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Wondering Pilgrim

~ the ramblings of a perambulent and often distracted sojourner

Wondering Pilgrim

Category Archives: Africa

On the fourth day of Christmas… an orientation to praise and thanksgiving.

28 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in Africa, Spirituality

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

aid, Christmas, gogo, praise, Zimbabwe

WP_001721When visiting one of the rural districts surrounding Zvishavane in the south of Zimbabwe 3 months ago, we were struck by the resilience of those who lived on the parched plots with little easy access to water, healthcare and education for their children. We were exploring a program run by the Zimbabwe churches with whom we partner that assists grandparents caring for grandchildren orphaned mostly by AIDS. Material help with seeds, chickens, goats, consumables and education fees are provided, along with pastoral support.

When one gogo (grandmother) was asked what else she needed, she replied, “The ability to keep praising God!” Her family had been particularly harshly ravaged by illness, failed crops and sheer misfortune. In her wisdom, she perceived a capacity to be positively oriented to the world through her faith to be a true gift.

On the fourth day of Christmas may our gift be that given by this woman – the understanding of a need for a  capacity to praise God for his persistent involvement in our lives, not in ways that are always discernable to us, but emphatically underlined by God’s “riding with us” in Jesus of Nazareth and all who follow his path. Use Psalm 148 for practice!

Melons, chickens & goats

20 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in Africa

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Zimbabwe

WP_001849Thinking today of a young lady I met in the back blocks of Zimbabwe. She’s 17 years old, orphaned and living with her grandmother. Her industry is inspiring – she grows melons and tends her flock of six goats (started with one). The two chickens given her two years ago have grown to a flock of many. Attending to all this takes place in her leisure hours after a school week of walking 20 kilometers twice a day over rough bush tracks. A church backed sponsorship helps ease the strain on this small farming family, but the spirited determination of this young lady spells hope and possibility for the rural communities of this area.

Wilderness Community Garden

17 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in Africa

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Zimbabwe

WP_001799

Whilst bashing about the parched back-blocks of rural Zimbabwe, we came across a large fenced off area above a slow flowing river – the district community garden supplementing hamlets and farmsteads for many kilometers around. Known locally as a “garden of Eden,” the plots of a variety of vegetables, including spinach and kale, were surprisingly healthy and robust. Water is carted by bucket from the river to irrigate and water each plot. Our guides tended their plots while we were there, gathering what was needed for their next few day’s meals.

Going to Church in Zimbabwe

14 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in Africa

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We got to do it five days in a row – each service lasting around three hours and part of our mutual exchange as we encouraged and taught amongst the very hospitable people.
We were never bored – Shona worship is exciting and exhilarating.
Here, in Muuyu, the musical Mr Bunda motivates the congregation. Who would have thought that the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah followed this?
(Please excuse the 10 seconds of side-flip – I got carried away!)

There were more-or-less sedate but still exuberant songs mostly carried by the women, wearing a denominationally defining red and white ensemble worn on special occasions and the first Sunday of the month. I’ve attempted to learn the Shona words to this one (“Jesus keep me near the cross”).

Each day has particular memories of conversations and events that emerged as part of our mutual ministry together. The sounds of worship in these rural churches for which some of the congregation regularly make two hour journeys on foot will remain in our auditory consciousness for a long time, however.

 

 

Drinking from a fire hydrant…

13 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in Africa

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… that’s how someone described a first time encounter with Africa.Bulawayo street

I recall my first day in Bulawayo standing on the pavement outside a courier’s office where my colleagues were spending considerable time. They were hopefully negotiating the reduction of storage fees for a box of solar lights that had been mailed over to assist students in night time studies. I found the sights, sounds, smells and sights of the street rich and varied – a surprise for every time I blinked. Such was my fascination I had a hard time looking bored and nonchalant, trying not to stand out as I leaned against a verandah post. The shop facades across the road were grand and faded and with impossible names. A kaleidoscope crossed time and took me back into the fifties of my childhood when shops were called emporiums and mothers dressed up with hat, gloves and handbag for their buying expeditions. The chirrups of mobile phones brought the contemporary into the vintage street scene which now included donkey carts, high fashion and rustic personalities bearing heavy looking sacks on their heads.

