November, 2004

Chronicles of Namibia
Lon and Val Garber on Assignment
We are trying to simplify our newsletter format to minimize the size requirements and formatting problems encountered by various email providers. Toward that end, we will post photographs on our internet site instead of including them in the newsletter itself.

LON’S MINISTRY NEWS
In conjunction with developing written lessons for our Pastors Bible Correspondence Course, on Monday evenings, I am test teaching those lessons to the next generation leaders of two churches in the Okahandja area: Bible Baptist Church in the Vyf Rand (Five Rand) informal settlement and the Full Gospel Church in the Nau Aib neighborhood (the old location during former apartheid times). We have completed the first six lessons of a 48 lesson course of study. It contains 24 O.T. lessons, 12 N.T. lessons and 12 lessons on basic Christian theology. It is a two hour study including a question and answer time at the end of each session. The Q & A time ends when I can no longer see the expressions on their faces as we interact. It is an evening class and there is no electricity at the church tent. This week, we studied the life of Jacob and what we learn about his character from his two names, Jacob (“He who follows after”) and Israel (“He who struggles with God”).

On Wednesday evenings I am teaching a Bible study on Christian financial principles at the Omgulambasha Baptist Church in the Omgulambasha informal settlement, just north of Windhoek. CROWN Ministries has graciously given me permission to use the CROWN study as a basis for this teaching. The Scriptures are the same, but I adapt the teaching heavily to make it relevant to an African context and more specifically to a poor Kavango audience. It is such a joy to watch them get excited about what God’s word says about money and its proper use. Last night’s study was on giving and the benefits that accrue to the person who gives to others from an attitude of love.

Two weekends each month, we travel to Swakopmund where I preach and conduct leadership training for their elders. I also make myself available for pastoral counsel since they do not have a pastor. The church offered to hire me as their pastor, but we declined since God has a much larger mission for us to accomplish in our African ministry. I have, however, offered to mentor pastoral interns that they designate in order to train a Namibian person to fill the role of pastor in this young congregation. Through the end of 2005, I am preaching on the topic of faith and how it is practically applied in our lives. We are marching through the Bible looking at positive and negative examples of faith (or lack of it) in action.

I am also cultivating a relationship with another church in town, the Swakopmund Christian Centre. I will also soon begin a training program for their leaders and on occasion I will preach in their Sunday evening service.

In my recent trip to the Congo, God provided the opportunity to train 85 pastors from the Kinshasa area. In between teaching times, I toured the city and learned some things about life in a city of 8 million people. Due in part to the recent war, the population of Kinshasa has doubled in the last 8 years. One of the things I learned was how many Congolese can fit into a 1960’s vintage VW bus. The answer: 28 plus those who hang onto the outside. This is standard public transportation in an overcrowded city. I look forward to my next trip in January when I will stay for a week and train 500 pastors.

One of my goals in Namibia is to connect with each other, all of the churches and ministries that have independent relationships with Northland. Part of the vision for the church distributed is an interdependent network of churches and ministries working, serving and worshiping together. Toward that end, Nan Parker brought all of the ministries together in July for a joint meeting. I recently facilitated the second such meeting, which will now be a quarterly event. It was exciting to see these ministries reporting and dreaming and praying together. Even more exciting was the experience of seeing them begin to plan ways that they can assist each other in ministry.

God is moving mightily at Khomas Community Church, a church in a Windhoek neighborhood that Northland helped plant several years ago. Patrick Britz, the new senior pastor, reports the following:

We as a church just had a wonderful spiritual revival in our church and community. We revived our small group ministry and we had 16 couples who served as hosts (small group leaders), 70% of them are continuing until early December. Close to 35 people gave their hearts to the Lord and we are busy with follow-up. Four of our hosts are helping with the follow-up of young believers. Lon gave us excellent materials for follow-up and discovering your spiritual life.

God is busy accomplishing many other things in and through our ministry, but I’d like to close this report with a story I call “The Cattle Baron.” Little did I think that one of my ministry roles in Namibia would be to help enterprising young adults develop business plans for entrepreneurial efforts they want to launch in order to provide funds for ministry. But this past Sunday afternoon, I sat down with Linus Albertus and helped him write his first business plan for a cattle business he hopes to launch in northern Namibia. Together we outlined his business strategy, established a mark-up percentage, identified needed equipment costs, the monthly fixed cost of running the business, weekly variable costs and most importantly how much money he needs in order to launch this endeavor. He now knows an exact figure for his start-up costs and the monthly sales target he must reach to make his plans succeed. The bottom line: he must sell 6 cows a month to achieve his immediate financial goals. His motivation? He wants to marry Donisa Shilongo and provide a home for them to live in. I keep you posted on his progress.

VAL’S MINISTRY NEWS
Well, ain’t it just like life, after cooling our heels for what seemed like forever waiting for our work permits, since our return to Namibia, we have been meeting ourselves coming and going. Besides the time and hassles of moving, ministry opportunities are blossoming everywhere.

One of my first priorities upon our return was to redesign the papier-mâché bowls to a more rustic “African” look as requested by the Namibian Craft Center in Windhoek. After doing so, they placed a large order with promises of more to come. The website will contain a photo of the new designs. We are also selling the new designs wholesale to a very nice gift shop in Swakopmund. The bead project is also going well and we were able to sell about 20 items to a different gift shop in Swakopmund.

