How Do You Deal With
Covid-19...On A Mission Trip to Africa!
So excited to hear from John Wenger since he is home form his mission trip to Africa! This is the manuscript we worked from for our youtube talk you can watch here:
or listen to here:
Where did you go?
I traveled to the Central African Republic
February 29-March 17, 2020. We flew into
the capital city of Bangui. This African
county has a population of approximately 4 million with half the people living
in the capital city.
What did you do?
When we arrived at the farm we first worked on
maintenance of some equipment. Which
included a water pump replacement on a tractor and clutch replacement and
assembling some equipment that had never been assembled since it arrived there
from the U.S. We then spent several days
in the field experimenting on the best way to work the soil to get it ready to
plant. It was a challenge working with
the tractor driver Alex to try to point and show him how to do it with the
language difference.
We also started to build a house for Marcellin. So he could move his family to the farm. His family was displaced in 2016 when there
was an uprising and it was no longer safe for them to be in the country so he
moved them to Cameroon and that’s where they live currently. He has a wonderful testimony on how God
spared him from harm as they first escaped to the bush and people helped him
hide one of his vehicles. How he lost
his home and possessions but he was thankful that now God put him in a new
place where he could start this farm to help the community. That was two years ago since he started this
farm which now has cattle, pigs, rabbits, chickens, turkeys, a few horses and
he is now planting banana trees, corn, potatoes, and is now going to try other
things as well.
What did you learn?
I learned that it was a day-to-day challenge for
the people there to just survive and live from the quality of water to the food
that they need and how blessed we are compared to them. (John also shared he ate a variety of foods including Nile Monitor lizard-which he said tastes nothing like chicken)
How did you get home?
The simple answer lots of prayer from believers
around the world! It took three
different tickets and we had to travel miles further away from home before we
could get a flight back to the U.S. from
Kenya. What a flight! It was about 15 hours long, very hot and a
very crowded.
What surprised you?
I think the heat.
I wasn’t prepared, that surprised me how hot it got in the sun it was
almost 120 degrees one day. Most days it
was close to 110 degrees at noon.
What challenged you?
I think for me the biggest challenge was knowing
how to do something but not having the proper tools or being able to get
something we needed and we had to figure out ways to make do with what was
available.
How did you change through this experience?
I think anytime someone goes on a mission trip at
least for me it just changes your perspective on how we live here versus how
little those people have over there.
How did you see God move through this
experience?
In many different ways, like how we were able to
encourage the church we attended just by being there and taking the time to
drink coffee and listen to them and pray with them before we left. It had been 1983 since the last white person
was in that church.
Or like when Marcellin needed more lumber and he
was talking to the guy about purchasing some and the guy said just bring a
truck it’s free because he knows what Marcellin was doing for his community.
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