I am reminded of the story of Elijah and God’s victory against the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel (see 1 Kings 18). Elijah poured large amounts of water on the firewood before starting. It was if he making it even more challenging for God to get the offering to burn. From the human perspective burning wet wood is not easy. From God’s perspective wet wood makes no difference. He is able to burn wet wood as easily as dry wood.
In a sense, we are going to be trying to burn wet wood very shortly. From the very beginning of our efforts to reach the Mwinika we have planned to start teaching in the dry season (July-Nov). That is the timeframe, from the human perspective, that makes the most sense to teach in. But as we finish our preparations for teaching we see that it is more likely we will start in December and teach through the rainy season. The rainy season is a time that the local agricultural community is the busiest. They practice slash and burn gardening and have to make a new garden in new location every year. People travel for hours to reach good gardening areas and tend to be gone from the village for days and weeks at a time. From the human perspective, it is not a good time to start a long intensive teaching program. It is like asking wet wood to burn. On the other hand, for God burning wet wood is nothing. He can work in people’s hearts just as easily in the rainy season as in the dry.
Even though the rainy season is not here yet, we have started communicating with the village leaders that we will be teaching in that time frame. We have asked them, when they start preparing their gardens for this upcoming year, to prepare them closer to home. The Mwinika have a proverb that we are using: “mphara piili modha yahinvuluwa.” If you try to hold two things at once one of them will fall. We are telling people that we will be teaching God’s Word this rainy season and we are asking them to garden close to home this year so that they will be able to garden and attend all the lessons. If they garden far away, they will not be able to hear the lessons.
Please pray that the decisions the people make in the next few weeks about where to garden will allow them to be able to hear the teaching in its entirety. The average villager is not aware of the enormity of the subject matter we will be covering in the teaching. It is hard for them to understand what we could have to say that is so important. Please pray that God will be working in their hearts to want to hear His Word being taught.