A DAY AND A BIT IN THE LIFE OF A MISSIONARY.
Rupert wakes up at 5-45 and leaves the farm (he is in Natal) at 6-30 for an easy drive to King Shaka Airport for a flight at 8-50.
The easy
one hour drive turns into a nightmare following a crash on the freeway!
Arriving at the airport at 8-20 he still has the hire
car to return and he gets to the check-in desk at 8-30 only to be told that the
flight is closed. As this was his only chance of connecting with the flight to Malawi from Johannesburg some prayer and a heavy dose of
pleading yielded the desired seat on the plane.
Arriving in Johannesburg
he was met by Alex and Peter and the trio booked in for the flight to Lilongwe. Having
completed all the procedures we moved to passport control at which point we checked
our boarding passes only to find we had been booked to Blantyre
instead of Lilongwe
so back to the check-in desk. Don’t worry the boarding passes are okay it is
the system we were reliably informed.
The plane was scheduled to take us to Lilongwe
via Blantyre in the end it left an hour late and
took us vie Lusaka
with no explanation. This is Africa relax and
get used to it.
At Lilongwe
we were met at the airport by our hire car and driver. We left for the town
centre to drop off the driver and collect our two faithful brothers in Christ
Fredson and Macnell. We eventually left Lilongwe
at 18-30 for a 480 km journey through deepest darkest Africa to Kazuni Lake.
No problem we were travelling on a national road and the GPS was forecasting
that we would arrive at 23-30. With Rupert driving we could even get there at
22-00. Little did we know!
Lots of traffic and people and bikes on the road.
Normal traffic rules are only loosely applied. The cyclist with a passenger
with a full roll of carpet on his head. The cyclist with a bench tied crosswise
to the back of his bike. The cyclist with a two meter stack of firewood. The
bucky with no lights but no problem they had tied a torch to the bonnet and
this on a national road equivalent to our freeways.
First big problem no diesel in Malawi or no
honest diesel there is some black market stuff available. Second problem the
engine warning light had come on. We were just over halfway and it was 22-00.
We managed to buy diesel from a friend of the garage attendant at 30% over the
usual rate. Checked the oil no problem.
The people at the garage were amazed that we were
proceeding to Kazuni at that time of night we were surprised as it was only 150
km further we had not realised that the national road became a dirt road after
this and a very poor African road only fit for 4x4 travel. 20 km Out of the
town and the bucky started to slow down and the engine light stayed on. We
figured that it might have been dirty diesel put in before we got the car.
rs.JPG)
We soldiered on getting slower and slower until in the
end we were doing 40 km an hour. We got to a bridge just outside Kazuni at 2-00
am! Drove onto the bridge slowly and the front wheels fell through the timbers.
Managed to back off the bridge. See photos.
Remember when looking at the photos
that we were crossing in the dead of night with only a torch and a couple of
hundred mosquitoes to assist.
rs.JPG)
After some pretty deft reconstruction work
by our resident civil engineer we managed to get across not one but two of these
bridges a feat that even Bruce Willis would have been proud of.
We arrived at the gates to the Big 5 game park where
we were staying at 02-30. Gates were shut- obviously. Imagine arriving at the Kruger Park
gates at 2-30 in the morning! What were we to do? Remember this is Africa so we got out of the car and pushed the unlocked
gates open and motored in.
We drove around for some fifteen minutes looking for
signs of our accommodation before we were eventually stopped by a chap with an
AK47 standing in the middle of the road. What to do remember this is Africa so we stick our heads and bark “where is our
accommodation.”
By three we were tucked up in bed under mosquito nets
after a quick Portuguese shower (no water in the main shower). We were
serenaded to sleep by a herd of hippos who sounded as if they were right
outside the front door of our chalets- chalet is a very generous term for the
standard of accommodation!
Woke up at 7-00 the next morning to superb view across
Lake Kazuni. Before we left at 10-00 we had
seen impala herd, kudu cows, 20 hippos, warthog family, pelicans, storks, four
kudu bulls and three separate elephant sighting’s the last one being a herd of
about 70 certainly the largest it has been my privilege to see. It is tough in Africa!
The two gentlemen that we had arranged to meet from
the Kazuni Church Readson and Frank arrived at the park at 9-00 and we enjoyed
an hour of getting to know each other sharing our vision for the ministry of
Christ with no bishop’s vicars or pastors. This is at odds with the often held
view in Malawi
when visiting “white” people are seen as purveyors of gifts. When we asked
Readson what he wanted from us he replied bible, hymn books and plastic for the
roof Christ was not mentioned. We quoted from Acts 3, 1-11.
How Readson got hold of us is a story in itself. Five
years earlier he had been in Blantyre
when a friend of his who was in the Central African Assemblies had said that if
you are ever in need of a man of God then phone Rupert on this number. Readson
had since left Blantyre
and proceeded to make his home some 800 km further north.
On arriving there he found no church so he decided to
start his own. His ministry was so successful that he was joined by four other
churches. He had now got to the point in his ministry where the Lord prompted
him to look for help. How he had managed to keep Rupert’s number and then to
find it after five years only the Lord knows. So he phoned Rupert and asked for
help. We must remember that the nearest Central African church was in Blantyre 800 km to the
South.
