International Assignment to Zimbabwe - September 2011

Zimbabwe Visit – 19th to 31st August 2011

The assignment was to speak at the Zimbabwe National Conference and then go on to make camp visits at 4 other camps, for encouragement and guidance, and start a new camp in a fifth town.  All the Christians there need encouragement.  You may have heard of the Anglicans being thrown out of their church buildings and having to find accommodation elsewhere.  And many of the whites that I met had spent time in prison and had had their farms taken from them.

The Conference was arranged to be held in a school in Chinhoyi (since it was holiday time) and use the school hall for the main meetings.  Accommodation was at the nearby Chinhoyi University, which boasts its own hotel.  Chinhoyi is a fairly small town about 2-3 hours drive away from Harare. 

The conference lasted from Friday morning to Sunday lunchtime.  It was an encouraging time.  I had several slots to speak at, covering about 5-6 hours!  However, both they and I survived and had great fellowship together.

Chinhoyi
After the conference I stayed on to meet with the Chinhoyi camp and we fitted in a couple of placements.  The main one was at the very large hospital in Chinhoyi.  It is the largest and best in the country and if you meet any nurses in the UK who have come from Zimbabwe, it is almost certain that they will have been trained there. 

Our placement was not to the hospital beds, but to the student nurses who were coming to the end of their training.  There were about 150 of them.  They brought them back from the wards to receive their testaments and they all crammed into a classroom built  for about 40.  I was asked, besides presenting testaments, would I explain the gospel to them.  I was happy to do this and make a personal challenge.  When I finished, the senior tutor followed up by telling them they were responsible for their own spiritual state and also for the spiritual state of their patients – as well as their physical needs.  What a contrast with the UK!  And this set the tone for the rest of the visit.

We next visited a small prison where we again preached the gospel to about 50 inmates.  At the end a group of 12 of them stood up and sang, unaccompanied, a gospel hymn which basically said “Lord have mercy on me”.  The choir goes out to sing outside the prison on occasion.  They were excellent.

Karoi
The next camp visit was to Karoi.  This again was a little town but again there were opportunities for distributions.  We were not able to enter the prison this time, but they sent 4 inmates out to receive testaments and listen to the gospel message.  I told them that they must tell 50 inmates each as they pass on the testaments.  Oh and yes there was a guard and the chaplain present to look after us!

We then visited a large army barracks, of about 1,000 men.  We managed to get past the guards and one of them came with us up into the barracks to show us the way.  When we parked (near the chaplain’s office) we were spotted by 3 senior officers who, one at a time, walked over to see what these white men were doing on their premises.  Each one arrived looking very stern and each one softened as we explained the gift we wanted to give.  The end result was the very senior officer called for the chaplain and gave authority for us to provide scriptures.  Of course, unannounced there was not going to be opportunity immediately but we discovered that there is a passing out parade in October and the local Gideons are going to follow through to see if the presentation can be incorporated in that event.  Do pray for them.

We ended this visit with a recruitment event/camp meeting.  At the end of it, two men came and asked if they could be Gideons – please!  I had to decline them though, on the grounds that we don’t accept Muslims as members.

Kariba
Kariba was the next stop.  This is miles away from anywhere else, travelling through countryside where you can see no living creature.  Not even birds flying.  Arriving at the hotel, we had to wait for elephants to move out of the road, and to avoid zebra in the car park.  I was not surprised the next morning therefore to find that there had also been wildlife in the bed – evidenced by a number of bite marks.

Kariba is on the border with Zambia and the Zambezi river divides the two.  The river has been dammed and there is a lake which is so wide you can’t see the other side.  Since Kariba’s area for distribution covers the other side of the lake as well, you can imagine the problems of doing distributions there, when the first day and last day of any distribution is crossing the lake.  Do we match up to that commitment – 3 days minimum to go to some of these schools?

The distributions here were a large hotel and a small hospital.

Chegutu
The next destination was Chegutu.  There was no reasonable hotel in Chegutu so we stayed in Kadoma, about 30 miles down the road.  As a highlight of the visit (!), outside the hotel there were parked 4 vintage steam trains from the old Rhodesian Railways – the ones with two sets of driving wheels.  Wonderful!

Arriving at the hotel, we asked whether the receptionist could give us a good rate since we were there for the Gideons.  There was another lady in reception who immediately said we could have the best rate possible.  She was the front of house manager and wanted to order more scriptures for the rooms there.  And just as one example of the Lord’s timing, she left about 5 minutes later.  Without her the receptionist would not have had the authority.

The main distribution here was to a large prison of about 200 inmates.  It took us over an hour to get to speak to the right person who could allow us in.  Each person took us to the next level, and some senior men were hard to find.  However, the crowd of prisoners sat on the floor and listened attentively to the gospel message.  Afterwards some came and asked for prayer. They were leaving prison in the next few days and didn’t want to return but knew that they were bad inside and could easily end up back there.  I told them the gospel message was their only hope, but we would pray for them.

Seke
Finally we sent to Seke.  This was a very small and extremely crowded town without any Gideon camp and our task was to set up a camp if at all possible.  We started by contacting a supervisory pastor who met us at a local school which was under his jurisdiction.  The Lord had prepared the way yet again.  The pastor’s son was a keen Gideon in another branch and this supervisor provided us with names of key pastors and contacted several people for us.  We spent the rest of the day visiting these other pastors, asking for names of men and asking for their support.

The next day at 10:30 (plus a bit for African time-keeping) people began to arrive.  This included a number of ladies who had been sent along by their pastor to get details because their husbands could not be present.  One of the pastors we met on the first day came bringing his potential recruits.  Most of the staff of the school also appeared, sent by the headmistress of the school.  After explaining the work, some were clearly ineligible, e.g. single women and non-professionals.  However, there were enough men there willing and able to get the camp started.  We had elections and then, as the time approached 1pm, we had our first distribution to the school where we were meeting.  There were about 300 pupils, aged 13-18.  I stood on a table to be able to see them all, and again was allowed to preach the gospel as we offered the scriptures to them.

What a great place to be!  Despite the political problems which are not insignificant, the opportunities for the gospel there are wonderful.  The people are extremely friendly – even more so than some other African countries I have visited.  And they are so open to the gospel.  Never mind one PWT a month – or one PWT a day – by the end of breakfast one morning I had given 6, and they were coming out the kitchen and just waiting patiently to be given one.  One day I gave 15.  Anywhere and any time you can talk about the gospel and they are pleased to listen.

Thank you for your prayers.  Without the prayers of the saints, very little of this would have happened.  In particular, safety in travel is not a minor issue.  On the way back from church on Sunday morning we passed a car embedded in a tree.  The engine was shunted back into the passenger area.  This had not been there on the way to church and we didn’t give much of a chance for anyone in the front seats of the car.  Another day travelling we counted 6 fresh smashes – the car being a write off in each case.  And it isn’t the bad driver that necessarily gets hurt.  We were nearly run off the road a couple of times.  And then there were the forest fires.  These don’t hit the news, because they are so frequent and relatively small, but each time you left a building, you could smell the smoke; large areas were black and more than once we drove between the flames of grass and scrub burning on each side of the road. 

Please keep praying for those who go on overseas work.  We need it.

Brian Dunning, York Branch
September 2011