January Namibia Trip

2 Posts in 1 Day!  Finally our Africa post from A and then our snow post after this one.

If you are a regular reader of the blog you will remember that Cameron said I would tell you about our Africa trip and now is the time. All that to say this is Aaron and I am guest starring on the blog today. Oh, you just thought Cam was long winded.

     Starting from the beginning is always the best idea, but for this story we have to go back several months. I wanted to go to Namibia in January after being there in July and knowing I was going back in June of this year I did not have the time nor the money to go. I still thought it was a trip that I needed to be on so I asked the church if I could have the time, but still did not have the money. Well as you can tell by the pictures God provided again and I was able to go and I am so glad I did. I knew God had called me to go and provided the way, but I was not sure why. I had my own motives for desiring to go, buy would soon see that God had been preparing me for some time for what He was about to teach me. ( I will show you what he taught me as we go through the story.)

LEAVING   

      The week before we left the weather forecast for our leave day which was Monday became worse and worse. On Saturday we discussed leaving a day early so we could get into Dallas and would have less risk in travel. Needless to say that none of us really wanted to leave a day early just to go to Dallas. We had made our plans with our families and churches for weeks and changing those meant readjusting mentally for leaving our families. We had also planned to have a joint service with First Baptist Seymour to send us out. On Sunday morning we had to make an abrupt decision to go ahead and leave due to the weather. The sudden departure made our leave much harder than usual. This is part of what God was trying to teach me. You can’t just say God and what he tells you to do is more important than your family and not have it put to the test. This trip was part of our test. We would have to leave suddenly a day early and what we did not know at the moment is that we would be coming back a day later than scheduled. ( More to come on that.)

GETTING THERE

     As mentioned above the weather was not cooperating with our trip causing problems even before we left. Though many flights had been canceled on Sunday ours was still scheduled and we felt great. Before we got to the airport on Monday our original flight had been canceled and we were to be rerouted through Memphis and then Atlanta. That fell apart after we got to the airport and they set us up to leave early the next morning. When I say they set us up to leave the next morning I stood in front of the poor Delta agent for almost two hours while he looked through every flight from multiple airlines to get us into JoBurg as quick as we could. It was at this point that as a team we decided to stay another day since we knew our trip would be cut short. Instead of going from DFW to ATL and then JoBurg we went to Cincinnati Airport, which is actually in Northern Kentucky, and then to Paris and then to JoBurg. Seventeen hours in Paris was not on the schedule. We finally did get there safe and sound. We were tired, frustrated, and more than anything we were longing to see God work.

FINALLY THERE

     On the way from Windhoek to Outapi, 9 hour drive, I made some calls to the men in Outapi to let them know we were late and that we would be in town that day. After a couple of messages I got a text saying that they needed to meet with us as soon as we go in town. They did not tell us what they needed to meet about. We were a little nervous, but our nerves were settled when they told us that since we had been delayed they would not have a chance to talk to us other than then. They had scheduled a baptism for Saturday and they needed to talk to us about what was going to happen. They had planned one for Saturday afternoon and then one again for Sunday morning. We were excited to see that they had talked with every person who was to be baptized and explained what biblical baptism was. WE WERE NOW EXCITED! I was especially excited because I was going to be performing the baptisms and this was my first baptism done out of the States and out of a baptismal pool inside a church building. We did this baptism with the understanding that this was only to teach them how as they had asked and they would need to baptize anyone else in the future who would need it after salvation. We used a hole that had filled with water due to the recent rains which marked the beginning of their rainy season. Saturday afternoon we did an open air baptism at 3 and then had worship at 6:30, well really it was 7 but we were on Africa time. Africa time is almost like not having time, but pretending to have time. You set start times, but they mean little.  The baptism was great and we had an exciting time of worship that night with our brothers and sisters in Outapi.

     Sunday morning I was about to begin understanding what God had been teaching me over that last couple of months. I had been preaching through 2 Timothy for the last couple of months and God had really been showing me the passages that dealt with using scripture to correct teaching and being patient while doing so in love and not pride or desiring just to be correct. 2:25,4:2

After we had a great service and several people responded to the Word and prayed to receive Christ one of the men who has been leading made some comments to this group to encourage them. In his haste he made some comments that came from what he has heard in other churches and did not reflect biblical truth or even what he truly believed. They sounded good and his ability to speak made them sound even better, but they did not match scripture and we knew we had to do something. We set up a meeting for the next day and began to pray about what to say and how to say it to a brother we love. The only way to say something  is to just say what needs to be said so that is what I did. After much conversation and looking at what the Bible says and what David actually believed we had the matter cleared up and were able to move forward with everyone knowing how much we truly all loved each other and how important staying true to scripture really is. That night we had another great night of Bible study and planned for another day of Bible study and worship on Tuesday.

Tuesday we had a great time teaching Noah, Erastus, and David, the leadership there about leadership in the church and how it differed from other leadership. These men are emerging as pastors called by God to lead His church. They are currently deciding on a name for this church and if God is calling them or one of them to be pastor of this congregation. They are doing a great job of leadership. That night we had our last night of worship and said goodbye to our friends.

We are excited to go back in June!

***The slideshow I had here does not seem to be working so I will be doing several picture posts after this one.