Mission Moroto Stories: Africa Prequel I
In October 2014, Rebekah, who had been working in Zambia, Africa, for two years, was forced to come home to America. She had been suffering from pneumonia for months, and the antibiotics they were giving her at the village clinic weren’t helping. She could have died. Some of her friends did die. She lay on her parents couch for six weeks as her mom nursed her back to health.
One night in late December, she and Papa Matthew were sitting on the balcony of the apartment, talking and praying, when she suddenly said, “Daddy, you have to come to Africa with me! I want you to see my orphanage and meet my children. You have to preach for Pastor Mbewe, meet Pastor Tendai, and then we have to go to Rwanda and preach for Pastor Ndagijimana!”
Africa seemed to Papa Matthew as far away as the moon. He had never even crossed the Atlantic! He quickly figured out a budget for what it would take to do all that she had asked.
“Rebekah, it would take $10,000 to do what you are saying,” he said.
She replied, “That’s OK, Daddy. God has $10,000. Let’s pray right now.”
He sheepishly bowed his head, and she prayed so boldly that God would give them $10,000 soon so they could go. Then she lifted her smiling face and said, “There, Daddy! We are going to Africa!”
He gulped and said, “Yeah, great, sure.”
They didn’t tell another living soul about that conversation, and yet, two days later, a man mysteriously wired $10,000 into their bank account! They quickly bought their tickets and left for Africa in mid-January 2015.
Oh, the miracles! Oh, the gospel crusades! Oh, the joy!
First, they would spend a week in Zambia and then head to Rwanda. Papa Matthew was blessed to preach in a church in Mashikili, Zambia. The night before, he sent a message to the evangelist who had led him to Christ, and said, “Tomorrow will be my first time to preach on the African continent, and I can’t quit thinking about you. Thank you for leading me to Christ.”
It was a heavenly day.
They had one of the most thrilling and humbling weeks of their lives at the orphanage where Rebekah worked. The children were so loving, and it was humbling to walk through the village and have people come up, touch Papa Matthew, and say, “You are Miss Rebekah’s father. How blessed you are.”
One day, she took him way back into the bush to meet her friends. They would walk up to a little mud hut, and the people would come, take him by the hand, and say reverently, “Will you please pray over our home? Will you bless our home with your presence?”
They would sit and talk awhile, then pray and bless them.
On the Friday morning before they were to leave for Rwanda on Tuesday, they were in the bush, and Rebekah stopped to use an outhouse. When she came out, she was white as a sheet and trembling.
“What’s wrong?” Papa Matthew asked.
She said, “Daddy, I just dropped my passport in the outhouse.”
Oh, my goodness! They had to fly to Rwanda in just a few days.
Papa Matthew, like a Superdad, grabbed a long stick and said, “Don’t worry. I will fish it out.”
He worked and worked, sweat pouring from his brow, and succeeded—in pushing it deeper and deeper into the latrine!
Finally, Rebekah said, “Dad, we need to go to the U.S. Embassy in Lusaka, the capital city.”
They called a driver, waited for him for two hours, then made the two-hour trip to Lusaka and pulled up to the embassy at 2:00 p.m. on Friday.
The guard at the front gate said, “Sorry, this is Friday. The embassy closes at noon on Fridays.”
They turned around and made the two-hour trip back to the project.
Oh, how they prayed Saturday and Sunday!
Monday morning, they went back to the embassy. Rebekah went in and explained everything. Everyone started laughing and coming out of their cubicles as the news spread quickly: “This girl dropped her passport in a Zambian toilet!”
They laughed and laughed and then said, “Don’t worry, young lady. We will have you out of here with a new passport before noon.”
They all jumped in and worked on it, and sure enough, Rebekah and Papa Matthew made their flight to Rwanda on Tuesday!
Praise God!
Their time in Rwanda was heavenly, but one story from that trip stands out. One night, the Rwandan pastor arranged for Papa Matthew to preach on a secular public radio station in the capital city of Kigali.
Rebekah, the pastor, a wonderful interpreter, and Papa Matthew sat down in the studio, and he preached from his heart a sermon entitled “Jesus Is Worth the Fire,” from Daniel chapter 3.
He told the Rwandans how deeply it had touched him to see that they had gone through the furnace of the 1994 genocide, but they had found Jesus in the fire. What a blessing it was to see them healing as a nation and hungry for God.
When he finished the sermon, everyone in the room, including the DJ, was weeping.
The DJ said, “You preach really well, Pastor. Can you please come back tomorrow night and preach twice?”
On the way back to the missionary compound that night, the pastor’s phone kept ringing and ringing. Unbeknownst to Rebekah and Papa Matthew, the radio station had given out the pastor’s phone number after the sermon for anyone who wanted to know more about God.
He received over 100 calls that night from people accepting Christ as Lord and Savior.
The next night, they were so late returning from a visit to the pastor’s sister’s orphanage in southern Rwanda that their scheduled airtime had already passed and the next program was in session. When the DJ saw that they had arrived, he suspended the other program and immediately put Papa Matthew on the air.
Papa Matthew preached a sermon entitled “Can God? Walking in the Miracle,” from Exodus 14, and then recorded a second sermon entitled “Passionate Pursuit of Jesus,” to be aired the following night.
Again, on their way back to the missionary compound, more than 40 people called the pastor to say they wanted to follow Jesus.
The next year, in 2016, they returned to Rwanda and preached all over the country…
But that’s for another Africa Prequel!
www.missionmoroto.org #missionmorotostories
