December, 2003

Merry Christmas
Yes, it is the Christmas season in Namibia even though it doesn’t feel like it. It is the middle of summer and many of the things that remind us of past Christmas seasons are missing: friends and family, Christmas Eve worship, family traditions. But the most important Christmas memory is ever present in our hearts and minds: Emmanuel – God with us.

Lon just finished an Advent sermon series at Swakop River Community Church. Normally, we use Advent as a means of preparing ourselves for Christ’s coming. Instead he preached on the ways Christ prepared Himself for His own coming to Earth. Here is a synopsis.

First, He emptied Himself of His power and position as God to remind us that we are nothing in and of ourselves. Then He filled Himself with the Father. He placed Himself under the Father’s authority, did His Father’s work according to His Father’s will and in accordance with His Father’s wisdom. This reminds us that we are totally dependent on our Creator and Heavenly Father. Finally, Christ subjected Himself to the sufferings of a fallen world. That meant being misunderstood, doubted, and deserted by his friends; disrespected, challenged and attacked by His peers; and relentlessly pursued by His enemies. He suffered all that to prepare Himself to redeem us from our own suffering.

People often ask, “What kind of God could allow so much pain and suffering in the world? The answer is: the kind of God who climbed down from His throne, and came to earth to suffer WITH us and to provide a way to thereby lift us above our pain and distress. God is not in the business of removing suffering; He is in the business of redeeming it. Christ suffered the worst thing that ever happened in the history of the world and turned it into the best thing that has ever happened. Merry Christmas to all of you.

Blessed are the poor in spirit …
More and more we are being called to the poor people of Namibia. We are now working in three squatter’s camps (Windhoek, Okahandja and Swakopmund).

Val’s work in Okahandja is going very well. Finally, most of the skill training is past, and they are actually selling bowls. Both Val and the ladies were smiling from ear-to-ear when the bowls were finally ready to sell. During the training process, many naysayers tried to convince Val that the bowls would never sell to Namibians (too expensive), so Val was especially pleased when the bowls started selling almost as fast as the ladies could make them. Christmas is a wonderful selling time even in Namibia.

Now that the craftswomen are making money, lots of ladies want to make bowls; even the one’s who dropped out in the beginning. They will slowly add staff as the first ladies learn to supervise their work. The next challenge is teaching them how to handle their newly earned finances. Saving for the future is not a traditional squatter’s camp value and those who earn money are often envied and persecuted by those who have none.

Lon is teaching a weekly Bible class in another squatter’s camp just outside of Windhoek. It is exciting to watch the Bible come alive for them for the first time in their lives. One student told Lon that they had been praying for years to have someone come and explain the Bible to them in ways they could understand it. Comments like that are very motivating.

Teaching and ministering to the poor adds a whole new dimension to walking out the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Each week after the teaching, there is an opportunity to personally minister to some family in the church. One week, we visited a family whose “home” had just burned down that morning. It was just a shack built with scrap metal tacked onto wooden poles, but it was their home, their clothes and all their earthly possessions. GONE. It was a sobering sight to visit and pray for them. It really puts life into perspective and humbles you.

They didn’t have much before, but now they have nothing. But there is something unquench-able about the human spirit. When we arrived, friends were already helping rebuild a temporary shelter for the night. When our homes burn down, we move into a hotel until our insurance company provides money to rebuild a new home. In the squatter’s camp, there is no such thing as insurance. You live outside without a home until you can build another shack. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

We are also beginning to build relationships with families who live in the DRC, a squatter’s camp in Swakopmund. In Africa, you build relationship first and then you begin ministry. We are doing that now with Augustinus, a pastor of a small church in the DRC. He is also a staff member of the non-profit foundation we are joining. (See work permit article.) We hope to begin ministry in the DRC next year. DRC is an acronym for Democratic Republic of the Congo. Nobody seems to know why it’s the name of an informal settlement in Namibia.

Swakop River Community Church
We are continuing our work with Swakop River Community Church, whose slogan is “Where the river flows there is Life.” A dry riverbed “flows” beside the church; an underground river flows below it which greens the nearby foliage. It is a wonderful metaphor of life. The real life is the invisible life that flows below the surface. Lon is guiding them through their first ever Elder selection process and is preaching there on a regular basis as we build close relationships with many church members. Val is facilitating a Healing Past Emotional Hurts class with the ladies.

Khomas Community Church
Lon and Stephan are working on a project to teach Panoramic Tour of the Bible to their entire congregation. Stephan will preach on one lesson each week and during the following week, the cell groups will follow a study and discussion guide developed by Lon. Lon is busy developing the small group leader materials now.

