Dueling Sermons and Adventures in Preaching

Crocodile and Hippo at Cultural Heritage Center.

Rebecca will be recounting most of the events of the past week because she spent the most time doing interesting things. One of the unusual confluences though was that both Rebecca and I were asked to preach this week at different churches-- I at ACC where we attend regularly, and Rebecca at a Mennonite church near the town of Moshe. In short we had quite different experiences, but you can hear all about it below. Oh, we also still have 2nd Cousin Julie visiting this week, and she spent her first week here in the St. Elizabeth hospital pediatric ward rounding with a Rumanian physician. She had interesting stories to tell about her experiences when we were together in the evenings. She has been a welcome addition to our family and enjoys playing board games, entertaining the kids, and even washing dishes!

So without further ado, here is Rebecca:

This past week, Paul had a normal week of work, but it was still an unusual week for me, since the kids didn’t return to school until Thursday morning. On Tuesday, the kids and I drove out to visit some friends who live about 45 minutes away. I really enjoyed spending hours talking with and getting to know Katie better – she’s been a missionary here in Tanzania since 2010. They have four kids and my kids also enjoyed interacting with them for hours on end. David concentrated on catching all varieties of crickets, together with the younger three kids. Oren played the game of “Life” with their 12-year-old. The sun had come out and it was so wonderful to just share lunch and relaxed time with this family on the rural Bible college campus where they teach future Anglican priests.

On Wednesday afternoon, the kids and I met my cousin Julie at the Natural History Museum in the center of Arusha. We had never visited this site before, so it was a good opportunity for us to explore a touristic corner of town. The museum featured exhibits on the origins of humans, being so near the Olduvai gorge with all its archeological finds, as well as exhibits on different animals from the region. But the live animals were of most interest to the kids. We hunted down an acquaintance of my mom’s there at the museum, and she was very friendly and gracious. She also let us know about the opportunity to hold live snakes: David was all in!

So, we went and found the guy with the snakes. He brought out a little African tiger snake (Telescopus semiannulatus), which apparently lived in a 1.5 L water bottle. That seemed quite sad to me. Then he started trying to get the snake out of the bottle, and obviously, the snake had no interest in complying. I’m not sure exactly how he got the snake out, but it was not happy with the process. The museum officer held the snake for a few moments and then started putting it into David’s hands. Unfortunately, David was holding the snake’s front end too gently (he is used to relaxed snakes), and this little snake twisted around and planted his needlelike teeth into David’s hand. David just said, “Ow, ow, ow,” but didn’t drop the snake (brave kid!), while the guide pried the teeth loose. They kept telling us, “It’s not venomous, it’s not venomous!” I did believe them, but I think Julie was quite horrified. There was a bit of blood, but the bite was just on the surface of the skin, so we decided to wash it, put on a band aid and not worry. When we got home, I looked up the snake and found that it is in fact mildly venomous, but not dangerous to humans. Interesting. Oren really regretted afterwards that he hadn’t held the snake, saying, “I wish I could go back to school tomorrow and when people asked me what I did on my holiday, I could say, ‘I got bitten by a snake!’” We finished our afternoon outing with some treats at Africafe in town, and then picked up Paul to go home for dinner.

Church council members

Paul and I also had completely different experiences this past weekend. On Saturday, I rose early to go join the other newly elected elders of our local church council for an all-day retreat. The morning was drizzly, and we were doubtful as we drove up the long slippery hill to Erwin’s place. As we arrived, Erwin, our council chair and master gardener took us on a tour to admire the beauties of his garden: secretive orchids blooming quietly in the branches of a cactus, tree tomatoes and passion fruits ripe for picking, beds of fragrant herbs and even an apple tree blossoming. And then we sat down together around scripture, reading thoughtfully through John 15:1-12. We spent the day, talking about the community, the changes over the years, the things we are currently celebrating and the areas of church life that perhaps need pruning or tending. We learned from each other and listened to God for our community. It was a good day and good to get to know one another better. It was also a long Saturday of intense concentration.

