No Coincidence, but Everlasting Arms
When Esther Zimmerman arrived in Nairobi, Kenya, she’d assumed arrangements were all in place for a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Her passport held a laboriously obtained visa. Flight connections had been confirmed months ahead.
As BCM’s International Children’s Ministry director, Esther was in Nairobi for Littworld, a global conference for developing indigenous Christian publishers and writers, held November 1-6, 2009. The event was being hosted by Kenya’s Christian publishers, among them Jeff Gathu and Sam Chebe of Cistern Publishers, who had recently produced 15,000 sets of BCM’s Life of Christ children’s curriculum in Bangala and Swahili. The material had been printed for the Democratic Republic of Congo’s largest evangelical church association, CECA (see “Footsteps of Faith in War-torn Congo,” BCM World, Spring, 2009).
With two million adult members and at least as many children, the CECA (a French acrostic for the Evangelical Church in the Center of Africa) churches needed the curriculum urgently. But the DRC’s political turmoil had repeatedly delayed the 15,000 volumes from crossing the border. After teaching workshops on curriculum writing at Littworld, Esther planned to fly to Uganda, then take a Mission Aviation Fellowship Cessna flight to the DRC. This would permit Esther to hand-carry the first installment of curriculum as well as hold a one-day Christian Education conference with CECA church leaders.
But when Esther opened her email the night before flying out, she discovered plans had changed. The MAF flight had been rescheduled for another airport a considerable distance from where Esther was landing in Uganda—and two hours earlier. It was too late to change Esther’s own travel plans. Nor could she contact the MAF headquarters. They were closed for the night and would not reopen until after Esther’s flight was scheduled to leave in the morning. Should she even bother making the 4:30 a.m. trek from Littworld to the Nairobi airport?
Then Esther remembered her parents, Bob and Sandy Barber, BCM missionaries in Scotland, mentioning an encounter at a birthday party in Edinburgh just two months earlier with a Scottish MAF pilot stationed in Uganda. Would there be some way they could contact the pilot from Scotland? A Skype call put Esther in contact with her parents. As it turned out, Esther’s parents had told the Scottish pilot of their daughter’s upcoming MAF flight, and he’d just happened to scribble down his cell-phone number for them in case of any problems. Perhaps he could help Esther make other arrangements?
Calling the number, Bob and Sandy discovered that their new Scottish pilot acquaintance not only could help, he was the MAF pilot assigned to Esther’s flight! In fact, the plane he flew had been donated to MAF by Scottish churches. Esther had been in Scotland for the dedication. She’d never expected to fly personally on the Caledonian Connection.
A coincidence too unbelievable to pass muster in any fictional storyline, but Esther has come to learn there are no coincidences in God’s economy. This was definitely divine intervention!
The pilot arranged to land at Esther’s original destination, Entebbe, Uganda, and wait for her flight. But when Esther arrived, she discovered the reason there’d been confusion the day before. The DRC was suddenly refusing permission for Mission Aviation Fellowship planes to fly internationally across their borders. A temporary solution was to fly north to Arua, a major Ugandan commercial center only twenty kilometers from the Sudan, where Esther could cross the border by truck to the small Congo airport of Aru on the other side, then take another MAF flight to her destination of Bunia.
The MAF flight landed safely in Arua. Two hours later a truck appeared to ferry Esther and several other passengers across the border. A mud hut housed the Uganda exit checkpoint. This was followed by a four-mile trek through a no-man’s land. But when the truck reached the DRC entry checkpoint on the other side, things degenerated. Confiscating Esther’s passport, the Congolese police insisted Esther’s hard-obtained visa wasn’t valid (it was!). Speaking neither French nor Bangala, Esther could hardly argue. Only when a fellow passenger, a humanitarian doctor working in the Congo, interceded was Esther allowed to proceed. But not before paying a fee for new “identity papers.”
By now the day had grown hot, long, and increasingly tense. Esther was thankful for survival rations of a bottle of water and granola bars tucked into her bag. When the second flight, a tiny five-passenger plane, finally landed at Bunia’s small, dirt-packed airport, the Congolese officials demanded another round of payments. But after further disbursement of funds, two CECA pastors arrived to escort Esther to her lodging. One spoke excellent English, so was able to serve as Esther’s translator. The next day when some thirty CECA leaders gathered, their excitement over the curriculum’s arrival and enthusiasm for Esther’s Christian Education workshops made all the obstacles and long trip worthwhile.
An added bonus, by the time Esther headed back to the airport, the DRC had granted MAF permission to resume international flights so that Esther’s return trip was a direct flight from Bunia to Uganda, though not before being stopped by a Congolese army patrol and a final shake-down of fees at the airport.
“The return flight was uneventful, and Uganda felt like such a haven of civilization, security, honesty, and friendliness when I arrived,” Esther shares. “It’s amazing how much perspective can change in two days!”
A reminder to pray for the Congolese Christians left behind—A continued civil war, government corruption, millions of refugees, and scarcity of food and other basic necessities make daily life a challenge. Church leadership expresses their greatest concern for the next generation. Over half of DRC’s population is under fifteen. Today’s church leaders were discipled during an era of relative peace with a strong network of Christian missionaries, pastors, and Bible institute training. The new generation, born into instability and turmoil, have little grounding in Scripture. Religious education, once common in public schools, has now been prohibited, leaving the local church as the only place community children will ever hear of Jesus Christ—A challenge the Congolese church is taking seriously.
“The only long term solution to the challenges of Congo,” CECA leaders state adamantly, “is to disciple a new generation—starting with the children.”
Which is why 15,000 curriculum sets of the Life of Christ are so important. Just after Esther left DRC, 300 Swahili Life of Christ copies arrived in Bunia. One of the pastors who’d attended Esther’s training immediately organized distribution and training sessions to use the curriculum. Since then, through a tortuous and truly miraculous succession of events and the help of many of God’s people (best left unspecified for future reuse), the rest of both Swahili and Bangala material crossed the Uganda border into DRC, where they are currently being distributed among the CECA churches.
Meanwhile, if Esther admits to some nervous moments, she would do it again in a moment. In fact, she hopes to return soon for more extended Christian Education training with the Congolese church. She says that it was a verse shared with her by a fellow delegate when she said goodbye at Littworld that kept her calm on the ground and in the air. “The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27).
A comforting truth on any continent!
