I wasn’t expecting the touch on my shoulder or the quick answer to our prayers for God to open the way to evangelism in this densely populated Zimbabwe village.
Months earlier, a Zimbabwe pastor’s wife and I had begun a sewing class for the purpose of sharing the Bible and teaching a practical skill. Word was getting around that a “murungu,” a white person, was telling people about God and His Son.
“Amai [mother], please come with me,” beckoned the young woman who had touched me. “Mrs. Muzonza asks that you come to her place. She has heard that you are telling the truth.”
For nearly an hour, I shared about creation, the fall of man, God’s tremendous love and His Son, Jesus, with the middle aged woman who had summoned me. She became a child of God that day.
Over the next year, this woman led the way in supporting our sewing class and the new Baptist church that had been planted by inviting people to come. Many of her people believed in the Lord as a result.
It was not only Mrs. Muzonza. In less than two years, 24 women in my class had died. We heard mourning wails constantly in our neighborhood during the funerals of others dying all around us.
“God, why are so many dying and I can’t seem to do anything about it?” I asked. It seemed as though everyone I knew was touched by this disease firsthand or within their families.
A young woman called me from the clinic where she had just had her second daughter. I forced myself not to cry as I wrapped that precious infant in my own son’s baby blanket from years past. A few months earlier, this mother, a new believer, learned she was HIV positive.
“Amai, will I give my child the virus if I nurse her?” she asked with tears in her eyes.
“Yes,” I said quietly.
(BP)
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