Thursday, 11 April: Around Town

I got to sleep in until 7:30 am today. Our plan was for Jake to drive me around Bulawayo to see the different BIC churches around the city.

We left shortly after we finished eating breakfast and ran an errand to the Zimbabwean version of the DMW. Jake had to renew his temporary export permanent so he could drive his vehicle out of the country. At the office, the man with the stamp wasn't in, so Jake left the paperwork there and was told that the official would be in around 3:00 pm. TIA. So far my two experiences with the African DMV make me more thankful for the American DMW.

We drove around to numerous BIC churches. There are around 20 just in the city of Bulawayo, a city of around 800,000. The BIC church in Zimbabwe is larger than the BIC church in the United States (and the Churches of God).

Jake explained the strategy for starting new churches in the Bulawayo. Whenever the city starts developing a new suburb, the church goes to the city council and asks for a stand to start a church. Because of their long history in the area, they almost always get one. The church puts up a small section of a building that they use until the rest of the church can be completed.

The general plan for the church is L-shaped. The smaller leg of the "L" is what the church builds first. Once they outgrow it, they build the walls for a large sanctuary on the other leg of the leg. Once the walls are up, the church can receive assistance from the General Conference to put the roof on it. The two requirements to receive assistance are that the building is made of kiln-dried bricks and the doors are made of steel. Both of these conditions ensure the building will survive the climate and insects. Most of the funding comes directly from the congregation itself. When the roof is completed, the church moves into the large sanctuary and uses the smaller section as classrooms.

We stopped at the church with the biggest congregation, Lobengula BIC. They have around 1,500 members, but Jake said he's seen them cram 3,000-4,000 into the building with people all around the outsides. One of the ladies who works at the church (coincidently, she had Jake as a teacher at Mtshabezi) gave us a tour of the church.

Entrance to Lobengula BIC.

First, we went into the sanctuary. The lady pointed out that the church had recently painted the roof. She said their future plans included painting the walls and tiling the cement floor. Jake bluntly asked her, "And when are you going to plant a church?" She fumbled along without really answering his question directly.

The sanctuary.

When the benches are full, they use chairs.

 The next thing we saw was there bore hole (well). They had recently been having problems with thieves stealing the pump so they put a small concrete slab over it. It didn't look like it would stop a very determined thief.

Our last stop was the Sunday School building that also doubled as classrooms for a small school/daycare. When we walked into one of the rooms, Jake said, "There's something in here that has been stolen." The room was empty except for a pair of crude candelabras. It turns out that he was talking about the candelabras. He explained that long ago when he was doing weddings, people always wanted to have candelabras but they were in short supply. So, Jake made a pair of them that wondered off one day. Now they finally turned up, here in this classroom. The funny thing was, no one at the church knew where they had come from.

The candelabras Jake made.

The very last place we got a tour of in the Sunday School building was the office of the woman leading the tour. She was the development officer and ran an AIDS program in the community for those affected. She had recently developed her own curriculum and was more than happy to show it to Jake.

One of the main things I learned from visiting this church was the need to be careful to remember the Great Commission and Acts 1:8. Too often, churches tend to plateau and get comfortable. When this happens, they frequently become inwardly focused on their own needs instead of having an outward focus on others.

We drove past a few of the other BIC churches then returned back to the house for lunch. Lunch consisted of toasted ham and cheese sandwiches and fresh avocados (I've really grown to like avocado, especially considering the fact that prior to the retreat I had no idea you could use avocado for things other than guacamole.). During lunch I also learned that the sick calf at Mtshabezi had died.

Jake had a board meeting for TCZ and Nancy needed to run some errands, so I took a nap and then a hot bath. We ate chicken, sweet potatoes, and gem squash for dinner.

After dinner I spent some time on Facebook chatting with my pastor, Zack Wilt, and Christina. I shared my excitement with her and I’m pretty sure she returned it a thousand-fold. It was only two days until we would be seeing one another for the first time in a long time, in Africa of all places!