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Adapted from an essay by Mike Delorenzo, AIM On-field Media, December 2009.
"Sometimes when we are called to obey, the fear does not subside and we are expected to move against fear. One must choose to do it afraid." Elizabeth Elliot.
I have only one pair of good boots. I seldom get to use them, but they were the first thing I packed. For 15 days I travelled through central Africa - into the middle of the continent, and the middle of some of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world.
AIM’s objective was to gauge the state of the church here, if there was one, and to learn how to re-engage these lands with a renewed missionary effort. What do you take on a trip like that? Good boots and a Bible, a notebook and an open mind, and, if you dare, an open heart.
Into Sudan, Congo, Chad, and the Central Africa Republic. Four countries with a combined land mass equal to two-thirds of the USA, but without the roads. So where the Land Rovers wouldn't go, we travelled by air, motorcycle, dugout canoe, and foot - thousands of miles of savannah, rain forest, mountain and desert. The landscapes were forbidding, and beautiful; giving way to sunlit villages of thatch and meandering footpaths, where smiling children and women carted the wares of life atop their heads.
But one has a sense, on a journey such as this, that there's more to the story of the people and the land than you can catch at a glance. Where your boots meet the rich, red African soil, and where your itinerary makes time for a cup of tea and a conversation, you begin to see the real picture. It is largely a disheartening one. From the southern mountains of Sudan, all the way inland to Lake Chad, these four unique nations share one tragic history. Each gained independence from colonial rule around 1960. Each replaced one kind of oppression with an-other. What followed has been decades of human conflict and unfathomable suffering. All four countries in recent years were listed among the 10 least-stable entities in the world. For most of the people here, generations of spiritual darkness rooted in animistic beliefs have led to a culture steeped in fatalism and fear. The “spirits” which they believe control their world are the most prominent and powerful forces in their lives.
My boots plodded through thick elephant grass in the Datooga Mountains, tracing out a path up a hillside and back in time to an era when missionaries lived and worked here. Their house, like a Bible School they built, lay crumbling and bare, returning to the clay from which its bricks were cast. Sudan's war in the 80's drove them out and shut down the school. The Church scattered, but somehow, survived. Even grew. I listened to a Zande choir rock their church, and my soul, with the sound of drums and voices. AIM's initial missionary effort in these lands was not perfect. But the roots planted by those first pioneers somehow endured. The danger now is that the “living stones” of the Body of Christ are looking like the actual stones of many of the buildings. Crumbling. Over 124 million people live in these four nations. More than 220 unreached people groups, and an impoverished church begging for help to reach them. It's time AIM returned to central Africa! Whatever the continued missionary effort looks like, it must be made of disciple-makers. All through this region, there are places where the church does not yet exist, and places where the church is barely holding on.
They ask for missionaries: people who love Jesus and are willing to share their lives and talents. This is a hard place! This is a hard calling!
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