Heading Home (Opuwo Part 4)

We stopped for an overnight at a beautiful lodge in Outjo before saying goodbye to our beloved translator and heading back to Okahandja. We made a stop at J.G., the other Okahandja secondary school that I haven’t been working at, to teach some Life Skills classes. One of the students invited me out to their afternoon Bible Study so I’m looking forward to checking that out. We spent our final ministry days in Windhoek visiting the hospital, a children’s home, and spending a day with the students at Pneumatics, a ministry & theology school connected with Emmanuel Church. I also introduced them to Joe's Beerhouse for Drew's birthday. :) Thursday evening, we said goodbye to the team at the airport where they had to wait another 8 hours for their delayed flight. Then Japie, the national OM director, Stephanie and Caryn, two OM volunteers, and I made the quiet trip back to Okahandja and everyday life.

Having the American team here was sometimes great fun, sometimes head-shaking, but always educational. Because I was an American familiar with Namibia my niche quickly became the liaison between Japie and the team. And since I’ve led so many groups over here, one of my greatest joys was interacting with the team leaders, hopefully helping them learn to be better leaders through the whole process.

I haven’t done much college aged ministry up to this point, but I really enjoyed it these past weeks. They were eager to learn and familiar with the intellectual rhetoric that I’m sure I’ve confused many a high school student with. College students are often independent for the first time and are making decisions on how the values they’ve developed in high school will play out in real life. They’re responsible for their own actions so the learning curve is steep and costly, but that much more effective. I think I may have to pursue this area of ministry further when I get back to NH.

Now with the team gone it’s back to my familiar ministries. It’s been almost a month and a half since I’ve seen the kids in our Bible Study at Okahandja Secondary because they had their school holiday then I left with the team. It feels like forever since I’ve hung out with the kids at the Ark. And it’s hard to remember the last time I was in church. I’m looking forward to getting back involved in what’s become my daily grind. Assuming nothing comes up in the meantime (which could be a stretch), I should be here in Okahandja until the team comes in July.

Photo of the Day

5/25/08 11:35am - Some kids playing

after church with the swing we built for them.

Photo of the Day

5/23/08 11:29am - Dinner preparation, not for the squimish

Epupa Falls (Opuwo Part 3)

With the following Monday being a national holiday, all the hostel kids would be going home for the weekend. Since school visits were our main ministry focus, that left us without much to do over the weekend. Japie suggested the option of driving 2-3 hours north to Epupa Falls on the Kunene River, the northern border between Namibia and Angola. We could help clean up the area since most locals bathe and do laundry there but leave lots of rubbish around. There was also a possibility for another school visit on the way.

To figure out whether to go or stay, Japie asked us to pray and ask God to reveal what He would have us do. Thursday night, the day before we would go, we sat down as a group to chat about what we’d heard from God. Quite naturally, this decision was cause for much debate amongst the team. Some felt we’d already done too much touristy stuff already and should stay for more ministry opportunities. Others felt we’d have more opportunities if we went. But Japie reminded us that this team was not a democracy, so a majority vote wouldn’t win. Our team was under God’s authority, so if we didn’t have a unanimous peace about going then we couldn’t go. We went to bed that night with no decision, no peace, and a team that was beginning to polarize.

The next morning we arose early for our last school assembly. Back at camp we spent half an hour individually praying and reading the Bible asking God for a word. When we got back together everyone shared what they’d heard. I had read Ezekiel and his vision of the four cherubim with wheels underneath them that moved with them. He wrote that the wheels went wherever the cherubim went “because they had the spirit of the cherubim in them.” In the same way, we should go where God goes because we have the Spirit of God in us. I really wanted to go to the Falls and masked it in sound reasoning, but at the root, my motivations were selfish. Deep down I knew that it would be best for the team to stay and get involved in the community in Opuwo. After everyone shared there was still no unanimous peace about going, so we stayed.

It may seem like a small decision in hindsight, but the tension provided a great learning opportunity. As Americans we’re used to our independence. We make decisions by listing the pros and cons of each side and ultimately choosing what seems best to us. Seeking God and waiting for His peace is a strange concept to us. I mean, sure, many of us offer the token prayer to say we asked for God’s direction, but really we end up making the decision ourselves. But I was struck by how Japie never asked us to decide; he asked us to pray. Rather than making the decision, we were seeking the decision God had already made. We were asking Him to bring our hearts and wills in line with His own. That kinda made me think that Epupa was never really the point in the first place, but this whole learning process was.

Later that morning Japie sent us out in pairs into town to pray and ask God what ministry opportunities He had for us. Looking back, this time of walking around town proved to be some of the best memories for many on the team. I set out with Caryn, a photo journalist major from Texas who’s here for 2 months with OM and joined as the team’s photographer. Rather than hit the main street we walked across the road to where people lived in mud or thatched huts. We slowly made our way to an open air market where all the locals hung out. We stuck out like a Yankees fan in Fenway, but they were very friendly and welcoming. The town is quite used to seeing tourists passing through on their way to Epupa hoping for a glimpse of some traditional Himbas. What they’re not used to is whites visiting their homes, praying for the sick, and mingling at the market. We scattered lots more seed that morning. How it will grow we may never know, but had we gone to Epupa it never would’ve been scattered in the first place.

Photo of the Day

5/22/08 11:03am - More reliable than a Toyota in Kaokoland

Home of the Himbas (Opuwo Part 2)

When the colonizing Europeans were looking for land to put a military base in Kaokoland the tribal chiefs gave them a plot of land that nobody wanted. Centuries later, the undesirable valley has now become the capitol of the region, the town of Opuwo. The drive to the valley is about 400km past Outjo along the western border of Etosha, deep into Kaokoland. Previously it was a gravel road the whole way, but last year they began paving it, so there was only 60km or so that was still under construction as we made the trek north.

For an unwanted property it was quite beautiful. The town is situated in a valley surrounded by beautiful mountains and plateaus. It’s a small town, but has all the necessities, supermarket, hardware store, etc. There are about 10 churches, 4 schools, and as usual, more bars than you can count. Our accommodation was in tents at the luxurious Opuwo Country Hotel. It’s a lodge with some campsites situated on the top of one of the mountains overlooking the town. The views were pretty phenomenal. We recognized the blessing in staying at such a nice place, but unfortunately it put us about 1km out of town and created a deeper, invisible distance between us and the community.

Our ministry during the week was visiting the schools in the mornings for assemblies and time in the classrooms. In the afternoons we would go back to visit the school hostels which house students who live too far out of town to commute. We made some great connections, especially with the secondary school students. We would split up the guys and the girls for questions. In the guys group they would ask us all sorts of questions relating to the gospel, ancestor worship, and random things about America. We taught a lot of truth and scattered a lot of seed, but with questionable if any follow-up we must trust God to do the watering and growing.

While these short school visits provided some of our best relational connections, many on the team struggled with the short term nature of that ministry. They kept saying, “I wish we could go back to the hostel” or “I wish we could’ve stayed here for the whole 3 weeks”. This reinforces my position that fewer but longer ministry opportunities are far better than many short opportunities. Ministry is about relationships, and relationships take time. So building into fewer relationships over a longer period of time seems to make a lot more sense than short, shallow relationships that will probably not continue past the trip. If you want to make a case for the opposite, drop a comment.

Okaukuejo dance video

At the Primary school in Okaukuejo,
the students performed this song for us.