I could have stood there for hours, just absorbing the street scene with its vibrant colours, its mixed aromas of spice, jacaranda and donkey dung – and the wonderful sounds of Shona speech and cowbells while an ox wagon trundled by.

Africa was getting into my blood stream.

Out of Zimbabwe

12 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in Africa, Ministry, Personal, travel

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

aid, mission, Zimbabwe

It’s now a few days since completing a three week stint working with Churches of Christ in Zimbabwe as part of a volunteer team from Australia and New Zealand. The dust has started to settle, the Africa in our veins is distilling to something quieter and more reflective. The next few posts will describe some experiences and tell some stories from the perspective of one who has only roamed from these safe Australian shores once or twice before. I’m not a born traveller and tend to be somewhat cautious and overly vigilant. The up-side is that I then observe and catch nuances, sounds and sights that a more casual sojourner might miss.

The team with host B J Mpofu

The team with host B J Mpofu


There were nine of us altogether, including a family of four. We were to be split into two groups, one team to be based at Khayelihle Children’s Village, a facility for some 120 children orphaned by the severe AIDS epidemic that has swept much of Africa. The second team (mine) would work out of the rural farming and mining centre of Zvishavane – ministering with a selection of 130 churches in the district, visiting extended families that are assisted by the churches in caring for AIDS orphans, and inspecting some of the 120 bores already sunk to ease access to water.

Apart from these broad objectives, agendas were necessarily open. We were there not to impose our will or advice but to respond to what our hosting church communities required of us. Flexibility and the capacity to adjust to the demands of the occasion quickly became hallmarks of our time together. At the same time, hospitality was open and generous. After eight days of solid work by both teams, we came together for some welcome R & R. The combined team visited three wildlife reserves and the famous Victoria Falls before returning to Bulawayo. Some final mopping up at the children’s village completed our work.

With that broad introduction, we have a base for the stories that follow, mostly from the rural ministries perspective because that’s where yours truly was involved.

For a day by day “flow of consciousness” description of team life at Khayelihle Children’s Village, see the Williams family blog.

 

The messiness of faith and sibling rivalry

11 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in Africa, reconciliation, Spirituality

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Abraham, Lenten reflection, Nigeria, reconciliation, stories of faith

Sarai Is Taken to Pharaoh's Palace - by James Tissot. (Wikipedia)

Sarai Is Taken to Pharaoh’s Palace – by James Tissot. (Wikipedia)

Lenten reflections take us a little further into Abram’s epic but troubled journey. Genesis 12:4b-20 –  the patriarch eventually finds himself in Egypt and, for cargo and self-preservation, makes his presumably comely wife (Sarai) available to the Pharaoh. Hardly a salubrious beginning for the father of the world’s three major monotheistic faiths!

Stories of faith are inevitably messy affairs. We wonder how its going to end up for Abram (yet to be named Abraham), the great epitome of faith, when he gives in so readily to fear and expediency – especially when anxiety and the desirability of the quick fix are at the source of many of today’s woes, personally and politically.

Today’s Huffington Post nevertheless repeats a story that has been on this blog before – and it points to a legacy of the kind of faith Abraham eventually inspires amongst his “children,” particularly when sibling rivalry has surpassed its most dangerous point. Read it at  A pastor and an imam once tried to kill each other — now they work to heal Nigeria | Public Radio International.

See a wrong and right it

23 Saturday Feb 2013

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in Africa, mission, theology

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

AIDS, Jerusalem, Jesus, Luke, Military use of children, River Murray, Uganda

English: Murray River at Murray Bridge

English: Murray River at Murray Bridge (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My brother-in-law, Des, is preparing a 665km kayak trip down the River Murray.  It’s not just his love of kayaking that prompts this venture; there’s been a fire in his belly ever since he visited Kitgum, Uganda, with my sister Janet, who had previously delivered relief to the school and orphanage there, a place of refuge and rehabilitation for many orphaned by AIDS and war. A number of the children there are previous child soldiers.

