Final Address

Greetings,

            It is two days until I leave this country that I have come to know and love.  As I have said before, the lessons and friendships that I have here will not only change the way I look at people but the way that I live.  I am continually taught by the people here in ways that I would not necessarily have guessed or even sought out.  One lesson came from two of the only guys that are younger than me that I have met here in Lusaka.

            Moses and Cosmas (aka Origaba) are two players on the basketball team that are still in secondary school.  They are not the main players partly due to their young age.  Moses is eighteen and Origaba even lied to the coach by telling him that he is nineteen so he would accept him on the team.  He is only seventeen and he looks it.  When he stands next to me he is comes up short of my shoulder and he has to weigh around 100 lbs.  Nonetheless, both of these guys put in the work to make the team and work behind the scenes when needed by mopping the floor and getting maybe a little playing time when the team has a large lead.  This dedication to basketball carries over in their lives to other aspects in a way that I can learn from.  The first week for Bible study, the two of them ran to campus and again for the first forum (large group meeting) of the year.  I just learned yesterday how far they actually ran.  Driving, it would take around five minutes driving to get to campus and then another twenty minute walk to where we stay.  These guys ran around six miles to come to the study and then forum and they seem like they are even willing to in the future.  Would I be willing to run six miles to learn about the Word of God?  Tough stuff to chew on as Dan would say.

            Another guy that I have been learning from like crazy is Gershom.  He has been working here on GAP for the last six years and has served as the campus director for the last few.  In that time, God has shaped his life in a way that I hope he shapes mine.  He is a wealth of knowledge about life in general and I have had the privilege of having several hour to two hour long conversations with him.  He truly has a desire to learn about both God and what he can do for God.  One of the major topics recently is mentorship.  He looks at what he wants to learn more about or improve upon and then he considers the best way to gain that knowledge.  His method is mentorship.  He looks at servanthood and he sees that as an area of his life that he wants to improve.  Instead of reading about servanthood, he looks for someone in his life that lives in a way that displays servanthood.  For him, he found a professor that he had while still in school and now he meets with him on a weekly basis to learn from his example.  He also has sought out mentors in the fields of faith and business.  The approach is not one that is common but I feel like he knows what he is doing and one more point that he made really made sense and I feel like everyone could benefit from hearing it.  He said “Whatever we learn for ourselves is gone when we die.  What lives on is what we pass on to others.”  Sometimes I feel like our whole life up until we are almost to retirement is spent trying to learn from others and learn as much as possible.  That is great for sure but what truly matters over the generational view is how much we teach others.

            Jon and Bryce have made it all the way back from Kitwe and having them back has been a blessing.  Hearing their experiences and how God is working through them in the lives that they were able to speak into was eye-opening and again shows how small I see Him and how He works.  God is not merely at work shaping my life, not merely at work shaping Dan and Nathan, not merely in our entire time but in the lives of students here, in the hearts of everyone around the world.  His impact on a global scale is amazing and He deserves our praise for this.  In John 14:12 it says “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing.  He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”  I had always viewed this as the many miracles that the disciples were able to do in the book of Acts.  Jesus was able to perform miracles that we have heard about such as feeding five thousand with a little bread and fish, turning water to wine, and even raising people from the dead.  So what could be considered “greater things than these?”  Looking at this and using a quote from a book that I really enjoyed called Blessed Child by Ted Dekker, I got a different thought.  It said something to the effect of “Who says a healed hand is more amazing than a healed heart?”  Looking at the impact that the “healed heart” has had on me and my life, I think that it is greater than even raising a dead person to life.  Something about giving life to the spirit of a person, to the soul of a person, is as powerful and amazing as it gets.  Christ died and through that, the gospel was able to be spread.  The message which was spread about by the disciples and is still spread today, changes the hearts of people and makes the unholy, holy; the unrighteous righteous; the imperfect perfect.  Seeing God doing this through the work of my comrades here has been beautiful.

