The Lord continues to give us opportunities to minister. Last weekend (Oct. 1-3) I, Luke, attended a Seminar/Evangelistic Conference in a village called Munzeze, about 2 hours North-East of Kigoma. On the way there I picked up 2 Tanzania brothers who were going to be the evangelistic speakers. I taught a seminar on the book of Galatians Friday and Saturday mornings, and in the
afternoons and at night we had evangelistic meetings outside.
What does an evangelistic meeting look like here? I thought you'd ask, so if you'll allow me, I'll try and give you a little picture of one. It means a long introduction where each special guest must be recognized and welcomed personally, as well as given the chance to greet everyone. This is followed by a LOT of singing. Each church choir that was invited to the conference (3 in this case) gets to sing a total of 4 songs each during the service, and then of course there is a lot of congregational singing of choruses and a few songs out of the songbook. And finally you have an evangelistic message that could be anywhere from 1-2 hours long. Then you have an altar call followed by announcements, and finally the closing prayer.
This is what the afternoon services looked like, and then you have a slightly shortened version of the same thing at the night services beginning at 8PM and ending anytime between 11PM and midnight. Needless to say I was pretty tired after the weekend, but in spite of this, the Tanzanians always seem to enjoy the fellowship, and especially the choir songs. The choirs are aided by a generator to power their keyboard, 2 electric guitars, and bass guitar. The choir members all do synchronized actions and steps (or should I just say they dance?) to the beat of the music. There always seems to be technical problems during their performances, such as excessive feedback, but they just keep going in spite of the unbearable high pitch squeal from the speakers ...
On Sunday we had a regular service outside and I preached a message on knowing God. During the weekend Gina stayed home with the 2 girls and I was very happy to see them at around 7:30 PM Sunday night after dropping off all the people that had crammed into the car. Was there any lasting fruit from this conference? Only God knows for certain. After one of the evangelistic messages there were a few professions of faith but I don't think there was very good follow-up by the leaders of the local church. One encouraging factor was that the people seemed to be very attentive during the seminar and they had a fair amount of good questions during the question times at the end of each session. Also I took 23 Bibles and was able to sell all of them at a reduced cost. The believer's were very eager to get them so we pray that God's Word will dwell richly in them. Is there a better way of conducting these evangelistic conferences? Probably, but the hard thing is getting them to think outside the box. That's how they have always done them, and that's how everyone else does them so why change now?
These are just some of the questions that we deal with on the mission field so we would appreciate your prayers for wisdom and discernment each day concerning all these issues, and that God would always be glorified through us.
On the home front we continue to adjust to having a newborn baby. Gina of course, cannot get a good night's rest at this stage, so pray for strength for her. And then it is hard to get the housework done with a talkative and active Esther and a hungry or fussy baby who needs a diaper change ... Meanwhile I am trying to fix the leaky roof before the rains come and keep up with the little problems that the car keeps reminding me of, and administrative things and ... and then I wonder why I don't seem to have enough time to prepare for the next seminar. So this is when we learn to depend on God and draw our strength from Him. The next seminar will be for young people in the village of Bukuba next weekend (Oct. 15-17). Please pray for this young people's seminar as I will be teaching part of it.
We truly are blessed and privileged to serve our Lord and we wish we could do more for Him, but we hope we are faithful in all things including the "small" things.
In His service,
Luke, Gina, Esther, and Emily Johnson