Reflections from a Flat Seat

 After an intense trip like this one to Central Africa, I find the flight home is always the best. This time, United has made it doubly special by giving me a complementary upgrade to Business Class—one that has those cool seats that actually recline all the way into a flat bed! What better place to jot down some final reflections on this trip?

Discussing organizational development

• Traveling with Al Hawthorne on behalf of Wycliffe Associates has given me even greater respect for the incredibly important role Scripture translation must play in the healthy development of a national church. Unfortunately, Congolese leaders have admitted that recent focus by many missions on primarily planting new churches has significantly sidelined the priority of Bible translation. I leave this trip more convinced than ever that the two ministry thrusts must work hand-in-hand if long-term sustainability of a strong national church can ever be expected.

• After presenting my seminar on Board Governance to one of the national Bible translation organizations, I’m impressed by how much emerging African leaders truly want to learn for themselves better methods of managing their ministries.  The response I got was not just a polite nod of thanks, but a genuine hunger for truly wanting to learn how to organize and function more effectively. This was confirmed when I shared the seminar outline with other national Bible translation groups and immediately received invitations to return and present it to their organizations.

• More than ever, African ministry leaders are facing the stark reality that funding from the West is no longer something they can depend upon as they did in the past. And, more than ever, I see the need for them to grasp a completely new perspective on Biblical stewardship that could empower them to successfully manage their own fund-raising efforts. Despite perceptions of local churches being too poor to help, I’m convinced there is much more hidden potential in the “widows’ mite” from African churches than expected. This has birthed in me a desire to prepare a new training seminar on Biblical stewardship and local fund raising specifically to offer African ministry leaders. I hope to have something ready to offer in both French and English in the next three to four months.

With veteran WEC missionary, Dr. Phil Wood

• It was amazing to bump into so many friends from the past on this trip. What surprised me was how many of them were folks I met and even flew around DRC back in the early 1980s.  Some of them were veteran missionaries with WEC like Dr. Phil Wood and Maud Kells. Others were Wycliffe Bible translators like Tim Raymond and Bettina Gottschlich. Walking through the big SIL center in Addis Ababa, I was introduced to a key visiting Wycliffe instructor doing seminars on leadership development, only to find out that Carol McGee was also a former missionary from Zaire days who I knew and used to fly to and from her remote mission station. Without doubt, the emerging national ministries I’ve visited are being built up on the shoulders of these faithful, veteran missionary servants.

Well, the flight attendants have just come around with tablecloths, so I guess it’s time to raise my flat-bed seat up a bit and enjoy the shrimp-salmon appetizer they’re offering to begin the four-course meal that comes with this Business Class upgrade. 

I know, I know… it’s all part of suffering for the Lord!

Unlikely Missionaries

One of the very obvious things I’ve seen here in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been the huge presence of UN military forces. Every single airport we’ve landed at, from Kinshasa to Gemena to Isiro to Bunia has its UN compound complete with an impressive array of aircraft, helicopters, and armored personnel vehicles.  Thanks to all the rebel activity during the past several years and a totally ineffective national army, UN forces have had plenty to keep busy with in helping maintain national stability.

But what was not so obvious to me is how these UN forces are also functioning as de facto Muslim missionaries. Because the primary country supplying UN troops to the DRC is Pakistan, it has been natural for themto seek ways to promote their personal faith. In locations where they have been stationed for the past couple of years, new mosques are sprouting up along with other Islamic-backed institutions like schools and hospitals funded significantly by these Pakistani UN soldiers. MAF pilot, Dave Jacobsson says that before the UN came to the city of Bunia, a predominantly Christian city in the northeast, public calls to worship from mosque minarets was nonexistent. Now, starting at 4:30 AM and throughout the day, you can hear them loudly broadcast from multiple locations around town.

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On an much darker note, local Congolese are discovering that many of UN troops are engaged in illegal smuggling. Gold and precious metals such as cobalt needed in cell phone manufacture, is regularly being transported over to Uganda or Rwanda in official vehicles normally exempt from the border inspections. Just last week two UN trucks were caught doing just that near the town of Goma causing a minor riot and further infuriating the local population.

I guess just because the official color of the UN military is white doesn’t always mean they’re the “good guys!”

Global Tracker

 My fellow traveler, Al Hawthorne, the Africa Area Director for Wycliffe Associates, has been testing a very cool device on this journey we’re taking together across Africa.  It’s a unit called inReach made by the Delorme company and designed to track and communicate with folks anywhere in the world in case of an emergency.

