The Drive.

Greetings to all of you!


On behalf of our family I would like to say we hope you are enjoying these correspondences. They are not much of a conversation but at times it feels as if this running dialogue is the only connection we have to all of our friends and loved ones at home...



Last night we finished the last day of a four-day drive from our soon-to-be permanent home in Kigoma, Tanzania to the Overland Missions base camp in Livingstone, Zambia. They were four grueling days of driving, with the first 2 being the hardest in regards to road conditions and terrain. We drove through the southern roads of Tanzania that Steve and Donna use to get into the tribal regions; some of the things the Land Rover did with 9 people and all of our luggage strapped to the roof was incredible. We went over mountains and through ditches, crossed rock beds and navigated the shoddy tarmac of Northern Zambia. With all of that considered it was often the truck drivers and villagers passing by that posed the greatest hazard, even on some of the nicer roads we passed heading further south towards the Zambian capital of Lusaka.


Over the course of our roughly 3400 kilometer (1900 mile) drive we passed countless trucks, tankers, and buses that had collided or overturned on the roadside, some freshly laid in ruin while others had become odd monuments to this cross-country African drive. There were so many different towns and villages peddling different produce and using differing architecture in the construction of their crude buildings and huts. The landscape changed as well, alternating constantly between different soil types and elevations, between rugged rockiness and smooth savanna plains. There were some wetlands and rivers, but mostly it was dry and dusty terrain. There were some tall groves of eucalyptus, but most of the trip was painted with smaller and sparse African trees; you probably know the ones that look like large bonsai growing up from the African scrub.


Certainly the pass through the Katavi game preserve was a highlight of the travel. We saw elephants and wild boar and a wallow of at least a hundred hippos as we crossed a riverbed. Steve even said he saw a giraffe, but at that point he was channeling the insane African bus drivers we were passing and at those speeds it was almost impossible for him to stop the loaded car fast enough to double back so we could all get a glimpse.


Well, with all of the shifting scenes and evolving cultures we journeyed through, there were some clear constants that tied the entire trip - and even the previous week's travel - together so tightly. The poverty and need from one end of Tanzania to the farthest end of Zambia never went away. The droves of children running barefoot along busy roadways and flocks of people corralled into open beds of trucks so loaded down it was a wonder they could drive were everywhere we went. With the exception of small pockets in some of Zambia's cities where for a moment you might think you were in a fully functional city, you could pull over anywhere, at any time, and not stop for the rest of your life helping people who will never have as much as any of us at our worst and most broken moments. And with that in mind, there is an echoing in my soul that I cannot seem to shake...


Since I first met an AK-47 armed man named Peter on the bus from Dar I have heard his plea ringing in my ears. He told me, "The African people are tired of the pastors who come here and tell us about God and the Bible and promise us a new hope and then we find out that they are just as filthy as our politicians and just as corrupt as the people they preach against." And, after meeting a group of other missionaries who seemed dazed and numb to the world around them and almost shell-shocked and helpless in their countenance toward the task before them, this echo has continued to crescendo across the open valleys and jagged rock-mountains of Africa...


CHURCH WAKE UP! Church in America: SHAKE OFF THE LAZINESS OF CONVENIENCE AND THE SLUGGISHNESS OF INDULGENCE AND LIVE DESPERATE FOR GOD BECAUSE YOU NEED HIM TO BREATHE, NOT JUST WHEN YOU WANT HIM TO MOVE! Church in Africa: YOU HAVE NOT ARRIVED BECAUSE YOUR PLANE LANDED! THE GLORY OF GOD IS NOT YOUR PRESENCE IN THIS FOREIGN LAND OR THE TITLE YOU HAVE AWARDED YOURSELVES! Body of Christ: Just be the body Christ called us to be! Submit to Christ, the Head of our body, and live led by the Spirit, according to the Word of God. YOUR SYSTEMS OF MEN ARE KILLING PEOPLE NOT OFFERING THE LIFE CHRIST DIED FOR! SET PEOPLE FREE!


Don't take this as if I have excused myself from this message. I am caught at the moment somewhere between these two churches and forever a part of the Body of Christ. But the stakes are just too high to not say what is so obvious. Its lives on the line and in many "church clubs" people have become collateral damage. And its not just happening in America. We can thank Jesus there is an antidote. Jesus revealed through real "Church" is that cure. The Kingdom come by way of the King on the backs of our witness. Its really pretty easy if we keep ourselves out of the way...


Well, if any of you are still reading, I would like to update and tie up some stories I haven't told all the way through to conclusion....The blind old woman Angelina and Bibi (Donna) prayed for in Dar Es Salaam was there again the next night. On the first night she prayed with us to receive salvation and on the second they prayed for her to see. She began shouting and pointing at us and yelling that she could see our faces! Needless to say that drew a crowd and we got a chance to pray for salvation with a group of Muslims right there on the street. And, on a much less important but equally miraculous note, the baggage we shipped across Africa while Javen and I rode the bus all arrived - albeit in two shipments and not quite on-time...but regardless, it arrived at home in Kigoma!


Thank you all for your prayers and support. Thank you for reading and may God bless you all!


--
The Garrett Family