Paul's interjection>> While Rebecca was at the church council retreat, I had a day with the kids and Julie. We had a normal, relaxed Saturday morning (we have a tradition of making pancakes). I spent some of the morning working on finalizing my sermon for the next day, but after lunch I took Julie and the kids to the Cultural Heritage Center to see the art and handicrafts of local artists and artisans. I have talked about this before and it is probably the most prominent tourist attraction in Arusha itself. (Most tourist attractions around here are in the surrounding game parks.) Shaped like a giant african drum, it has spiraling layers of galleries not unlike the Guggenheim museum. In an adjacent mall-like complex where one can buy many handicrafts and souvenirs of Tanzania, including a very impressive jewelry store where one can purchase the extremely rare gem 'Tanzanite'. Tanzanite is native to the area around Mt. Kilamanjaro and nowhere else in the world. It is about 200 times more rare than diamonds and is deep blue in color. 

Outside these buildings are a huge array of iron sculptures of Tanzania wildlife. Some are much bigger than life. It is like a heavy metal safari.

We spent about 2 hours walking around the galleries, then went into the stores. Julie did end up getting a beautiful tanzanite ring. Definitely an excellent souvenir to take back from here. 

Back to Rebecca:

On Sunday morning, I rose even earlier to be ready to leave the house with Julie at 6:30 am. Our mission was to visit a Tanzanian Mennonite Church, where I had been invited to preach. I had warned Julie thoroughly that it would be a long day with many unknowns, and she was still game to join me; I was honestly very glad for the company. We met Pastor Nzela in town, together with his adult son, and then started out together for the community of Merarani, about 75 km from Arusha. This village is unusual, in that it is located right outside the one and only Tanzanite mine in the world. There is a large industrial mine, owned by South Africans, which is doing it’s best to wall off and regulate the mining of this gemstone. This has put them in conflict with the many small-scale / artisanal miners and traders in the community. Apparently, many of the church members are Tanzanians from various other parts of the country who came for the mining opportunities and stayed in Mererani, but now are really struggling to make ends meet. They all came from places where the Mennonite church was more established, and so a Mennonite church was built in 2016 in this community.

We arrived at about 8:40 in the morning, just as the drizzle was picking up into a proper rain. So, we took shelter in a neighboring house, and Pastor Nzela had his sister in-law serve us all chai tea and bites: vitumbua and mandazi (fried rice cakes and fried dough) along with a huge platter of bread. We were told that we needed to eat a lot, because you never know what’s coming in the next few hours, and if you don’t eat a lot, you’ll be banished from the men’s table to the women’s table (!). Church normally starts at about 9 am, but we were experiencing a rain delay – people who need to walk to church usually wait a bit to see if the rain will slow down before they head over. By about 9:30, Pastor Nzela decided it was time to make our move and so we entered the sanctuary to continue waiting there. A bit later, the associate minister began to lead a bible study for those who had already gathered. He told me later that he is really trying to help people open their bibles and discover scripture for themselves, so that they own the truths they find there. He gave me an interesting analogy, comparing the church to chickens. “The church today is like broiler chickens. They just sit inside their shed and wait to be fed. They have no idea how to fend for themselves. I want our church to be like local chickens, which can go out and search and find the food they need for each day, and then have enough to sustain them while they sit inside on their eggs for up to three weeks.”

After about another hour, the service itself really got going and I was led up to the chairs on the dais, leaving Julie behind, together with the three male service leaders, so that we faced the congregation. They sang Swahili hymns together from their hymnbook with tunes I know, and I was glad I had remembered two copies of Tenzi za Rohoni (the skinny little hymnbook) so that both Julie and I could sing the texts. Then the choirs started leading worship: the young women’s choir, the youth choir, the joint choir. The time of worship was very lively and very loud!

