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Written by Administrator
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Tuesday, 01 July 2008 10:47 |
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 A desire to enter full time mission work drew Zech Schewe back to Uganda after his first visit three years ago. Zech grew up in Berkley, Michigan as one of five children and now attends Rochester College as a Christian Ministry major. He counts among his varied interests mountain biking, fishing, soccer, and hockey. Wed like to see him explain ice hockey to Africans living on the equator! He might try though since he considers personal challenges an important part of his spiritual development and something that attracts him to serve God in a foreign mission field. During the next six weeks, Zech hopes to immerse himself in the lives of Ugandans and the world of missionaries so that he can be shaped, more fully, into a person prepared to witness to Gods Kingdom - wherever he ends up.
One thing I have struggled with since being here is the sense that I am not doing anything and I am just more of a burden then anything. Our ministry rotations so far seem to be more of bench rotations and it is not that we are not be involved in what is going on but that there is just a lot of sitting around and talking. The missionaries are with us, but we still seem to be doing more sitting around then working of any kind. This drives me nuts. I asked Mark Manry about it and he said that he job consists of a lot of conversations and few tasks. That seems to be the way of a lot around here. Today while talking with Spencer he brought up the topic of people who were wanting to come that had been in contact with him. One thing he said he would get a lot was people saying they wanted to come only if they could do something. He seemed to express some frustration over this because doing something is not exactly what the missionaries themselves do. This sounds really bad right now but stick with me - there is an important lesson here. He then expressed that the main purpose of such visitors, such as interns, is to encourage. He reminded me a lot about what ministry in total is all about. Ministry is all about presence and being there more then any other thing.
We were in the village of Kagoma today having a meeting about a well project and one lady stood and said how white people always had what they needed and black people were not able to get what they needed and it made her happy that we were there trying to help them to get what they needed, water. We did not do a thing but encouraged simply because of our presence. Last night I spent dinner at two local church members house, Godfrey and Abraham. They did not just show us their home and family, they showed off there home and family. They were so encouraged and excited that we simply took an interest in them and wanted to be there that they wanted to share with us and were honored to do so. One thing I have learned so far is something that I already knew but was not practicing. Presence is the most important aspect of missions and any ministry. The missions team does a lot here but they could work day in and day out and accomplish nothing but instead have accomplished a lot because of simply being present and caring about the people around them.
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