A few months ago Pastor Norman started talking with Jeff about exploring Zimbabwe as the next mission field for Open Baptist Church. After another successful Pastor’s Conference in Zambia for the 8th year he thought the church was ready. Because of the political, unrest most people were leaving, not going to Zimbabwe. OBC has a Pastors Conference planned in August for the 3rd time. Interesting to note that one of the guest speakers is our own “Craig Rees”! Pastor Norman’s vision was to invite the pastors to our conference this year and possibly next year have a Pastors Conference in Zimbabwe. Rather than send e-mail and letters, Jeff thought it would be much better to personally give out invitations. When it came up at one of our “lunch at home” times together, I felt better about it when Jeff mentioned that his friend Hillary, a Zimbabwean, would travel with him. It was a few weeks before leaving that he casually said that Connie (Hillary’s wife) and I should come and we could all spend a few days at their lake home. It is on Lake Kariba, which is a man-made lake between Zambia and Zimbabwe. Jeff assured me that they often travel there with no problems. I was excited about seeing Kariba Dam with Jeff since this was a place I had seen as a child growing up in Zambia, so I prayed thru my fear and forgave Jeff for late notice.
Since we were driving our vehicle, we picked them up at 5am, June 9th and headed for the border. We were having a great time when 3 hours later it was discovered that our friends didn’t have their passports. This was a big problem! Upon calling home, both passports were discovered on the kitchen table. Each thought the other had picked them up! I was just glad that Jeff always takes care of ours! Hillary called a friend who picked them up and then waited at a bus stop on the main road for someone coming our way. We kept driving knowing that God would work it out. An hour later we were informed that he had found a man, Matthew, coming our way and had given him the passports to give us when he caught up to us. I was quite shocked that they would give passports to a stranger but, low and behold, Matthew finally arrived at 3pm. It was another hour drive to the border where we discovered that we needed the blue book for our auto which we had never heard of nor had with us! However, we called and got someone to go to our house to look in our paperwork. We then went to a motel to wait for a fax. Thankfully they found it although it was neither blue nor a book, but it got faxed all the same. However, “All in God’s Timing”, because as we waited for the fax, Hillary started talking with the motel receptionist and brought her to talk with Connie and myself. After much sharing I was privileged to lead “Masego Titus” to Christ!! We finally arrived at our first destination in Zimbabwe at 1am, having to cancel the meeting we had set up with a group of pastors in Bulawayo. Just another day in Africa where time is irrelevant!
Over the next few days, things just got better. We stayed overnight at a town called Kadoma at a guest house provided by a friend of Hillary’s. There we headed to Grace Bible Church where there were 21 pastors waiting for us. They were excited to hear about the conference and 2 even signed up, with payment! We then went to Chegutu Baptist Church where to our surprise we were met by over 80 people of which 35 were Pastors and the rest were lay leaders and youth. Two of the youth had been to our church 2 years prior attending OBC’s “Face The Nation”. They were so excited to see us! They also asked about hosting a Pastors Conference at their church next year. From there we headed to Harare, where we met with leaders of church groups. They said they would pass the news on to the many rural pastors they are responsible for. We spent the night with Hillary’s brother and family.
The next day we travelled on to Kariba to spend a few days and were astounded at how beautiful the lake and dam were. What a view from our friend’s mountain home! And better yet, we came across elephant, baboon, zebra, kudu and impala while driving around! What a beautiful world The Lord has made! Of course, Hillary and Connie have so many friends there and it is considered rude not to stop in to see them for tea and cake. We sure did have a lot of delicious cake! We attended the Community Church of Kariba on Sunday where we were once again greeted warmly and were able to share the reason for coming to Zimbabwe.
At each stop I shared about the project my father started while in Zaire and continues to run today. This is the P.E.T. Project, building wheelchairs for the needy in 3rd world countries. I left applications with each group in case they knew of any recipients. They assured me there were many and would get them back to me. On our way home from Kariba we stopped in at the church we had missed on our 1st day and met with Pastor Jeff from the U.S.. He had only been there 5 weeks but already knew of a van load of people he thought would be coming. We called the pastor of the church in Chegutu to let him know we were headed home and looked forward to seeing him in August. He asked us to stop on the main road (that’s how things are done in Africa) so he could meet with us. He turned in 21 registrations (6 paid) for the Conference along with 4 P.E.T. applications w/ photos of the intended recipients. He also had gifts of hand carved wooden bowls for us!
Throughout the entire trip we were welcomed very warmly. Not once were we concerned for our safety. The comment we heard several times was there were several conferences in Zimbabwe each year but they were more about emotions and very little actual teaching. Get ready Pastor Craig, people are waiting anxiously for your teaching and curriculum! And we are looking forward to seeing you too!
(Check out our picassa web album for more pictures!)
Posted by April
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