The congregation included many, many children. Pastor Nzela had been lamenting with me that he has no building in which the children can meet and have a separate Sunday school (and he was quietly asking for support for that endeavor). However, I really noted the way that the children of the church felt at home and part of the body. They knew all the words of all the hymns and contemporary songs, without any hymnbooks. They knew exactly how to participate in the prayers. They danced their hearts out and with great skill when it came time for the children’s choir to perform. And yes, they did get fidgety during my sermon, but they are children! For heaven’s sakes, it was a four-hour service! To my eyes, they looked like people who were fully integrated into the body of Christ and felt comfortable and needed there, far more than most western kids look and feel integrated into the Christian community.

Starting at about 12:30, I was invited up to preach a Mennonite sermon to Mennonites, on the heart and character of a peacemaker, drawing especially from James 3. However, I found as I went along that I needed to simplify a lot of things to make them relevant to the community and translatable. (I could understand at least 75% of the service in Swahili, but I’m still not ready to preach in that language). I really felt the gap in my understanding of this community, of their needs and struggles, and of their level of biblical knowledge. Honestly, I’m not the best preacher for a group like that. Maybe next time, I will have a better idea of how to prepare.

But the fact is, my preaching to the community was in some sense a pretext. Really, the community wanted a visit. They wanted to share their needs and struggles with people whom they perceive to have access to resources. They truly want to develop their church, in terms of buildings. They want to help develop income-generating opportunities for their congregants. They want to support the evangelists and church-planters in the neighboring villages, who are presently just volunteering their time. They want their church to grow. Somehow, they hope that the presence of a missionary might help in those endeavors. They even asked me, in the presence of the whole congregation if I would be able to return once a month! I know about making promises in Africa, so I had to respond that I would try to return at some point, but that I would not be able to come once a month, since I am a leader in my own congregation.

Once the service was over, I needed to sit with the (male) leaders of the congregation and hear their list of requests for support. I did my best to point them towards the Mennonite mission in East Africa and to gently let them know that MCC doesn’t support the kinds of projects they want to do. Those are hard moments for missionaries, when we need to tell people “no.” I also find myself very frustrated by the kinds of superpowers imputed to me, simply by the fact of my racial and national identity. I wish there were ways that Tanzanian church leaders could feel more confident in their own judgement about how to solve the problems of their churches. But I also intensely feel the inequity in our access to resources. Yet how can we be more generous without fostering dependence, and especially the sense of white cultural dominance?

Following this meeting, we were graciously invited back into the sanctuary to share lunch with the (male) leaders of the church. Julie had been hoping to try ugali (stiff cornmeal porridge) during her visit, and this lunch was an answer to prayer. She learned to roll little balls of ugali in her palm and dip them in the meat and sauce. Then we found the women who had cooked and thanked them, took lots of photos with just about everyone, and finally headed back towards Arusha. We made it home at about 5:30 pm, nearly 11 hours later. Now that’s a day at church!

Paul finishing off:

My day at church was quite a bit less dramatic (and shorter). I did end up having the kids alone and had some concern that they might need parenting during my sermon, but they did very well. I don't think I can do the topic justice in a synopsis, but I did move through scripture from our natural and righteous anger at injustice--(especially when we or someone we know is a victim)-- to a point where we realize that while it is easy to point fingers at others, we may avoid seeing our own culpability. Sometimes in systemic ways, other times very deliberately, many of us find we quite literally have 'blood on our hands'. The recognition that we need to be forgiven greatly--to the point of someone dying for us, should lead to profound gratitude. "Those who are forgiven much love much." I talked a bit as well about my experience of sharing this hope with incarcerated men through the Kairos prison ministry. The message was well received and I had a number of people approach me and talk about how it impacted them personally. 

I spent the rest of the day with the kids having pizza for lunch then going home and relaxing, waiting for Rebecca. I have had the experience of preaching at a church where I am perceived as 'the great white missionary; I knew her day would be long and rife with awkward moments. It was good to see Julie and Rebecca finally back around 5. I was very happy to hear about the cultural experiences Julie had there, and nodded in sympathy to Rebecca's negotiating the minefield of cross-cultural ministry.