Our African Experience: Zimbabwe Report and Footage

Amazing, difficult, profound, adventurous, turbulent, challenging, awesome, character-building, revealing, educational, radical, enlightening, frustrating, life-giving and eye-opening. Thats a decent stack of adjectives to describe the last 6 months of our lives in Africa. The first 3 months we were in Cape Town, South Africa with a missions organization called All Nations. We worked in an inner city market place called Green Market Square, making relationships and sharing the Gospel with shop owners and locals. At the end of those 3 months we went on a short term outreach to Zimbabwe with a team from All Nations where we worked for 2 months in a crowded township connected to Victoria Falls. It was the best worst thing that ever happened to us.

Heavy Dose of Hard African Realities

We were unprepared in many ways for what we faced there… Along with a fragile team structure, it was a heavy dose of hard African realities. Broken families, poverty, prostitution, HIV/AIDS, poor medical care, economic instability, racism, severe injustice and blatant church corruption. There were times when it was literally nauseating to see. We became acutely aware of evil. Grasping for how we could serve the community and inspire transformation we felt defeated on multiple fronts. Strategies and ideas seemed to crumble right in front of us. It forced us to question everything we had learned. I would like to say that we handled everything with grace and strength, but we didn’t. Confused, bitter and powerless we were forced to the cross.

Clearer Understanding of His Death on the Cross

It was in this hard place that God showed up in a big way… Through a hailstorm of relevant scriptures, some good books and the guidance of our mentors, he opened our eyes to unrealized power in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Our minds were seared with a clearer understanding of his death on the cross. Intellectually we knew the Gospel, but our lives reflected an understanding that it was something that we hear once and then move on to more important things. This weak understanding was shattered. The Gospel became an all-day/every-day message that is essential to every dimension of our life. The moment by moment reflection of Christ’s death and resurrection became the bedrock from which we could stand and build. 

In the end the outreach turned out to be very fruitful. We had 19 baptisms and a bunch of Zimbabweans who were really experiencing freedom through the Gospel. It was also very defining for us personally on where we felt God would have us focus our efforts.

Two videos from our time in Zimbabwe:

Life and Ministry in Chinotimba

Footage of the Local Wildlife and Victoria Falls

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