November 23, 2006
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
We wish each one of you a blessed Thanksgiving at the same moment
when our prayers are lifted before the Almighty One, for his grace
and love is upon his people and his church.
It is suitable to be thankful to our Lord, who through small
or great signs shows us the tenderness in his heart. No matter
how bitter or sweet the circumstances of life, the truth is that
beyond human brokenness, the power of God’s fulfilled promises
breaks through the fragility of our lives and makes sense of them
amidst the misery of “defeat.”
Yesterday, November 22, I preached at the funeral service for
a pastor of the Presbyterian Church here in Equatorial Guinea.
The sanctuary was packed with church members, relatives of the
deceased, and other friends and neighbors in the tribe who came
to express their condolences to the pastor’s family. You
can easily imagine the scene: tearful eyes, sad expressions, black
veils on ladies’ heads, and so on.
I preached on the story of Lazarus’s death (John 11: 17-27),
and the purpose of it was to bring consolation and hope to the
church by lifting up the victory of Jesus Christ over the power
of sin and death.
During our time of mission service here in Africa, we have had
the opportunity to observe the importance given to a worship service
commemorating someone’s death. It’s even more important
than the celebration of life, especially when it relates to caring
for the survivors.
Yesterday, we learned that the members of the mourning tribe
were planning a “bereavement ceremony” This ritual
is an African religious practice intended to liberate the soul
of the deceased from the post mortem stage of suffering and roaming.
The family of the deceased typically spends a small fortune to
hold a feast. Then the priests, who are called “djanies,”
the uncles from the mother’s side, distribute everything,
including the personal patrimony and wives of the deceased.
There is an ironic dimension to this story that perhaps we cannot
fully understand. On the one hand, the people we meet at church,
on the street, at the market place, in village schools, and in
schools in town seem to be the poorest of the poor. They’re
the humble vendors who spread out their goods on the sidewalk,
or the children who work on trucks, whose families depend on their
labor force. They have no money to pay the bills, much less to
invest in a family dream.
But there seems to be another face of Africa brought about by
the arrival of a modern mentality and a secular approach to personal
and social life. When the new day has broken, we see thousands
of children rushing hand in hand to get on time at school.
The town gets noisy as people leave their homes heading for work
and the market. Everything seems part of a single living engine
with the aim of surviving for one more day. In this titanic struggle,
education seems to be the only way that holds a possibility for
improving their material lives. Education, in a word, is what
we are doing here in Equatorial Guinea. We’re trying to
help this church build a humanizing philosophy of education that
will serve the vocations of thousands of children.
There are three private Christian schools engaged in this task,
and we are doing the best we can in order to provide a quality
education for these boys and girls. There is great lack of professional
educators, facilities, and financial resources, but we have faith
in the everlasting One, our provider who always takes care of
his children at the right moment and according to his plan.
Gloria and I will be in the United States from January until
the end of June 2007. We would love to visit you and have the
chance to share the story of our ministry here in Equatorial Guinea
and to grow in Christ together. We’ll be based in Roanoke,
Virginia, and you can reach us at (540) 334-2374.
Yours truly,
Andres and Gloria Garcia
The 2006 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.
319 |
