A 21-foot cabin crusier purchased by Southern Baptists is helping make a difference in the work two missionaries with ties to Alabama are doing in Zambia.
Steve and Shirley Taylor, who live in Siavonga with their 9-year-old daughter, McKelvey, said traveling by boat on Lake Karbia is the only way to reach the people of the Tonga tribe.
“In the past, I hadn’t had much experience with boats, but I have learned,” said Steve Taylor, a 1973 graduate of Samford University. “I’m better on a quarter horse.”
Steve was born in Gadsden and Shirley was born in Boaz, and both graduated from Boaz High School. Taylor was pastor of churches in north Alabama after graduating from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas, in 1976m before going to the mission field in 1981.
While the Taylors now live in New Mexico when they are back in the United States, both still have family in Alabama. “so we still consider Alabama home in a sense,” Steve Taylor said. “Our goal is to find unreached people that no one has worked with,” he said. “We have found that there are so many people who have not heard.”
One of the places the Taylors are sharing Christ is in Siandambwe. From Lake Kariba and the Zabezi River, the couple must also travel to the Lufuwa River and eventually the very narrow Lusungazi River.
“It’s like a 1950s Tarzan movie,” Taylor said. “Many varieties of birds are all around and crocodiles are gliding in the water.”
Bizarre rituals
Taylor said the Apostolic Faith cult, a religion based on man’s speculation and prophets from Europe has infiltrated the area. The missionary said the cult embraces doctrines such as serving the Lord’s Supper to the dead and baptizing the dead.
The “Jesus” film produced by Campus Crusade for Christ is one of the ways Taylor ministers to the people of Siandambwe. Traveling by boat before reaching land, Taylor said he loads a generator and projector onto a hand-hewn wooden sled driven by oxen provided by villagers.
After the villagers responded positively to the film, the missionary started leadership training, using hand-cranked tape recorders that play discipleship cassettes translated into Tonga.
Previous problems with transportation have helped Taylor share the gospel. Taylor said when a boat he was using got tangled in the fishing nets off Siandambwe, he was able to secure a ride home to Siavonga by the owner of a banana boat. As they traveled for two days, Taylor witnessed to the man. Taylor said he was traveling back to the village several weeks later, where he encountered a woman waiting for him at the mouth of the Lusungazi River. The woman shouted “Muzungwaazi, Muaungwaazi,” which was the name they had given Taylor meaning “emphasizer, the one who emphasizes the Word of God.”
The woman was carrying a letter from the owner of the banana boat saying he had accepted Christ and wanted to take Taylor to a village that had never heard the gospel.
When Taylor visited the village of Nanjili in February, he found himself in a location where there is no church and residents had never seen a missionary. But he would have to overcome several obstacles before arriving there.
The boat he was traveling in sprang a leak and he was forced to turn back. A friend with a houseboat came to the rescue by offering to take Taylor to Nanjili. Heavy rainfall then began after they arrived at the village and Taylor said he began to feel the mission was under demonic attack.
Again, the friend came to the rescue by offering to let 150 villagers come onto the first level of his boat to view the film.
“No one made a sound until the crucifixtion and then the people couldn’t believe what was done to Jesus,” Taylor said.
Twenty-nine people made professions of faith the following day. Within a few weeks that total had grown to 61, all of whom are being discipled by Taylor.
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