Using both GPS and satellite communication technology, once you turn it on, it will send a signal every few minutes to a central location giving the precise coordinates of your position.  Then, if necessary, it also allows you to make simple two-way text messaging so you can indicate if you’re OK or in need of some kind of urgent assistance.  All this can happen remotely without the need of any cell phone network or Internet connection.

Just for fun, Al turned the unit on as we were taking our MAF flights across the northern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Later, he was able to retrieve the location information that had been stored on a website to see exactly where we had been. Here’s an image from that website showing our flights over the past few days. (Isn't it great to see that MAF pilots can still fly in a straight line?!)

For more information about InReach, check out the following website: http://www.inreachdelorme.com

Impressive Initiatives

ACOTBA-SUBO, CITBA, ECG—all impressive acronyms that I’m learning about on this trip across the Democratic Republic of Congo. Each are related to efforts to complete translations of the Bible for the many tribal languages of the country that do not have one.

What has been interesting to me is that all of the new effort on translation projects have come not from the traditional Western-oriented organizations like Wycliffe Bible Translators or SIL but from relatively new national agencies. ACOTBA-SUBO is one of those focused on the northwestern part of the country. Undaunted by grueling logistic and economic difficulties common to this part of DRC, they pressed ahead to start four new projects funded totally by the tithes of their own staff! Interviewing director Bolobo Obed, I was able to gather this graphic representation on my iPad about just where these projects are located. The blue markers on this map indicate existing language projects started by Wycliffe missionaries years ago. The red markers are the brand new projects and the green ones are future projects they hope to start as soon as more funds can be procured.

Some 470 miles (and a four hour MAF flight in a Cessna 206) to the east is the jungle city of Isiro, the region historically called by C. T. Studd, the “heart of Africa.” It is also the home of CITBA, another new national Bible translation organization. This effort is a collaboration of three Protestant church groups and three Catholic diocese, all committed to seeing the Bible completed in the tribal languages of the region. Some of the member church groups have donated buildings and property for CITBA to begin work, which now consists of five separate teams focused on translation into such languages as Mayogo and Mangbetu.

Finally, the East Congo Group (ECG) of SIL located in the border town of Bunia is transforming itself more and more from a traditional Wycliffe translation team into a support and training service for other national translation initiatives. Working in conjunction with the Univeristy Shalom Bunia (USB) they are providing technical training to a significant number of Congolese learning the ins and outs of becoming a “mother tongue translators.”

It’s been fun making this trip on behalf of Wycliffe Associates and learning how our logistics and organizational training support can enable these national translation efforts to make new Bibles a reality for those tribes that have never had one before.

Hurdle Jumping

I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve got a spiritual Enemy who does not want this trip to happen.  

Making another visit to Central Africa is not new for me, but what is new are the incredible number of hurdles that seem to have been thrown in the way to keep it from happening.

When I was asked last January by Al Hawthorne, the new Africa Area Director for Wycliffe Associates to accompany him on his first visit to translation projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I thought it would be pretty much a routine trip.  So, I got busy setting up the logistics for him, which included a number of charter flights on MAF aircraft to get us across some pretty remote regions of the country (see map.)

Then the hurdles started appearing.  First it was a hangar mishap with the MAF Caravan aircraft in Kinshasa that ended up grounding it for repairs and eliminating it as an option for our travel. That was followed by the refusal of the local DRC embassy to give Al a visa forcing him to send off his passport all the way from Ethiopia to Washington DC to get the proper permission. Then, yesterday, just hours before my departure, I learned that some of my United flights had been canceled due to the snowstorm on the East Coast. Not wanting to lose the several thousand dollars already invested in this trip, I made some last minute changes (costly changes!) and am now on my way to London to reconnect with flights that will get me back on track with our original journey.

One of my new French language PowerPoint slides
on board governance

With God’s help, we’ll have a chance to visit with three different translation centers where national Congolese are picking up the primary task of Bible translation. While Al surveys logistic needs that Wycliffe Associate might offer, I’ll be leading some seminars on Board Governance and Organizational Development.  Thanks to some great help from my friend, Rene Mbongo, in Dakar, Senegal, I’ve now have my PowerPoint presentations translated into excellent African French. So, for the first time, I’ll be giving a hand at offering this training in the local trade language of these “mother tongue” Bible translators.

Stay tuned over the next few days.  As I have WiFi opportunity, I’ll try to keep you abreast of how the rest of this trip pans out.

Under His wings,

Jon