            Dan has been here with me the whole time and seeing him and how he walks in his faith has been inspiring.  He truly is a servant of God who I learn from as well.  He has been very busy meeting with several guys from main campus that he was able to meet at the welcome party and their relationship is very encouraging.  These first year students are willing to spend their days with him and learn from him and they even came to visit us here at our place due to a power outage in their hostel.  Their servant-like nature came through when they even served us nshima and vegetables and Dan made the gravy.  The food here is something that will stick with me forever.

            Another aspect of my stay here that I have discussed some with Gershom and Dan is the way we have been integrated into the culture.  The way some other organizations such as Campus Crusade approach housing their short-term missionaries is they book a lodge and the only time that they spend with the people in the culture is when they go for ministry.  We have been lucky enough to live here with three guys and live in the culture.  We not only eat nshima and caterpillars, but we are learning how to make them.  We have used the bus system and even taking a taxi around town.  Living in the village we even shattered expectations by drinking the water straight from the well.  The people here have been so much more willing to open up when they hear that we are actually trying to enjoy the culture instead of bring our culture and live the same way as home.

            The bus system had a new twist yesterday for Dan and me.  We were on our way to the Ridgeway campus and in town when we found out the bus to the hospital that we take was no longer running.  We had to get there by bus so Dan talked to one of the guys at the station who told us to get on this new bus on a different route and then get off at the bus stop called SDA and it would be right next to the hospital.  The bus driver that we had taking us on this new route proved to be both impatient and very fond of shortcuts.  First, when faced with a long line of traffic ahead of us, he moved to the left shoulder (cars drive on the left here) and passed all the cars on the dirt shoulder.  Next he was driving on a side road and ramped the curb and drove across a large dirt section to a new road, ramped down the curb on the new road and took off.  This guy was doing things that I have always wanted to do in the US and it will take much self-control to restrain myself from using him and his driving as a model…  His next tactic was perhaps the most insane though.  Again with a long line of cars in front of us, he decided to use the right lane instead of the left.  He continued in the wrong lane for a good stretch until he had no choice but to move off to the right shoulder to avoid a headlong collision.  When the coast was clear again, he would go back into the right lane and do the same.  Risking our lives was worth it I guess for the fifty or so cars that he passed in the process.  When we finally got to our stop and to safety (or so we thought), we found ourselves in an area of town we had never seen.  We asked the bus driver where the hospital was and he pointed and told us to cross Bama road and it would be right there.  After five minutes of walking in the direction he pointed, we asked another person and they simply pointed in the same direction.  This happened two more times and took twenty to thirty minutes before we finally saw the sign for the Ridgeway campus.  Not what we had planned but it sure was exciting.

             Some odd jobs have kept Dan and I occupied here at the Nav office as well.  Last week, the two of us as well as Sam performed surgery on a couch that was "eating" things way too often.  One of the cushions would sink almost all the way to the floor when you sat in it and there was a gap in between it and the one next to it that important things would continue to get lost in (such as Bryce's phone and my ipod).  When we flipped the couch over, it showed what a real mess the whole thing was.  Of the four supports, three were completely disconnected, four springs had come loose, and stuffing was spread everywhere.  After a little hammering and attaching the springs, we flipped the couch over and it is good as new and has not consumed anything of late.  Dan and I also were given the task of re-tiling the bathroom by the office.  So far the demolition has been done and we await further guidance before we proceed.  It has been great to be able to give back here to the people that have given us a home and fed us.

             Tomorrow we have a briefing in the morning and then most likely a farewell party for the four of us that are still here.  We are not really privy to the details because they are trying to keep most of it a secret but we have some guesses.  The GAP staff here has been planning for the last couple weeks and at our apartment here we recently had half of a pig dropped off and stuffed in our freezer.  Who knows what that might be for???

            In three days I will be back in the US at the Chicago airport getting picked up by my family or some of my family I should say.  I am leaving some brothers and sisters behind here in Zambia.  That is what they are to me now and that is who they will be to me forever.  I do not see this as being the last time I will see them.  Who knows, I could even be rambling about Zambia again in a few years!

Farewell from Lusaka, Zambia,

Aaron