Article from our January Newletter

by: Steve Schwarz

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let
the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is
thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of
life without cost (Revelation 22:17). In December I
(Steve) began entering the Maround Compound of
Mbala (pictured below) to share the good news of Jesus
Christ with all who would listen. These initial trips
into the area showed that an adjustment needed to be
made in the approach I was using. There is a veneer of
religiosity in most people resulting from years of programs,
events, and crusades. The first home visits revealed
that every person is affiliated with a church,
they all know Jesus, and they are all bound for heaven.
But just in case they needed to do something more for
their salvation, most would pray to receive Christ
again. Something was clearly not right.

The change of approach in January was very
simple but powerful. Instead of quickly entering into
the gospel in one visit, I began slowly working through
the issues on multiple visits while building relationships.
The people are so gracious and accepting that
they readily welcome many visits to their homes. The
first visit includes “get to know you” dialogue and basic
spiritual questions like Do you attend a church?, What
is religion ?, What is Christianity?, What is the Bible?,
and Who is God? The answers to these questions reveal
a great deal about spiritual condition of a person and
give direction for future visits. The second visit continues
to build relationship while going a bit deeper with
questions like Who is Jesus Christ?, What is sin?, Are
you a good person?, and How does a person go to
heaven? At the ready are stories of Adam and Eve and
the Fall of man as well as the encounter of Nicodemus
with Jesus. A third visit provides opportunity for my
personal testimony or a Creation to Christ presentation.  All along love of Christ is demonstrated and gospel truth is being communicated.

A basis fact is that the people here have heard
gospel presentations many times but not as a part of a
complete biblical context. As a result, many who claim
to be saved don’t know who God is or what He is like.
They have no foundation on which to build gospel
truths so the good news becomes a false, legalistic security.
The general consensus is that all a person needs to
do is go to church and pray and he will be made right
with God.

So, what is the answer? A clear, simple understanding
of God’s Word from Genesis through Christ
will be a good place to start. To that end, I will be starting
a weekly Bible study on Saturday February 12th at
one of the local schools. Our prayer is that men and
women will begin to see God as He has revealed Himself
in Scripture and fall in love with Him. By the time
the New Testament is reached in the teachings, there
will be no doubt that Jesus Christ is the only answer to
the sin that separates us all from our loving Father in
Heaven.

This type of teaching will take some time but
those who respond will be true born again believers.
Jesus commanded His followers to make disciples not
get decisions. Praying a prayer does not make someone
a Christian any more than just reading a Bible or going
to church does. I thank the Lord for the direction He has
given us in reaching Mbala for the cause of Christ. May
the result be many Mambwe-Lungu people joining
those from other tribes, tongues, and nations in worshiping
the Lamb at the throne of God (Revelation 5).

 

Ministry has Started

Steve has started going to the Maround Compound to do ministry in the afternoons.  Afternoons were picked because a lot of people are in their fields in the mornings.

Pray for Steve and his language helper as they do this.  For the past year of language we have been working with Christian people.  Most of our workers are Christians.  Steve is finding out just how dark it is here.  What he is doing now is like survey work.  Talking to people and finding out what they know of God, do they believe in heaven and hell, and such questions.  It helps him to know what method of teaching he will need to do.  Does he just go out and witness and then start discipling them.  Or does he need to start at the beginning of the Bible and teach them who is God and that he created everything. 

Pray for his communication skills.  He studied ciBemba.  I think he knows a lot, but to carry on a conversation is difficult.  He has all his questions written out in English and ciBemba, so he can read it.  He does read ciBemba pretty well.  The thing is this isn’t just ciBemba country.  A lot of people are Mambwe and they want to speak that.  He has come across a few other language too.

So pray for Steve as he goes out and does ministry.  Pray that God would open the eyes and ears of people and they would come to know the Lord as their Savior.  Pray for Steve’s language skills.

Also, a big thank you to the IMB for providing us with a 4-wheel drive vehicle.  Steve got stuck the first day.  A friend told him during the rainy season just to keep the hubs locked.  He forgot.  So they got stuck.  All it took to get out was to get out and lock the hubs and turn on the 4-wheel drive button and out of the water hole they drove.  I personally would prefer to avoid all water holes / big mud puddles, but that isn’t always possible.   You just turn on the 4-wheel drive and pray that you make it out the other side.  Steve has been using it every time they go out.

