Preaching Christ In Zambia and Congo By Chester Woodhall ©2019 Chester Woodhall, East London, South Africa P.O.Box 211, Gonubie, ZA 5256 [email protected] DEDICATION TO OUR CHILDREN MARY, KIM AND IAN WHO WERE SO COMMITED TO OUR CHRISTIAN ENDEAVORS IN ZAMBIA Contents INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................... 1 BACK HOME ............................................................................................................................................. 2 MISSIONARIES ARRESTED ...................................................................................................................... 10 WHITES MURDERED IN ZAMBIA ............................................................................................................ 18 GUERILLA WARFARE .............................................................................................................................. 25 THIS IS A HOLD UP ................................................................................................................................. 32 HOUSE SPRAYED WITH BULLETS ........................................................................................................... 39 MISSIONARY MURDERED ...................................................................................................................... 46 EVANGELIST FLOGGED IN CONGO ........................................................................................................ 48 REBELLION IN THE CONGO .................................................................................................................... 54 FROM MARX TO CHRIST ........................................................................................................................ 69 BRITISH MISSIONARY IN PRISON ........................................................................................................... 77 RIOTS ON THE COPPERBELT .................................................................................................................. 84 MEETING PRESIDENT AND PRIME MINISTER ........................................................................................ 89 ESCAPE FROM ARMED BANDITS ........................................................................................................... 95 BOMB GOES OFF ................................................................................................................................. 102 COUP IN ZAMBIA ................................................................................................................................. 107 CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................................... 111 INTRODUCTION "Will you marry me?" was my heartfelt request to my sweetheart Angela. We lived with our families a street apart in Birmingham, England’s second largest city where I worked in marketing for a large UK metals company and Angela taught in a primary school. Following a positive response from Angela to the marriage proposal we arrived by air at the small Kitwe airport on the Zambian Copperbelt a few weeks later. My new job was as an economist and Angela as a Kitwe primary school teacher. Angela and I were and are committed Christians. We surrendered our lives to Christ and went through the waters of baptism as did the New Testament Christians. We identified with the plea of Churches of Christ for Christianity as it was in the beginning. In the mid-sixties, whilst a Fairbridge Scholar at the university, I had attended the Sinoia Street congregation now known as Avondale Church of Christ in Harare Zimbabwe. In England we had attended churches of Christ. As part of our lifestyle we shared our faith in Jesus the Son of God with others in Zambia and further north in Congo. "Stop preaching! You don’t know when to stop preaching" shouted the serious faced man carrying a miner’s helmet. "We want to become Christians. We want to confess our faith in Jesus and be baptized but you keep on preaching." I was standing on a large ant hill and preaching in the open air. We went to a suitable pool of water for baptizing and a new congregation that exists to this day was formed. The Christians built their own mud brick meeting place and the man with the miner’s helmet became one of the preachers. Five hundred men and women came to Christ and were baptized over a three-year period. The Christians formed their own independent and self-financing congregations and organized or built their own meeting places. The congregations are still in existence and we continue to hear from those early converts to Christ and from their children in the faith. We will receive a message over the internet: "I am your grandson in Jesus." After three years in Zambia we went to the States for two years where we made many lifelong Christian friends and studied the Bible at Sunset International Bible Institute and Abilene Christian University. Then we returned to the Zambian Copperbelt to continue with leading the lost to Christ and church planting. This book is an anecdotal account with emphasis on church planting of this second period in Zambia up to 1990. In 1991 we moved further south in Africa which is another story. We made many mistakes but we did our best to share the Amazing Grace of God in Zambia and Congo. We pay tribute to our three children who did all they could as children to help their parents in their cause for Christ. Enjoy the book! - 1 - BACK HOME We stepped onto the hot tarmac of Lusaka airport from the Zambia Airways plane. The heat engulfed us after the crisp cold that we had just left in England. We were home again in the place where God had called us to serve Him and we were excited. Mary, our three-year-old daughter, stated happily "We are in Zambia". The crowd of passengers swept us past the soldiers keeping a watchful eye and into the large hanger type building where immigration and customs officials awaited us. Angela, who had first come to Zambia with me as a new bride five years previously, whispered in my ear, "Hope we can get through fast. There's a plane about to fly to the Copperbelt. It's the small plane on the tarmac." We joined a slow-moving line of people wending its way past various checkpoints of officials. "Health certificates," ordered the first official and he inspected our papers for our family of four, including the papers for Kim, our four-month old babe in arms. Then catastrophe struck. "Halt. You are detained. There is a plane leaving for England this afternoon. You will be on the plane," and the stern-faced uniformed official placed us under escort to a detention room. The temperature had risen in more ways than one for us in Lusaka and we had a baby who needed changing. "Your papers are not in order. I will only accept the originals," harangued the official after all the other passengers had been cleared, the flight to the Copperbelt had long since departed and he had all the time in the world to interrogate us. "We have friends awaiting us at Ndola airport who can produce the originals you require," was my unacceptable reply. "Why aren't you worried?" he enquired, "Don't you realize what I am doing to you? You have come all this way and I am sending you back!" He seemed frustrated that we did not lose our tempers or argue with him. "We are Christians and we are here because this is where God wants us to be. We rely upon the Lord our God for the solution to problems we cannot solve," was our reply. This answer was obviously different from what he expected. It did not satisfy him but prevented a more serious argument breaking out. His colleagues were helpful to us, assisting us with our small children, and having whispered discussions with him. After several hours, his words were the answer to our prayers, "You may go on the next plane to Ndola. Produce the papers to our officials there." One of his colleagues offered me his phone and our friends waiting anxiously for us in Ndola were on the line. We left the official who had given us a hard time reading a Christian book and our friends at Ndola airport greeted us with the words, "Welcome to Zambia." The date was June 11, 1976. He was a Zambian teenager who always had a mischievous grin on his face. Moses was a skilled pickpocket who found new life in Christ soon after we moved from staying with our good friends in Luanshya to a new house in Kitwe, the hub of the Copperbelt. Moses gave up his life of crime and became a street vendor instead. Bible study was for this fourteen-year-old a very enjoyable activity. His sharing of his joy in the Lord - 2 - was infectious and many of his friends became convinced that Jesus is the Son of God and were baptized into Christ. In fact, there were so many conversions to Christ that we had our own key to the local swimming pool - no worry about crocodiles there. Our normal way of baptising was in the closest river, always making sure there were no crocodiles lurking about. Grace was an attractive fifteen-year-old African girl. Her father was killed in Zambia's worst mine disaster at Mufulira. Her father's current wife - not Grace's mother - picked up the mining company's family compensation payment for the deceased father and deserted the family to live with another man. She kicked Grace and the other kids onto the street telling them, "I hate the sight of you! Don't ever come back!" Grace's real mother had another husband