So what does Rupert do? Being the faithful servant
that he is he says no problem I will put a team together and we will fly from
Cape Town to Lilongwe and we will get two brothers from Blantyre to catch a bus
up to Lilongwe and then we will all jump into a vehicle and drive for 480 km to
come and see you.
We had also realised at this stage that our 4x4 with a
top speed of now 30 km per hour due to the blocked fuel filter was not going to
get us back to Lilongwe.
We were faced with challenging telecoms as there was no reception in the park
and it was essential that we got a new vehicle for us to be able to meet our
already tight schedule and get back to the Convention in Blantyre on time for our planned ministry
there.
What I have pictured here is a one day snapshot the
wildlife was an unexpected blessing. We rarely get fun like that! The hassles
are a daily event. The real blessing is being allowed to preach the gospel to
people and to see a response as they accept Jesus into their lives and then
grow in their knowledge of the Lord. Despite all the hassles when Alex and I
returned to SA we both found that we battled to settle down and adjust to what
we would euphemistically call normal life as our spirits were at peace in Malawi.
A SECOND DAY IN THE LIFE OF A MISSIONARY
I was woken up at 06h00 by Godwin (the cook) wanting
the food for breakfast with me having spent a miserable night with four
mosquitoes that flew through the holes in the mosquito net. Still no water in
the shower.
But it is a glorious day thank the Lord. Drove to the Chilombo
Fellowship for a 09h00 start. (The hire company had driven a new 4x4 the 530 km up to us with a mechanic to strip out the whole fuel system on the old 4x4 and
then drive it back.)
A single song (that is very unusual in itself in
Africa but they were keen to get to the ministry after the ministry the day
before and we were on a very strict timetable) and then into ministry on John
3- you need to make a decision to come to Jesus and be born again and 70 people
do so by 10h00. We had been ministering and sharing all the day before as the
Lord prepared the ground for His seeds to be planted.
Set off from Chilombo for the 530 km drive to Lilongwe. We do not like
leaving any of the fellowships in a hurry but in this case we needed to catch
the 16h50 flight from Lilongwe to Blantyre.
We drove halfway looking for diesel with no luck. Malawi had run
out of diesel. This is a normal occurrence due to the shortage they have with
foreign currency. We were running very tight for time with our GPS showing that
we would arrive at the airport 25 minutes before the flight. The only way we
could get diesel however was by turning off the road and travelling 15 km in
the wrong direction to where we knew we could get black market diesel.
This delayed us by 40 minutes and the GPS showed an
arrival time at the airport 15 minutes after the plane was due to leave. Rupert
switched to turbo drive and we all started praying. We overtook a large truck
doing 120 km s an hour and he started swerving to the right forcing us onto the
dirt at the side of the road which would have been fine apart from the donga
that we were going to hit. Some superb driving by Rupert and we are certain the
helping hand of the Lord and we survived it.
Despite all the crazy driving the GPS said that we
would only arrive at the airport as the plane was taking off and we still had
to return the hire car. We had to be in Blantyre
that night as we were ministering at the Malawi Convention the following day.
What to do. Most important thing continue to pray! We
then phoned the hire company and asked them to phone the airport to delay the
plane. Impossible- to delay a national carrier only the President can do that
but we do not realise the awesome power of the Lord.
We arrived at the airport ten minutes before the plane
was due to leave left the car keys with the ticket clerk and boarded the bus
which had been held waiting for our arrival to take us to the plane to take us
to Blantyre-
thank you Lord! But please never a drive like that again.
On arrival in Blantyre
we took Fredson and Macnell our two translators to the church. They had phoned
their friends at the church two hours earlier to tell them where we were which
was a town about 600 km from Blantyre so they could not believe it when they
arrived. They kept asking how and they replied the Lord.
rs.JPG)
The full story of the
flight was only explained the following day to a rapturous reception as nobody
there had ever flown before as these are mainly subsistence farmers from the
rural areas to whom flights are just dreams.
We left for our own accommodation which was in a
cottage in the grounds of one of the original colonial houses of Blantyre owned by the
McGrath’s. A huge thank you to them for the wonderful cottage which was a real
privilege after the privation of our accommodation in the North.
The three of us sat back on the stoep and cried in joy
and in thanks at the glory and the power of the Lord – we serve an awesome God!
I cannot explain the joy and love felt by the three of us in that time of
prayer and worship. After all we had been through nobody ever got stressed as
we knew that the Lord was in control all the time because we loved Him and we
were about His work!
If this Blog has created a spark inside you and you are interested in serving the Lord as part of a mission team please contact Rupert Freese on 083 799 5522. Mission teams normally leave Durban and Johannesburg twice a year in 4x4 convoys to minister the wonderful word of the Lord to communities in Mozambique and Malawi. We are hoping to go up more often and possibly do fly-in’s as on this trip, it depends on the number of volunteers.
Report & Photos by Peter Lord.
Contact Us:
Please send your emails, pics, testimonies and other
relevant input via this Link. (click on the word "link")
At the bottom of the post you can comment on that particular
post by clicking on the yellow word "comments".
rs.JPG)
rs.JPG)
rs.JPG)
rs.JPG)
rs.JPG)
rs.JPG)