So Des has initiated a sponsored fund-raising trip for the foundation that runs the village. Details are at http://www.irenegleesonfoundation.com/content/events/gjj8i0

 

I  reflect on this as I prepare tomorrow’s message on The Power of Lament. The passage is Luke 13:31-35 where Jesus laments over Jerusalem. He recognises the short fallings of places of power that are meant to be places of healing. The imprints of rejected and murdered prophets and sages are here, and their ghosts continue to cry out the summons to healing, wholeness and peace. Jesus will be the next to meet his end, but he embraces his path willingly, for his end is not defeat, but teleos, accomplishment.

Jerusalem can be a symbol for wherever we are. We are called to embrace the pain of the world, but not in defeat. We engage suffering, not in self-indulgence, but in purposefulness. It is to accomplish expression of the shalom of which the prophets spoke and which Jesus achieved in completeness.

I suspect this is something of the drive behind what Des is attempting. May we all have occasion to reflect and respond similarly where we see opportunity.

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Mercy from the inner womb

02 Monday Apr 2012

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in Africa, Ministry, Spirituality, theology

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

aramaic, compassion, Greek, Kony, Mercy, Uganda

The Spirit of Compassion by Raynor Hoff (1894&...

The Spirit of Compassion by Raynor Hoff (1894–1937), carved from marble on the South Australian National War Memorial, unveiled in 1931. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Healthy are they who from the inner womb birth forth compassion,
they shall feel its warm arms embracing them.

(Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy)

Mercy is often depicted as the grudging letting go of rightful retribution or discipline for a wrong, along the lines of “OK, I’ll let you off this time,but you’re on notice. Don’t let it happen again.” It is often associated with a Western understanding of jurisprudence, allowing for some melioration of the hardness of the cold scales of justice

The word in Greek is eleos, taken after the god Eleos renowned in Hellenistic mythology for pity and compassion. The stories relate to shelter and reprieve for those caught in the maelstrom of political and military conflict.

The translation from Aramaic reinforces not only the notion, but the depth of commitment and nurture behind compassion. Indeed it is a quality that is birthed rather than decided. It is warm and flowing, eschewing all association with jurisprudence.

We may know some such merciful ones.

Recent attention on Uganda has contrasted the viral Stop Kony campaign (for justice) and not so well known rebuilding programs such as those run by the Irene Gleeson Foundation which provides shelter, food, health care, education and vocation for former child soldiers and the following generations. The latter is the face of mercy.

 

 

Related Articles
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  • Former child soldier in tears over Kony film (news.ninemsn.com.au)
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-31.911079 115.772731

200 years

09 Monday Mar 2009

Posted by wonderingpilgrim in Africa, churches of christ, restoration movement, Stone-Campbell, Wembley Downs

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

B J Mpofu, Christian Church, churches of christ, Disciples of Christ, Great Communion, restoration movement, Zimbabwe

Things are beginning to happen amongst the individual and diverse communities of what began to emerge 200 years ago as the Restoration Movement and ended up under a plethora of monikas covering most of the countries of the world – variously Churches of Christ, Disciples of Christ, the Christian Church, churches (small c) of Christ. This movement for Christian unity and church restoration has a chequered history, sometimes punching above its weight in its impact on the wider church scene, but often falling into the bitter divisiveness its origins abhorred. This is us warts and all!

This year sees calls from all streams of the movement to a rediscovery of our common roots and the passion evoked in the hope of a transformation of current vision. Study groups, web-sites and publications are beginning to appear – all with good stuff. It remains to be seen whether this anniversary will have any effect on our self-understanding as a whole. Will it pass like a summer storm with a bit of dampness but little lasting effect? Or will we see some drenching, saturating rains that will bring fresh, verdant growth and a fecundity of wisdom and understanding to contribute to the wider church and the world at large?

What might be possible in this year of  The Great Communion?

Looks like the South Australians are kicking things off with a series of provocative essays.

On Saturday, we host a breakfast attended by B J Mpofu, Zimbabwe Churches of Christ leader and President of World Convention of Churches of Christ. Responses from a few churches are starting to come in.   Maybe a cloud, the size of a man’s hand, is beginning to form on the horizon.

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