The literacy effort in Five Rand however, needs your prayers. After an enthusiastic beginning, with great initial results, Isabella’s students are falling away. (After all, would you have gone to school as a child or teenager if you weren’t made to go?) Many students lack the discipline of working toward long term goals, especially when there is hard work and no $ involved. Pray for Isabella to be encouraged by the Lord. She goes faithfully to teach, walking 3 kilometers there and 3 kilometers back in the heat of summer, to find from 6 to 0 students showing up for class.

Our new home/ministry center hosted it’s first ladies retreat the first week of October. Because of long distances in Namibia, weekly classes are not always possible. We therefore condensed the eight weeks of HEALING PAST EMOTIONAL HURTS into a week-long seminar. Seven ladies attended with five staying the week in our guest flat and guest room. For the first time, I taught this class with no drop outs (they couldn’t get away J ) It was a great success, and I have requests to do another class soon. See the website for a group photo.

If you want an idea of Namibian lifestyles, check out the options one has for ironing in Namibia. I took this photo recently of an in-store display. (See web site after Nov 21st)
PERSONAL NOTES
We have completed our move to Okahandja and have mostly settled into our new home and ministry center. . For those we may have missed our earlier notice, our new address/phone numbers are as follows:

P.O. Box 1514
Okahandja, Namibia
011-264-61-504971 (from U.S.)
061-504971 (from Namibia)

We have a new Namibian family member. His name is Mambo. He is an S.P.C.A special so we are not sure the breed. We think he has some shepherd in him. More than a pet and family member, he is also a watchdog since we do not have a security system protecting our new home.

Lon was involved in an auto accident in late September and we just got our bakkie (pickup truck) back from the panel beaters (body shop) this past week. So we were without the use of our only vehicle for 6 weeks. But God is good and enabled us to continue our ministry activities with the loving help of friends who loaned us vehicles, use of the Intercape bus and occasional walking. We were so excited to be re-united with our Isuzu yesterday. No, Lon was not seriously hurt, but as the emergency room doctor was patching up the gash in his head, he said to Lon: “This cut is not too bad, I just can’t stop the bleeding.” Just one more thing you don’t want to hear a doctor say while you are laying on operating table.

We also want to thank you all for your ongoing offerings of love, support and prayer. We feel your presence and love in our lives all the time. We hope that you also feel more connected to the African or American church (depending on your vantage point) because of our presence here.

CHURCH DISTRIBUTED UPDATE
We would like to share from time to time small examples of the distributed church in action. Lon’s recent trip to the Congo demonstrates the global church connected. He began interacting with his host pastor via email over a year ago, due to a relationship he had established with Jim Laird, Northland’s new director of Distributed Ministries. Jim’s connection with Pastor Mushadi came through our longstanding relationship with Youth for Christ Namibia and more recently Christ’s Hope International. Pastor Mushadi is a board member for CHI. And now Pastor Mushadi has provided an opportunity for Northland to be involved in training a network of over 500 pastors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This is the distributed church, “linking global communities for ministry and worship everywhere, every day.”

ON THE HOMEFRONT
We would like to thank our faithful friend Hazel Sun, who provides wonderful support for our ministry from the States. Not only was she a godsend to us when we sold our home in America, but she continues to help us with stateside financial assistance and she regularly sends us news and magazine articles she knows will be of interest to us

We would also like to thank J.T. and LeDonna Almon for the many ways they assist us every day. They graciously supply us with a guest flat when we return to the Orlando area. They manage our stateside mail and help us in many other ways, including tutoring us in the care and maintenance of our new ministry center pool. That’s right God supplied us with a pool. The only suitable home available in Okahandja when we had to find a home and move within 13 days, came equipped with a small pool. It is a wonderful respite from the hot summer heat and we are making it available for local ministries, such as CHI to use as well.

Please take a moment and join us in a prayer of thanksgiving for Hazel and J.T. and LeDonna and a prayer of blessing on all of their endeavors. We are eternally grateful for their friendship, support and faithful assistance.

FINANCIAL SUMMARY
We want to keep you abreast concerning how God is supplying our financial needs for our work here in Namibia. Northland has sent us out as their representatives and graciously supplies 25% of our support base and wonderful friends like you supply the remaining 75% that enables us to remain as Namibia’s link in the church distributed. So here is a recap in U.S. dollars for 2004:

YTD Love Offerings: $ 19,509
YTD Budgeted Need: 34,375
-----------
Balance of Ministry Account: $ 14,563 -

PRAYER AND PRAISE POINTS
- Praise God for our support partners who faithfully pray for us and those who provide financial support.
- Pray that God would raise up more monthly support to address our 2004 deficit and improve the value of the U.S. dollar so the money we have can stretch further.
- Isabella’s literacy class as explained above
- Pray that we will have the discipline to say NO to worthy requests when our schedules get too full.
- Pray for discernment in knowing which ministry possibilities to say YES to.
- Pray for wisdom and sensitivity for Lon as he continues to train young African leaders
- Pray for growth and maturity for Val’s ladies as she trains them in business and life skills
- Thanksgiving and blessings for our friends Hazel, J.T. and LeDonna
- Thanksgiving for the fixing of our bakkie (an essential ministry tool) at a reasonable fee.
- We are so thankful that God continues to provide the opportunity for us to live and minister in this country we have grown to love.