On a side note, it has been raining a lot here.  We had another gully washer yesterday.  I dumped out three inches of rain from my cup.  It rained several times in the night and most of the morning.  I just dumped out another two inches!q

Merry Christmas from the Schwarz Family

While your day is only partial over, ours is winding down.  The kids are already reading books in bed.  Steve and I are listening to a little country music.  We have had a lazy, but good day.  The game Risk was played thanks to my sister’s in-laws.  Seth played chess with his daddy.  A puzzle was started.  Turkey was enjoyed.  Steve and I enjoyed stuffing – our kids don’t like it.

Thank you to all of you who gave to the Lottie Moon Offering.  That offering is was makes it possible for us to missionaries here in Zambia. 

Love from Zambia and God Bless!  Rita for the Schwarzs

Electricity Woes Part III

The electric came on Monday afternoon.  We are thinking maybe everything is fixed now.  Think again.  On Wednesday afternoon the electric went off again.  Steve has a friend at the electric company, so he called him to ask what is going on and when can we expect electric.  The transformer blew and it will be a few days before it is fixed!  They usually keep a spare in the area – I’m thinking one spare for the Northern Province – but, it had been used and not replaced.  He admitting to poor planning.

We Americans think – transformer blew, need a new one, put it on the truck tonight, it will arrive in the morning and install – right!?!?!  Not so.  The transformer had to be shipped from Ndola.  I don’t know when it arrived, but the electric didn’t come on until Sunday at 3PM.

Life changes when there is no electricity.  We went into survival mode.  Steve got the generator going every morning.  Our generator is only a 11 amps.  So first he plugged in the coffee pot.  Then when that was don’t the milk pasteurizer was plugged in.  Then he came and got me so that I could enjoy at least one cup of hot coffee.  Although, I think he turned the gas camp stove on twice in the day to heat coffee back up in a kettle.  After that then the fridge and freezer were plugged in.  We ran the generator most of the morning.  Steve also plugged in the computer and tried to get some work done in the kitchen.  He was trying to finish up preparing for teaching a Bible school class in Kasama the following week.

Generators are noisy.  So in the afternoons we enjoyed the quiet!  Then sometime between 4 and 6 again we would turn it on and plug in the fridge and freezer again.  We would also plug in the TV and watch a show before we turned it off and hopped into bed.

We have a two burner gas camp stove that we cooked on.  We also headed water on it to wash dishes and take bathes.  Although I do know we forgot about it and our worker washed dishes with cold water.  Steve did spend probably 4  to 6 hours trying to make it work right – the stove that is.  Gas doesn’t flow through it properly.

I was planning Heathers birthday party for Friday night.  She turned 13!!  The party was to be at our house, but with no electric how am I to make pizza and cake.  Our friends gladly helped us out.  They were the ones invited to the party and their girls were staying overnight at our house.  She has a outdoor brick pizza oven.  It takes charcoal.  So she made the cake in the pizza oven in the morning and then in the evening I brought over the pizzas and we partied at their house.  Then we took the girls to our house.

There is so much that Steve does when the electric is out.  He even helps or does most of the cooking.  All this time we were without electricity, it was cloudy, raining, and we were having thunderstorms.  So cooking on the porch wasn’t exactly  pleasant, especially when the wind was blowing the rain onto the porch.

Sunday afternoon Steve is packing up to leave for Kasama and showing me how to do everything.  How to start and stop the generator.  What to plug in where.  He even showed me how to unwire the pump from the electric supply and wire it to the generator so that I would pump water up into the tank.

I told him not to worry, that we would survive with him gone.  He said he wanted us to more than survive!  He is sweet.  I told him, “If this was a class that I was taking.  I would pass the test, maybe not with flying colors, but that I would pass and he was not to worry about us.

He left at 2 PM and the electric came on at 3 PM.  For the most part it stayed on for the whole week he was gone. 

Electricity Woes Part II

So the electric came on Thursday morning and I was happy.  Four days later it went again.  Sunday morning is left us and didn’t come back until Monday afternoon.  So we got some experience living for about 30 hours with out electric. 