Work Permit Status
We are mounting a new campaign that hopefully will finally produce the desired outcome. We are becoming board members of a newly forming non-profit foundation, which will provide leadership training and humanitarian services to the poor and disadvantaged population of Namibia. This organization will then apply for work permits for both Lon and Val to work for the organization. Lon will focus on training and Val on economic empowerment. The application will not reference churches or the fact that Lon is a pastor, so hopefully Home Affairs will see our activities as nation building in nature.

Daily Life
So besides teaching, and planning for the next teaching, how do we spend our days? Of course there are housework and errands wherever you live, but they are a bit more complicated in Namibia. They use clotheslines instead of dryers here. There is dust everywhere. As soon as you sweep it out the back door, it circles the house and sneaks back in the front.

Then there is shopping. Stores are open from Monday to Friday 9 to 5 and Saturday 9 to 1pm (no evening trips to Home Depot for that next-day project, or running out for the milk you forgot!) The grocery shopping has settled down to a routine now since we’ve learned about kilograms and litres, and new terms and brand names for normal grocery items. And we can find most things in one store (now that we know where to look and that we must stock up when we see something, because next time it may not be there).

Shopping for other things is still a bit of a challenge. One day the hardware store will have something, and next time they have never heard of it! We can’t buy the whole store out just in case we need something later.

And nothing is in the Yellow Pages, so when I’m looking for something, I just ask everyone I know if they have seen it and then go searching for it. Unfortunately, that takes a lot of time; however we usually also find places and things we never knew about, so all is not lost.

Windhoek seems small when you first get here, but there are so many hidden places to shop, it is quite a progressive adventure (Namibian businesses have yet to discover the power of advertising).

And just an aside on shopping - people think everything here is cheap. Not so. Food is less, and labor intensive things are less, but any electronics or imported items are out of sight, a lot more than in the U.S. and years old as far as technology goes. We can’t bring ourselves to buy a TV for instance because they are ridiculous in price. And arts and crafts supplies, IF you can find them, are about twice what they cost in the U.S.

Paying bills is quite another challenge. It is not safe to send money through the mail (either cash or checks). So you must hand deliver your bill payments.

Security is also a challenge. Theft is a significant problem. Everything must be locked all the time. Everyone lives behind electrified walls, but that does little to discourage the thieves. They are excellent climbers and electricians. You must have a security alarm (which you must show you have tested every few weeks) connected to a private armed-response service or the insurance company will deny your claim. One night Lon was up late and “surprised” a burglar trying to break into the back door. Val claims Lon’s late night studies are our best protection against theft.

If you call the police, they will commiserate with you, but they will not respond to your emergency. They will tell you, “Sorry we don’t have a car.” It can take months for them to even complete a police report for the robbery. That is why you must have a contract with a private armed response firm. They are well trained and quite responsive.

So you see, daily life is a bit different here, but we have adjusted to it nicely. We feel totally at home in Namibia and have a wonderful peace about our calling and our ministry here. We are exactly where God wants us to be doing what He has called us to do.

Language School
Val is very busy learning Oshindonga, an Oshiwambo dialect. Sixty to seventy percent of the Namibian population can speak some form of Oshiwambo. During the Spring (Fall for you) term, she took classes two nights a week at UNAM, the only university in Namibia. Val says, “It’s VERY slow going. The pronunciation is not too hard, but the grammar is almost impossible!” There are 11 classes of nouns alone, and all the pronouns change depending on the noun class. On the bright side, not many African whites here can speak it, so her feeble attempts are quite appreciated by the blacks, and sure to get a smile out of even the most dour looking.

Lon is busy learning German. Since Namibia was a German colony and still maintains close ties to Germany, much of the white population speaks German. Swakopmund is a German retirement community and favorite German tourist location. He now does his daily devotions entirely in Deutsch and has started reading German books and novels.

Most of the white population still speaks Afrikaans although the government stresses English over Afrikaans in order to better connect Namibia with the outside world and to separate it from unpleasant apartheid memories. Many blacks are therefore less inclined to speak Afrikaans even though they understand it.
Val has been thinking for some months now that if Christ had been born in 2003, He might have chosen a squatter’s camp for his birthplace. So a few weeks ago she did a photo shoot to depict what that might look like. The result is our Christmas card to you:

When the time came, He set aside the privileges of deity, and took on the status of a slave ...
Philippians 2 (The Message)

Comments

[Retro Jordans]

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[supra shoes]

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