Zimbabwe

October 16, 2010

Rev. Nedson Zulu dropped us off in Harare on the 28^th of September where we were graciously hosted by the CCAP Synod of Harare who are in partnership with Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church. Harare is beautiful this time of year, with the Jacaranda trees in full bloom. We stayed at the home of Dr. Lamiel Phiri who recently received his Ph.D. in Servant Leadership. Lamiel was an incredible host. While in Harare, we conducted a three day workshop on entitled “Training of Trainers.” The course was scheduled to be held at Rock Haven CCAP Conference Center, but due to water challenges we held the course at Mbare Congregation in Harare, where we were generously hosted by Rev. Juma. We trained lay leaders from CCAP churches all over Zimbabwe. One participant even travelled 800km (500 miles) taking him 12 hours via bus to reach Harare The courrse was similar to the courses that we taught with TEEZ in Zambia, but with more of an emphasis on preaching and leadership. Many of the participants were leaders in their churches, but had little formal training and therefore were very eager to learn, and were full of good questions. English varied among the participants and we were very impressed by the way they helped each other translate the material. We had a lovely closing ceremony and we were able to present each participant with a certificate of completion.

Lamiel kindly showed us much of Harare and on Sunday took us to a CCAP church in the small town of Chegutu, about an hour outside of Harare. I preached and after the service we went to a nice lunch with several of church leaders. Chegutu Congregation just expanded their building and is a thriving congregation. We really enjoyed our five days in Harare and were grateful to meet the people with whom MAPC has established a partnership. In less than a week, a group from MAPC will travel to Harare to continue this partnership. We know they will have an enjoyable and blessed time.

After finishing the course in Harare, we boarded a Greyhound Bus on Monday October 4 and reached Johannesburg, South Africa 18 hours later! The bus was really nice compared to the buses we took in Malawi; we had assigned seats, there weren’t any passengers in the aisles and the bus was chicken free. However, no matter how nice the bus it was still a long ride to Johannesburg. We will write more on our time in South Africa and Lesotho in our next post.