The timing wasn’t exactly perfect, but God’s work got done and that was the reason Jonathan Forester MD, his son Chris, and the rest of the six-person, Louisiana-based mission team went to the southern African nation this summer.
HARARE, Zimbabwe – The timing wasn’t exactly perfect, but God’s work got done and that was the reason Jonathan Forester MD, his son Chris, and the rest of the six-person, Louisiana-based mission team went to the southern African nation this summer.
It was a trip nearly a year in the planning. Who would have thought inflation could skyrocket between the time the mission team’s flight left the U.S. and arrived in Zimbabwe?
“When we got there, there was no gas to buy,” Forester said. “When we left, there was no food to buy.”
The official inflation rate was said to be 4,500 percent, but unofficially it was said to be 11,000 percent or more, according to a July 10 article in Baptist Press.
“If you bought a loaf of bread for 50 cents last year, it now costs around $1,125,” according to the Baptist Press article. “Or more likely, you’d end up spending $2,750 at the unofficial inflation rate found in most stores. Government and independent estimates are completely different.”
Forester, an experienced volunteer medical missionary, family practice physician and member at Kingsville Baptist in Pineville, was prepared – if you call crackers a meal.
“When you go over there, you realize how bad it is,” said Chris Forester, 15, who participated in the three-week midsummer mission trip by sorting and repacking pharmaceuticals and Bibles to be given out at each stop, by playing Frisbee and other games with Zimbabwe youngsters – some of whom had never seen a white person – and even one time by preaching.
“In America you find people struggling day to day to get what they want,” Chris Forester said. “Over there people struggle day to day to get what they need.”
There was a time when Zimbabwe, formerly known as Rhodesia, was considered the “jewel of Africa.” Electricity and water were abundant and the Zimbabwean dollar held firm. Zimbabwe was the “bread basket” of the southern Africa region; it produced enough food to help out bordering countries, according to Baptist Press.
Now, many cities are without electricity for 10 to 20 hours a day, there’s a water shortage and more than 4 million people – a third of the population – need food aid. Another third or more face food shortages. Store shelves are bare of maize, meat, bread, eggs, milk and other basics that sell on a thriving black market for at least five times the government price, according to numerous news sources.
“I had been invited to lead a conference on spiritual warfare for pastors from all over the country – they’re hungry for it – but because of the shortages of gas, that didn’t happen,” Forester said. It was his second time to go to Zimbabwe.
“The Lord was in it; I had to do it,” the physician said. “He gave me peace about it. Looking back on it, it was just right. I had some fears as all of us would, but I had to pray through them.”
By all accounts, Zimbabwe is in the midst of its worst economic crisis since independence from Britain in 1980. Unemployment is about 80 percent, the AIDs epidemic is the worst in Africa – average life expectancy for women is 34, or perhaps 30, depending on which s; a new person is infected every three minutes, according to the website www.avert.org – and political unrest is high.
“Zimbabwe was somewhat dangerous,” Forester said. “There are some gangs; we never saw them. But if you ran out of gas in the wild jungle … then that’s a little upsetting. That and we were stopped seven times by the police. I didn’t feel physically endangered; it was more the economy and the lack of gas.”
Zimbabwe native Arthur Mazhambe, a business professor at Louisiana College, led the trip, which included his 13-year-old son, Fortune; Forester and his son Chris; and Gordon White M.D. and his wife, Laveka, a nurse, of Alexandria.
Despite a rapidly deteriorating economic situation, the mission team prevailed.
Forester interchangeably dispensed medical advice, Bibles, spiritual truth, teaching to preachers and encouragement to Southern Baptist workers at Sanyati Baptist Hospital and to nationals – leaders, church members and nonChristians alike – in Harare and as far west as Binga and Victoria Falls on the Zambia border.
“Some things we planned out didn’t happen; some things we didn’t, happened, and that’s a God thing,” Forester said. “We passed out Bibles all over the country. We’d just stop at the side of the road and say, ‘You want Bible?’ and they’d reach out their hands.”
Every memory held a story, Forester said.
One day, when they were traveling between Binga and Victoria Falls, they stopped at what Forester called an “African shopping center,” where the fronts of several shops clustered together were open to entice business.
Their driver went to look for gas, while the Americans looked at African goods.
“He said he’d be back in 10 minutes,” Forester said. “Ten minutes. I asked myself, ‘What can I do in 10 minutes? Preach!”
He moved away from the shops, and as he did so, the shopkeepers followed him to interest him in spending some of his hyper-inflated money. So Forester gathered them around him, and passed out to each one a copy of the wordless tract.
“Black is for sin,” he began; his interpreter, Fortune Mazhambe, repeated the words in the local dialect. The red blood of Jesus covers your sins, and if you accept the sacrifice of Jesus, you can – yellow – go to heaven some day, and while you’re on earth, you are to – green – grow as a Christian.
“They were just caught up in it,” Forester said. After explaining the significance of each of the colors, Forester asked, “How many of you want to accept Jesus’ sacrifice for you?”
Sixteen people – all but one person standing there – raised their hand. Later, the woman who did not raise her hand went up to Chris Forester, who called his dad to hear what she had to say. She was a pastor’s wife, she told him. She and her husband had been praying fervently for the people in that village, but they had been unsuccessful in leading anyone to Jesus Christ.
“Yesterday I prayed, ‘God, would you send us somebody?’ and today you came,” she said to the evangelist physician.