Make a Joyful Noise - Post 1 from the Congo Mission Team
- Our mission team upon arrival in Africa!
"Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth, Worship the Lord with gladness, come into his presence with singing....Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name." Psalm 100:1-2, 4
The pilot had told us that we'd have to buzz the runway once before landing. In Kamina goats graze along the landing strip, and he has to fly low once to scare them off, he explained, then circle back to land quickly before they return.
As our Cessna swooped down over the red dirt, we looked for goats but instead were struck by the crowd at the hangar. Standing in front of a corrugated tin shelter off to the right, there were several hundred people in formal array, some in brightly colored uniforms. They must be expecting some local dignitary, we thought, or maybe were bidding one farewell. We knew that annual conference was just ending here in this headquarters of the North Katanga Conference of the United Methodist Church in Congo. Maybe an important minister was leaving.
- A jubilant choir welcomed us at the airport.
But as we landed, then taxied over to the hangar, we saw that the people were looking expectantly at our plane. The pilot, a local Methodist who usually spends his time flying critically ill villagers from the bush to the nearest medical clinic several hours away, turned off the propeller and the engine. Only then did we hear the rich, joyous, vibrant choir. The people in yellow shirts were dancing and singing; we didn't understand the words, which were in Kiluba, but the joy was evident. A choir leader with a horn of tin sung out lines, and the choir picked them up in rich harmonies, dancing and drumming all the while. As we climbed out of the plane and walked toward them it became evident that the celebration was for us, a welcome unlike anything we could have imagined. A row of ministers in clerical collars and robes lined one side of the tarmac; ten young women in red dresses stood waiting to give each of us a wreath of croatan leaves. Children gathered all around the edges, watching.
It was ten minutes before anyone spoke a word. We stood listening to that glorious music praising God and felt instantly at home among these total strangers in a remote village halfway around the globe from our New Jersey. Only after they had finished two songs did the bishop's assistant come forward, beaming, welcoming us to Kamina and telling us that cars were waiting to take us to the other end of the town. The bishop had extended annual conference an extra day, feeding and housing them one night more, so they might be there to give their American visitors a warm welcome.
That annual conference, held under tarps in the open air with hundreds of people crowded around, was only the beginning of an extraordinary stay in Kamina. For the next 24 hours we were ushered all over the area, which is home to some 500,000 people, to see the work of the Methodist church among them. The people are wretchedly poor. Most live in thatched huts with dirt floors; they walk miles every day to wells or to the river for their water. About 20 percent of the population is literate; the local medical clinics have only the rudest of beds and minimal supplies. At conference the bishop distributed five bibles in Kiluba to ministers who serve some 50,000 people in congregations that thrive despite the fact that they own no printed scriptures.
Indeed, the United Methodists of North Katanga have great vision in the face of what would seem to most of us to be overwhelming odds. For two days a team of ministers and lay leaders showed us the wells they've built, the new church buildings that serve as community centers in villages, and the primary care clinic named for Methodist bishop John Wesley Shungu, the first African to be appointed a bishop and the father of our own congregation's Daniel Shungu. We saw the nursing school, the maternity clinic, and the orphanage, all built and run by the Methodists. There is a teaching farm on the edge of town where demobilized soldiers are taught farming skills to help re-incorporate them into society. The church has built schools, a marketplace, and even a 15-kilometer canal that members dug by hand to drain swampy land to help prevent malaria. And on the edge of town in a vast field featuring just one large empty building and some half-built walls, Rev. Mande Muyumbo proudly introduced us to the fledgling Kamina Methodist University, his charge and the town's great hope for bringing higher education to people of the area.
On the way out of town, flying out over the goats and the huts and the amazing, spirit-filled people we had met, I was leafing through my Bible and was struck by the following words from Proverbs:
"All the days of the poor are hard, but a cheerful heart has a continual feast. Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble with it." We were taught so much in one weekend about what it means to have a truly cheerful heart and the great treasure of a loving spirit.
But that's not to say that we felt complacent. It is clear to us how much we have to share with a place of such hope and vision but such poverty. We look forward to a long relationship with the people of our sister Methodist conference in North Katanga and to sharing more with all of you about this incredible place on our return to the United States. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to journey here and to represent our Princeton congregation to the people of Africa.
God's richest blessings. Gretchen B.
