Crusade Year 2: The Great Controversy In Action
I wish I could say that I had been to looking forward to Crusade. That my heart was happy to leave Riverside. That I enjoyed the camping, the food, the showers and the toilet. But I was not looking forward to Crusade.
If, you have read my other blog about just starting out on Crusade, you know that we took public transportation in the form of a bus. It feels a bit like deja vue to say the trip should have…. But, it was supposed to take roughly 20 hours at the most this time. Instead, it took us 36 hours just to get to Mpulungu, the town before our final destination.
And let me say this year was, by far, more stressful than the last… even if that trip took 52 hours (Go read that blog here!) In short, at around 18 hours we hit a man who was trying to die and we were 3 hours, in either direction, away from the nearest town. In Zambia, in the middle of no where, anything can happen. People (white people especially) have been stoned to death for less. Robbed for less. Would his family or village come after us to exact revenge? It terrified me.
That night I barely slept and only really feel asleep when we started moving again at 04:30. (You can read the full story here!) This was only the first of Satan’s very obvious attacks against this Crusade.
Thankfully, after a crazy bus transition, we made it Mpulungu. We would be staying the night at the Adventist church there… a fairly nice church to be honest… still, hard wooden benches and no screens on the windows, but electricity and a couple of fans were more than I was expecting.
We cooked rice and cabbage for dinner and were able to take a bucket shower in over a very nicely tiled hole in the ground. Ya! The first of many such showers… I slept hard that night, very grateful for my tiny little battery fan I had brought from home. (Big travel tip for places without air-conditioning - USB powered fans!) We got up the next morning ready to buy the provisions we would need for the next 3 weeks and then head on our way to Crocodile Island.
Elder Fortune had requested our boat to arrive at the harbor at 06 in the morning… it got there at 10. TIA(This is Africa.) We loaded it up, nonetheless, and headed out for the short 30 minute boat ride to our first location, were we would be running the Crusade and medical/dental work.
This year, we were split up in 3 groups in order to serve the different villages around the island. It was about an hour hike between the two furthest villages. My camp was right in the middle, at one of the larger villages and right next to the only soccer field on the whole island, which got daily use. Our village was called Chikonde. The one furthest from everything and on an absurd hill was called China and then the main camp where Elder Fortune was stationed was called Mena.
Also, incase you don’t already know, Crusade is a term used for a series of evangelistic meetings, and in the case of Riverside also accompanied by medial and dental outreach programs. It sounds strange and abrasive in the western context, but if you ask any Zambian, and I believe, a large majority of Southern Africa, most everyone knows what a Crusade is.
It took us several hours to set up our campsite and a whole day, before we ended up with a sketchily dug pit toilet. On this island, the only shade trees were in the villages, and our camp was a distance from any kind of trees. We used the rainfly from our largest tent to create a shelter from the sun, and I can say it was my best friend. I spent most of my time on Crusade under that rainfly tree.
Last year, I felt absolutely useless with no purpose so when I decided to go back to Zambia and knew I would go another Crusade, I realized we needed to think ahead. We prepared stories, songs, a memory verse and a health talk, along with things to give to the kids. The attention spans of the kids, unless you can sing for hours at a time, is never more than about 10 minutes or less. So we would sing songs, tell a short story about Jesus’s life, and then sing some more. Eventually, they would practice their memory verse with our translator and we would do the health talk and then, disorganized chaos would erupt. There is one thing you should know about an island without a school, the kids will not know how to make a line. Nor will their parents…
It’s almost indescribable the feeling of being absolutely surrounded by kids, with hands outstretched, pushing, grabbing and snatching for whatever you are giving them. (Especially, when there is more than enough to go around.) But the uncomfortableness is worth it to see the happy, joyful faces afterwards. And to know that even if you can’t save the whole island or truly improve their level of living, that you can bring joy in the that moment and have tried to inspire hope that will last longer than my presence on the island.
Look for part 2? Part 3? Next week!
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