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From 1994 to March 1997
we lived and worked on the banks of the Sankuru River, in the province of
Kasai Occidental in a small river town called Longa, 1400 km from
Kinshasa. Our house was a
stones throw away from the river. Our first time going up, we made
the journey by
road, from Johannesburg, South Africa, across the southern Countries of Africa
(Zimbabwe, Zambia, Zaire) to get to our mission station of Longa.
The trip took us over 2400 km and two months on the road
every day. |
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Longa, is nestled in
the rain forest, with a spectacular view of the Sankuru river, which was
also our swimming pool and on occasion became the bath tub. This
mission station was started by my wife's father, Mark Grings, in
1960. This was the station that Esther's parents brought her
home to as newborn in the 1970. She spent her first three years
here before her parents left the Country in 1973. |
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The mission station provided housing for two missionary families and a
single nurse/ mid-wife and also the Bible school. here were
dorms, for the Bible school students which at times housed
as many as 20 families. The Bible school was a three year
program preparing men for service as pastors and
evangelists. We also had a one year program that was for
laymen. Many of the churches were made up of small groups of
believers and they did not have a pastor so they had to
depend on laymen in the church to teach and preach.
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Bible school
would start a 7:00 Am and finish at 12:00 noon. Then at 2:00
pm, all the men would come for work around the mission
station till 5:00 pm. This work would include cleaning
around the station, some would be involved in building
projects (learning to fix mortar, lay brick), others helped
in the garage doing mechanical work (repairing bicycles that
were used for evangelism) Many pastors would bring
there bicycles for repairs. Others would work in the office
learning to type, and gain some computer knowledge. |
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Every new term they would be
rotated so that they would learn a new "trade." This would give
them an opportunity to be "tent makers" to bring in an income
for their families, and at the same time allowing them to start
with church planting. We would make many evangelism trips to the surrounding
villages by road, and villages along the Sankuru river. |
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On the mission station we had a local church "Eglise Beloya de
Longa" (Berean Baptist Church of Longa). During the time we were there,
I was called on by the church to be their pastor, along with a national
pastor Jean Piere Nkisi. The church would average in the 120. Many of
these being families of the students but also a good amount of people
from the village. The church had what we called "satellite churches".
There were three other villages that were close to us, yet too far for
people to walk to church, so meetings were started in those villages.
Each weekend, a deacon or a student or myself, |
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would go and teach Sunday
school and preach in the morning service. These services
averaged 15-20 People. We thank the Lord for the time that we
were able to spend in the church at Longa.
1997 brought the civil war from the eastern
Zaire, to the Sankuru region. On the 29th of March 1997, we had
to evacuate the mission station because of a boat load of
soldiers, fleeing the war, was to pass our station. It did
arrive and the station was looted and most things were either
destroyed or plundered. Thank the Lord no lives were lost |
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Iwas able to evacuate my family and
those of the 20 students that lived on the mission station.
We went up to our sister station -the Yassa mission
station that was 45 km from Longa, but the very next day, on the 30 of March 1997,
we had to flee from Yassa to Dekese, to be evacuated by Mission
Aviation Fellowship - a good friend of ours Dan Carlson landed
and picked us up and evacuated us to Kinshasa. It was a
time that taught us to depend on God and trust that He knew all
that was happening to us. At this time our first son
Joshua was just 16 months old. We left with just one
suitcase. |
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Because of the war and the situation in
the country we decided it was best to return to South Africa for
furlough, and we were able to visit many of our churches and family in United States of
America. We were able to return to Congo mid 1998. I was able to
make a visit to the Longa
mission station and this was to be the last time for many years that
we would be able to visit it again. The second civil war started, Longa was in rebel territory
and we were in Kinshasa. Thus the Lord
lead us to minister in the capital of this vast country- the
capital of Kinshasa.
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