Dave and Jen Hess's dairy farm in Wedza overlooked a river valley and low mountains in the distance. To say the place was idyllic is an understatement. At their invitation, we moved in to a thatched-roof one-room cottage that had an attached bathroom. It was one of two out-buildings that shared that valley view with the main house.At an altitude of about 4000 ft, it was pleasantly warm during the days and cool in the evenings. During the winter months, (June - August in the southern hemisphere), you needed a light jacket and there was always a roaring fire in the main building. On those evenings, it got a bit chilly in our cottage since it did not have a fireplace, so we found ourselves "dressing" for sleep!
What was not idyllic was the colony of red ants who had burrowed into the hillside underneath the cottage. Dave had injected poison into the colony to kill the ants as the red ant bite is painful. We didn't encounter any living ants, but would find our cottage floor covered in dead ants each evening after midnight. The dying ants would surface through cracks in the foundation each evening seeking air on their final journey of death. That meant that we couldn't leave shoes, suitcases, boxes or anything else on the floor at night. And, it meant that a midnight or early morning excursion out of bed required grabbing a pair of shoes off the nightstand to noisily crunch a path across the floor. It also meant dressing for breakfast in bed. By the time we would return from breakfast, one of the household "helpers" would have swept the floor clean.
But, let's speak of more pleasant subjects--breakfast! Breakfast on a dairy farm was early, 6:00 am, but worth losing some sleep. A typical morning would include oatmeal with fresh cream so thick you could literally stand a fork in it, eggs, beef sausage, toast with jam, guava and other fruit in-season, and tea or coffee with a "slice" of that thick dairy cream. It was a good thing that I was getting plenty of exercise or my arteries would have turned to sludge! But, oh was it good!!!
After breakfast and a bath in water heated in a 50 gallon drum over a wood fire, (I can still smell the woodsmoke!), Pegi and I would meet with Norman Kalilombe to discuss upcoming ministry on the surrounding farms.
Dave's farm struggled financially because the price of milk could not support the cost of running a modern dairy farm. Most of the farms in in Wedza were still white-owned, but the ones that were the most profitable grew tobacco. Dave had settled in Wedza after moving from South Africa during the '70s. Of course, he arrived as the insurgency against white-ruled Rhodesia began to get out of control. His purpose in moving to Wedza had been to establish a evangelistic outpost. As such, he resisted the temptation to grow the very profitable and sanctions-busting crop, tobacco.
Tobacco remained one of Rhodesia's and later Zimbabwe's major cash crops. Alistair Forbes, in whose home we had stayed many months in Harare worked for British-American Tobacco as a senior accountant. Most Christians in Zimbabwe considered smoking to be a sin. This made working for a tobacco company problematic for Alistair, but not nearly as bad as the impact that being a tobacco grower would have had on Dave's "testimony" in Wedza. Of course, smoking among the African population was endemic. It was one of the few "pleasures" along with beer that was available to the African populace, especially in the rural areas.
The concept of smoking as sinful arises from the Pauline teaching that the Christian's body is the "temple of the Holy Spirit of God." As such, smoking was seen as "defiling" that temple. In the US, smoking was rarely considered an issue among Christians. But, in Zimbabwe, smoking was a big deal.
Most of the prosperous farms in Wedza grew either tobacco or maize (corn). Dave's property wasn't quite suitable for growing maize as the quality of maize he could grow in his hilly and rocky fields was only adequate as feed for his cows.
The really big money was in tobacco, a hardy crop that could grow in hilly soil and was drought-resistant. Zimbabwe had endured drought conditions for three years in 1984. Only the tobacco farmers were turning a profit.
Dave and Norman had already established a small church among the 70+ workers on his dairy farm. Therefore, Norman and I turned our attention to the surrounding tobacco farms to "plant" new church groups that we hoped Norman would be able to supply itinerant ministry.
We began holding evening meetings on the surrounding tobacco farms. We knew that there was some attraction-power that Pegi and I could provide. After all, for the last few decades, the only white people who had shown up in the African worker compounds were the farm owners and Security Forces during the war. Neither was cause for rejoicing. The farm owner was the "boss" and the Security Forces were rooting out terrorists. Since the terrorists had found succor (willing and unwilling) in the worker compounds, the Security Forces suspected every African worker as a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer.