The four days with electricity were interesting.  On that Saturday it took me all day practically to do one load of laundry!!!  The electricity was so low most of the day that the contractor wouldn’t stay in.  So every time I thought about it I went by and pushed it in to see if there was enough power to keep it in so that I could turn on my washing machine again and then later the dryer.

That same evening I was trying to use the blender to make applesauce.  It wouldn’t go around fast enough.  Steve thought: Oh! there is something wrong with that.  I’m thinking, I haven’t done anything to make this not work.  I think it is the electric. 

We are suppose to have 220 volts coming through the electric lines into our house.  If we have 190 we think that is good.  At the time I was doing the applesauce we were only getting 75 volts.  The thing is, all these gadgets we have to stabilize the electric should have cut off the fridge and freezer like it had been doing to my washing machine and dryer all day.  So to save everything we just turned off the main to the house. Then we wait 15 minutes to 1/2 hour and turn it on and see if the voltage is high enough to run things.

Electricity Woes Part I

Some families go into the mission field knowing they will not have electricity and so they prepare for such a life.  We have one family in our mission in Zambia that lives without electricity.  We had friends in orientation that were going to a place without electricity.   We on the other hand knew we would have electricity.  We did know it wouldn’t be great and it wouldn’t be always there, but that we would have it.

The Monday after Thanksgiving, while we were still in Lusaka, we got a call.  The electricity is off and they are not sure when it is coming back on.  We figure, no big deal, we are not even there.  We drove back to Mbala on that Wednesday.  The electricity was still off.  In Kasama we filled one of our jerry cans with petrol/gasoline. 

When we got home, Steve pulled the vehicle right up to the front door to unload it.  He took off to the back to get the generator up and running.  The kids and I unloaded the vehicle and trailer.  We unpacked and climbed into bed exhausted from our drive.  We had left Lusaka at 4 AM.  We stopped in Kasama to take care of a few things there, so didn’t get home until about 6 PM.

Steve got up twice in the night to fill up the generator.  At 4 AM the electric came on.  Whoo hoo!!!!  We really didn’t have to put up with that electrical outage as we were not here to deal with it.  We didn’t lose anything in the Fridge or Freeze because no one was opening and shutting the doors all day.  I was thinking, Yes!  didn’t have to deal with that one.  I think the Lord thought I needed to deal with an electrical outage as you will see in Part 2.

The reason for this three and a half day outage was due to some guys stealing bolts and or cables or both, holding up a tower.  Stories are conflicting.  Anyways, the tower fell over taking another tower with it.  One of the guys was caught and sitting jail.  I heard that others were caught, but this of course is not confirmed.

Putsy Fly

Warning:  Do not read this or look at the pictures if you don’t like gross things.  Gross or not, this is what we have to deal with here.

 

About a week ago I noticed our one dog, Buddy, had a wet spot on him where he had been licking himself.  I noticed a hole in the spot and thought our other dog, Vern, finally bit him good.  The more I thought about it though, that didn’t make sense.  There would be more teeth marks.  I finally remembered to tell my husband this past Thursday morning.  He meets with two other guys for prayer.  The one guy has been here for 12 years and has lots of experience with this. 

So after prayer time they went to work.  You have to let the thing grow for 4 or 5 days so that it gets big enough to get it out.  So on a person this can be very annoying.  Then you put Vaseline over the opening.  At this stage the maggot breaths air and so it starts to go crazy wiggling to the hole to come out.  Then all you have to do is gently push it out.

This is a picture of the whole.

This is the maggot.  Steve enlarged it so that you can all see it.

This is why we don’t hang clothes on wash lines.  The fly lays its eggs in your wet clothing.  You put on the clothes and the egg hatches and crawls inside your skin.  It is itchy.  You have to try and endure this for 4 to 5 days without scratching it!

You can hang clothes on the wash line.  You then need to use a hot iron on everything.  Or you can put them into the dryer on hot heat for 10 minutes.  Or you can not wear them for 4 to 5 days.  If it doesn’t have a body to crawl into it will die.  Our family doesn’t have enough clothes to let them sit around waiting for bugs to die.  I also don’t trust the dryer for 10 minutes and I refuse to iron all of our clothes.  So nothing goes on the wash line at our house.