matter). How in debt I am to my (black and white) African brothers and sisters for what they have allowed me to learn and experience among them…
Even in the tiny part of the picture I work in, we have seen true miracles from time to time. In healings from cerebral (often fatal) malaria, witchdoctor curse-sourced sicknesses, etc. In freedom from dark powers.
And interestingly, in many, many “God-moments” of provision. Some amazing and a bit hilarious – like the time in 2002 when Elizabeth and I were taken to one of the most remote and poverty-stricken parts of Zimbabwe by a dear brother who was overseeing several bush churches there. There the people kept getting their crops stolen by elephants. And lions killed a donkey 3km from our bush-tent the day we arrived!
After three days of ministry, we set out back to Harare on the gravel road, after driving to Taschinga over the worst road ever in my 45 years of driving. Before long, we had two further punctures on the second vehicle (a Landrover with 8-ply tyres that you can’t strip off the rim without proper tyre levers). We had no tyre levers. We were stuck. Our host, Peter Zulu, said to one of his sons, “go over to that compound (about 4 huts) and see if they have any tyre levers”. There were no signs of vehicles anywhere, only animal tracks in and out. I inwardly rolled my eyes….
But, five minutes later, the boy emerged with two tyre levers!! I was stunned! Peter looked at my amazed expression, grinned, and said, “Brian, in Zimbabwe we not only live by faith, we DRIVE by faith!” And he meant it. Mwari anopa zvose indeed….
These are valuable lessons for a murungu to learn, that he could never learn in Sydney (where, if a cell-phone call doesn’t summon the AA to repair your vehicle within 30 minutes, you get angry)….. I had to go and sleep in the bush where David Livingstone slept (literally) to learn what God could not teach me in my comfortable circumstances back home in Sydney
It’s true… The dear people we relate to there in Zimbabwe and Mozambique have taught me as much as I have taught them! Things of the Spirit; things about real faith! Kudza ishe!
Until next time, takazvipira kuna Mwari, takazvipira kuhama vanhu raMwari.