Reaching other Mwinika villages! How exciting! We are doing evaluations this next week in Hodie where soon a new literacy class will start. (We evaluate the students, since they are more than double what we can take at a time!). But how does the still young Mwinika church know where to go to next? The Lord sometimes has mysterious ways to open doors, and Hodie is one of them…
It started one day late last year when an elder from the Mekela church (one of 4 Mwinika church groups here) asked help to transport a sister from that church to her visit her children. Their village is about 25 minutes’ drive (and about 4 hours walk) from us. This lady has leprosy and finds walking difficult. I (Nadia) agreed and early that Saturday morning we set out with the elder, this lady, her daughter and grandchild. We went where I have never gone before ☺ – into a neighborhood that I did not even know exists! We went as far as the footpath took us and right where we stopped, there were three men passing at that very moment. One guy was really interested in who we are and what we do. Between Antoen (the elder) and myself we explained. The more we did, the more he wanted to hear! He was very interested to know that we did not come to change people’s religion or built buildings, but to tell them about the relationship that we can have with God through His one and only Redeemer. When he heard that we do all of this in eMwinika and that we teach Literacy as well, he was hooked!
“Please come and teach us! We need to hear this,” he said. “Look at all these children”, he pointed to the many little people that gathered to watch, big eyed, this most unusual phenomenon (a white lady in a car with a local “uncle” speaking their language!?). “What other future is there for these children?”
He asked for Antoen’s telephone number and soon he called and asked Antoen to return to explain more. Antoen – living a full 15 km further from this village than where we are (!) and not being a young man anymore – immediately set out on foot to visit them again. He came back glowing: “They are asking for us to go and teach them the Word of God! And they want to read the Word too!” And that soon led to more visits ofmore believers from here.
The guys quickly brought things down to pragmatics: how can we make this work? And so the plan is to start teaching groups in both “new” villages as soon as the peanut harvest comes in in May month. We will make use of the recorded lessons and will visit each group once a week to teach, answer and ask questions to see if they track the recorded lessons well. BEFORE the harvest, the Literacy team will go in to start literacy classes so that the leaders can follow and check what is taught from God’s Word in eMwinika. We will be teaching and training the literate in Portuguese first so that they can help start classes for everyone who is interested later.
Quite a venture! We need, as always, your faithful prayers, dear brothers and sisters in Jesus. We are not able; we do not have enough of what it takes to see this – and so many other things! – through. Please pray as you feel the Spirit leads you. Thank you for partnering with us to see the unreached reached… to the edges of the earth!