Bible teaching in beautiful Busokelo

Things didn’t exactly get off to the best start. I was going somewhere I had never been before, accompanied by a young man who I had only met for five minutes a couple of days earlier, in order to provide three days of Bible teaching to a group without a single familiar face among them to encourage me. And then on the way there, less than an hour from home, my car decided to overheat.

I had prayed before the journey for protection and no problems with the car. Didn’t God hear me? Of course he did, and even in the midst of this inauspicious start, I could see God’s care. The problem with the car was spotted when we stopped to buy tomatoes and onions from roadside stalls a little way out of town. Ahead of us were lots of hills – if the lady selling tomatoes hadn’t told us that water was leaking from under the engine we would have carried on and encountered a much more serious problem half way up a hill a long way from any help. Although my usual car mechanic wasn’t available, an office colleague who lived in the area and drives a car was able to come with a mechanic, identify the problem, and guide us to a garage to get it fixed.

The car shenanigans meant we were somewhat late arriving and I was pretty tired after my early start and then driving along a rough, dusty road for about an hour and half, but I needed to jump straight in and start teaching as everyone was there waiting for us. Once again, I had reason to give thanks as I thought it would be uncomfortably hot, but the church turned out to be an open sided, grass roofed building that stayed pleasantly cool. And when we finally got lunch after 3pm, they had kindly prepared food without onions for me to eat, so I could enjoy my plate of rice and pork in a tomato sauce without worrying.

I wasn’t quite sure what my sleeping arrangements would be, though I had been in communication with a local pastor about all the practical arrangements and knew I would be staying in someone’s home. It turned out I had the house to myself as it is owned by an elderly couple who had left a few days previously for medical check-ups, which was a nice surprise as it meant I felt freer in what I did. The pastor also proved game to take me on a good walk all around the village – we climbed up to where Lutheran missionaries had built a hospital about 50 years ago (the views were amazing, looking particularly beautiful in the soft evening light as the sun set), down to a few small shops and along trails between fields of banana trees before ending up at his home.

The pastor’s home is under construction. It was hard to believe anyone could live there, as it looked like most of the rooms didn’t have roofs yet! However, with true Tanzanian spirit and the heart of a servant of Christ, he and his family had moved into the house before it was completed so as to avoid the cost of renting rooms as they planted a church nearby. By the time I got back to my house, it was dark and I was tired! I had a wash, a light tea (I had brought my own food for this) and headed to bed. After lying there for a while, I heard scuffles. What was it? Mice? I thought I’d better check that my food was secure. Coming out of my bedroom I saw large cockroaches scuttle away as my solar light shined on them. That’s what the sound was – their pattering feet and the sound of them eating the polystyrene insulation of an old hot pot! (Hot pots are insulated food pots, so that you can cook food and keep it warm for some time, which is really useful when you only have one stove to cook over – it means you can cook one thing and keep it warm while you cook the next, and they’re also useful when guests turn up late.)

The church was on the opposite side of the road to where I parked my car. In reality it was more of a dust bath than a road! Not only did this mean that my feet were constantly dusty, but also everything else was covered in a thin film of dust because every time a vehicle went through it kicked up all the dust and it landed gently on everything within a few metres of the road. Blow the dust off my teaching resources one minute and a few minutes later they would be coated once again. So I was worried about showing the Jesus Film (in the Nyakyusa language) on the evening of the second day – concerned that the projector and my laptop would get dust inside them. However, we had planned to show the film in an open area with a few shops around the edge, and this area was covered in grass, the nearby road was less dusty and the breeze had dropped, so it was fine. I don’t know how many times I have watched the Jesus Film now – although I sat there with everyone else, I was listening to a podcast! There weren’t as many people there as I would have hoped for considering the central location, but there were still a good number (including children) who stayed from start to finish, despite the chilly night air.

Cooking station

Going back to lunchtime of day two – I experienced one of those cultural things that always makes me feel very uncomfortable. They brought me a plate of chipsi mayai (chip omelette), while everyone else had rice. It is their generous hospitality and their desire to honour guests that causes them to do this; my remonstrations with the pastor the previous day that I would eat what everyone else ate fell like water on a duck’s back. Almost everywhere I go to teach, I end up eating in a separate room with the pastors and we are often given ‘better’ (in their eyes) food than everyone else has. While I appreciate their hospitality and the respect that they show to their leaders and guests, it grates with me, partly because of my cultural background in which egalitarianism is valued (sometimes at the expense of a healthy respect for others) and partly because of Jesus’ teachings around servant leadership.

On day three I tried something I haven’t done before. Normally I do the Bible overview seminar in two days, but as I had three, I was able to take more time over it and add in an extra exercise. In order to help the participants see how understanding the Bible’s story helps us interpret different parts of the Bible, I chose an Old Testament (OT) passage for them to discuss in groups, thinking about how it points to or is fulfilled in Christ and how it applies today. I chose Deuteronomy 28, which is about blessings for the Israelites if they obey God’s voice. I wasn’t surprised to find that they still jumped to applying it directly to today, without thinking about how we are not Israelites about to enter Canaan! But this then gave me the opportunity to talk them through how I would handle the passage, in light of its context in the grand narrative of the Bible, and to draw their attention to verses like Galatians 3:14* and Ephesians 1:3*. At the end, when I asked what new things they had learnt through the seminar, one of them said, “We shouldn’t just take the Old Testament as it is.” It was great to see that some of them had got the point about needing to read the OT in the light of the whole story of the Bible, while others said they had learnt how important it is to read the OT and not just the New Testament (NT). Someone else said they found the different methods I used for teaching helpful (I even got them doing actions) and another said it was like being at college. This feedback was encouraging, and the door is open for me to return. As always, I was struck by the huge need for good Bible teaching. And for Bibles! Some people didn’t come with Bibles while for a couple of people I noticed that the only Bible they had was a children’s NT (the ones that are given out for free by Operation Christmas Child)! A few people had Nyakyusa NTs – they said they read them at home when they don’t understand their Swahili Bibles; it was good to hear the local language NTs are helping people understand God’s Word better. I was also able to put the audio version of the Nyakyusa NT on a couple of people’s flash drives for them to listen to at home.

An evening walk with the host pastor to a
nearby crater lake. Livingstone Mountains
in the background.

Day four, Thursday, I headed back to Mbeya (with the same young man for company, the pastor’s son, who is at high school in Mbeya and who proved to be pleasant company). On the way we stopped at a Baptist Bible college for me to speak to the students. I understood I would have all afternoon to talk with them, but they thought I was just getting half an hour! We compromised, and I had an hour to talk about language use in ministry. They were enthusiastic listeners and several of them bought New Testaments in their local language.

I returned home tired, once again thankful for the opportunity to teach but humbled by it too. Who am I that I should be teaching God’s Word to these church leaders? I still have so much to learn myself. And my life is so comfortable compared to theirs. It’s easy for me to find time and space to be quiet before God and meditate on his Word and I can listen to endless excellent Bible podcasts, while some of them barely have a roof over their head, have many mouths to feed, a farm to tend and can barely afford a Bible. A Bible seminar gives them a chance to take time to stop and learn, something that is hard to do in the noise and busyness of daily life. Oh Lord, help me to faithfully handle your Word and to not grow weary of helping others to discover its richness.

*Galatians 3:14 – “…in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith."

*Ephesians 1:3 – “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places…”