Pegi and I came to share our faith and to care for the African population. Pegi and I would lead Shona Christian choruses and perform a couple of American Christian songs that seemed to please our audiences.
One song, "From Glory to Glory" (written by American artists, The Hendricks Family), became our signature song. Over the coming months and even years as we ministered throughout Zimbabwe, young children would come up to us singing lyrics from that song. We didn't sing it particularly well, our harmonies were often comprised by very sore throats and my 12-string guitar was a bear to keep tuned. Nevertheless, we were asked to sing this song wherever we went. We even found ourselves asked to sing this song at weddings of people we hardly knew. Rhema Church which had not been interested in our ministry and arguably had the best contemporary Christian music in Zimbabwe even asked us to perform it! I still don't get it!
But, we felt we needed more firepower when it came to reaching a Shona-speaking crowd. Yes, I could speak and have Norman or someone else interpret, but I really had no idea how to reach the locals. I came from another world!
We had been given a film of a Dutch evangelistic crusade that had been dubbed into Shona. We also had been given a 16 mm movie projector when we were in South Africa. Showing a movie of any kind drew huge crowds in urban and rural settings. So, after singing for a while, we would show the hour-long film. The evangelist in the film was T.L. Osborn, an American Pentacostal preacher who claimed a miracle ministry in his mass crusades. The audience in the film was well over 50,000 and the focus after the preaching was on the dozens of people who came forward claiming to have been dramatically healed during the preaching.
Now, I think I probably watched that film fifty times--not once was I convinced that this "show" from a Holland in the 1960s was believable. Yet, somehow I had bought into the belief that miracles could happen and thought that people in our audiences would find faith in God by watching. How silly this was! People watched simply because it was the "only show in town." But, what actually had lasting effect was Pegi and me singing a few songs from our hearts.
So What About Miracles?
Some time in 1983, we had begun to consider the possibility that the miracles associated with Jesus' ministry might have been something that modern Christians could expect. Looking back on this now, it is hard for me to remember just exactly it was that persuaded me to see validity in the Jesus' ministry, more less to become a follower of Jesus. I refer you to my earlier blogs where I relate all of this.
In 2011, a good dozen years since I had considered myself a Christian of any sort and now defining my Jewish spirituality in a way that I couldn't conceive in the '80s, it is even harder to explain why I expected miracles associated with our gospel ministry. I think it just boils down to being convinced that if Jesus was to be taken at face value for what he said as recorded in the gospel accounts, then we should see potential of the miraculous in any Christian ministry.
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto the Father." John 14:12
We had begun to seek out fellowship with others who also expected the miraculous. This is what led us into charismatic circles to begin with. We never really saw any real evidence of healing. However, we appreciated the commitment to an active faith that many charismatics seemed to express. Yet, it wasn't the promise of the miraculous that kept us in charismatic circles. It was the music! Charismatic churches were using popular and light rock music to change the nature of their worship services. Music was something that Pegi and I both related to strongly. I had grown up in a household where my mother played jazz piano by ear and I had begun playing guitar just before the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Dave Clark Five led the musical "British Invasion." Pegi had grown up loving music and spending years finding peace and solace playing piano.
Our ministry was really based around music as I rarely had the chance to teach anything that was beyond a superficial gospel message. So, even though there were several who claimed to be healed by our ministry, and bunches more who claimed to be healed after watching the Shona-dubbed TL Osborn film, those kinds of miracles didn't keep our attention.
Unfortunately, many of our supporters saw miracles as the attestation of the legitimacy of our ministry and so we seemed to always lead our newsletters with something that hinted at the miraculous. (I always wondered what my Jewish agnostic mother thought of those newsletters! We never discussed that subject, but I am sure she was relieved when our newsletters began to focus on our baby, Abigail. She was the only "miracle" that mattered to us from 1986 on.)
It was only as I reflected on these events much later that I realized that we didn't need that film at all. Our compassion and love for people was what had a lasting impact. And, although I am embarrassed to think about the crazy things that we presented as truth, such as that film or "miracle ministry" in general, I smile when I think about the heart-filled and lasting response to our simple and amateurish singing.
Faith is a matter of the heart. Communication of faith in God occurs neither by reasoning (theological argument) nor by empirical demonstration (miracles). It is communicated heart-to-heart from person-to-person. If I learned anything on the tobacco road, I learned that.
Next: Under the Big Top
No comments:
Post a Comment