FYF RAND SQUATTER'S CAMP

My relationship with Pastor Thomas Mbundu began simply enough in April, 2002. I was asked to give him a ride to Five Rand. Five Rand is the squatter’s camp near Okahandja, Namibia where he lives and ministers. Unemployed workers from Ovamboland and refugees from war-torn Angola migrate south in search of work and safety. However, work is hard to find for the unskilled and unschooled who only speak Oshivambo. So they gather in these “informal settlements.” Pastor Thomas pastors a church at Five Rand.

Several months later I received a letter from him asking for clothes for his congregation. Upon returning to Namibia in December, I visited Pastor Thomas to tell him that the clothes would soon arrive. In the process, I invited him to tell me how God was blessing his church. Thomas blessed me with the following report.

He founded the church in September, 2001 in response to the obvious spiritual needs of the camp dwellers. 40 people attended his first service in which a crippled man received healing. 80 people attended the next week. They now have from 140 to 200 attendees meeting in a modest sanctuary that holds about 70 people comfortably. Pastor Thomas attributes the increase to concerted, faithful prayer. An educated man who speaks 7 languages, Thomas and his family have chosen to remain in the camp and minister to the needs of their fellow camp dwellers.

Eventually, people in his congregation return to their homes or migrate elsewhere. When they do, Pastor Thomas and his leaders go with them to help them plant a church in their new location. As a result, in the past 16 months Pastor Thomas has planted a church in Noordoewer on the southern border of Namibia, another in a migrant labor camp on a grape farm in the south, one at Gobabis in the east, one in Windhoek, one in Ongulumbashe, two more in an Angolan refugee camp near Otjiwarango with over 500 attendees, and 4 more in Rundu on the northern border. That’s 11 new churches in about a year. The Five Rand church has an apostolic ministry that is spreading churches all over Namibia and beyond.

Now that the war has ended in Angola, many of the church members in Otjiwarango refugee camp will be returning to their homes near Lubango, Angola. In March, Pastor Thomas and several of his leaders will be traveling with them to Angola to plant a church in Lubango.

Pastor Thomas wishes to send greetings and thanks to the many Northland attendees who donated clothes for his congregation at Five Rand. He will use them to bless his congregation and then give the remainder to the elderly, orphans and handicapped people in the camp. Thank you for partnering with the Five Rand church as they continue to minister to the needs of people throughout Namibia and Angola. Your care and concern is helping Thomas and his church leaders to shine the light of Christ’s love in very dark and needy places. He summed up God’s blessings on his church by stating, “In the beginning, we spread through the camp in search of people to help us build our church. Now the people seek us out.”