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Rocky Mountain District South Africa Trip, March 2007
Pretoria, South Africa
In June, 2006, the Rocky Mountain District in convention voted to support the Lutheran Seminary in Pretoria, South Africa, along with a number of human care projects in South Africa and Botswana with financial gifts and our prayers.
This March (21st -28th, 2007) eight men from the district traveled to South Africa to see first hand the Lord's work in Southern Africa. It is one thing to hear of the need and opportunity,it is quite another to see.
Our first three days,were spent on the Tshwane Lutheran Seminary campus, visiting with the thirty-six students and the professors and teachers. The Seminary mission statement reads:
The Lutheran Theological Seminary in Tshwane through worship and theological study will educate and develop men for the office of the ministry and women as deaconesses in the Lutheran Church in Africa.
It was a great joy to see this taking place as men came from all over the African continent to study the Lord's Word and our Lutheran Confessions. They travel from Botswana,Ghana,Kenya,Liberia,Sudan and Uganda. Many of these men leave their families for ten months of the year to prepare to be pastors. Their dedication is matched by their love of the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions,a fact obvious to us as we joined the students in chapel and lectures,as well as when we read the reports from the three students returning from vicarage.
One vicar,'Vusi',spoke of the abundance of cults in South Africa. Anyone can start a church,and the people come,he reported. Sometimes,when a person is sick, they would call for their Lutheran pastor, but before they get to the sickbed the person would be visited by three or four people from a different cult in the neighborhood. So some people leave the Lutheran church and join the cults.
We also heard about the AIDS crisis. The average life-span of an individual in South Africa and Botswana is 36 years. The vicars spoke of church members leaving one funeral to go to another. Being surrounded by so much death,the seminarians said,we constantly are fighting back despair with the good new of Jesus' death and resurrection.
Our delegation split up over the weekend,four traveling south to visit Rev. Peter Weber in Durbin near the Indian Ocean in southern South Africa,the other four traveling north to Botswana to see Rev. Christoph Weber,a missionary in Serowe, Botswana.
The group in the south visited a cattle-treatment station,a program begun by Peter Weber to help support the farmers and the economy where he serves his congregations. The group also attended Zulu services at a number Pastor Weber's preaching stations and congregations. Pastor Weber serves three Zulu congregations
The group to the north went to Botswana to meet with Pastor Christoph Weber. We saw the new building of the Lutheran Church in Serowe. We heard about the AIDS crisis in Botswana,and saw housing that the Church in Serowe has provided for the AIDS project. Pastor Christoph Weber has a number of preaching stations in the Kalahari desert among the Bushmen. Their isolation has not protected them from AIDS,and while the government of Botswana provides free medicine, the Bushmen have no way of getting to the clinic. Pastor Weber has begun a program to bring sick individuals in to the clinic,as well as provide housing and food for their time away from home.
We also traveled to one of his congregations in the village of Otse on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. In a mud hut with a thatched roof we celebrated the Lord's Service with a number of Bushmen families,none of whom,six years ago,had heard the name of Jesus. On Sunday we attended services in both English and Setswana in the Lutheran Church in Serowe,and visited with all the Lord's saints there.
We returned for another day at the seminary,which included a meeting with the seminary Board of Directors. They outlined the three challenges the seminary faces:
1.Finding adequate facilities to house and teach the students.
2.Obtaining accreditation.
3.Supporting faculty.
The board of directors continues to explore ways to face each of these challenges. The RMD pledge will help with the first, buying or expanding buildings to meet the demands of a growing student body.
The dedication of the students,the faculty and the board was apparent to all who visited,and this dedication to the Lord's Word and His church ought to give us hope for the future of the Lutheran Church in Africa. Through the Tshwane Lutheran Seminary the Lord Jesus continues to answer our prayers that men would be sent in the harvest. Jesus is there keeping His promise that He would build His Church,and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
As a district we are privileged to be part of this work in Southern Africa, helping prepare pastors for the Lord's Church in Africa.
Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller
Hope Lutheran Church, Aurora, Colorado
Excerpts from the Rocky Mountain District Resolution
June,2007
•Resolved...that the Rocky Mountain District in convention partner with LCMS World Relief and Human Care, in a three year $1,000,000 special mission project to enlarge and improve the seminary and to help with a human care AIDS project in Southern Africa and a cattle dipping project started by Missionary Peter Weber. The Rocky Mountain District will seek to raise $500,000 which will be matched by LCMS World Relief and Human care.
•Resolved...that in addition to our financial gifts,we up hold our brothers and sisters in South Africa in prayer and through our partnering with the Lutheran Church of Southern Africa we share the Gospel in word and deed with these brothers and sisters in Christ.