Page 37 - PC Fall 2023

Connection
REFLECTIONS
Reflections on End of Career Inter-Mission
presbyterian.ca
FALL 2023
PRESBYTERIAN
37
By the Rev. Capt (RCN) George L. Zimmerman
The year Covid struck, I had planned to holiday in Kenya to ex- perience a safari, at Maasai Mara, and to visit the mothers of Kenyan immigrants of the congregation of St. David and St. Mar tin Presby- terian Church in Ottawa, where I was serving. My original plan col- lapsed, but it opened a possibility that I had not previously consid- ered: a 10-week inter-mission in- corporating a longer visit to Kenya.
I resolved that my inter-mission had to meet certain goals:
• experience Kenya, not as a tourist, but as a visitor
• worship in congregations that had raised members of my congregation
• experience African solutions to complex African problems What I encountered set me on a new, unexpected pathway. I was told Africa would change my life,
and it did.
Following my objectives, I paid
pastoral visits not only to the moth- ers of my congregants, but also to their many relatives and neigh- bours. The welcome I received from these sincerely devout, Christian, kind and hard-working people touched me deeply. One congregant refused to advise his father, an elder of the Presbyte- rian Church East Africa, that I was coming to visit him until a few days before, because if he had given too much notice, the father would have built for me a house!
I preached twice in the Riara Ridge Presbyterian Church. The elders met to rename me the Rev. Wangai, a wonder indeed, as it
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figuratively. To look for God is perhaps sometimes more to look for a type of conversation. “God understands me better in my own language,” one Taiwanese Indig- enous man told us.
A New Testament scholar at one of the Taiwanese seminaries told me how she ended up in an academic career because of her professor’s suggestion, and said that maybe I would like to pursue a similar path. At one theological college where all the professors met us, dressed formally, sitting behind desks in a conference room, and where they spoke in careful, fluent English, looking calm, collected and reflective, I did feel an affinity.
The Rev. George Zimmerman at MCF Ndalani, Kenya.
hopelessness and defeatism. The dedication of the volunteers from the churches, the staff at MCF, and the performance of the hun- dreds of high-performing rescued MCF children shows the concrete work of the Nazarene in our time.
Like others blessed to enter their eighth decade, I was strug- gling with the common question: “What is God asking from me in the latter stages of my life?” My inter-mission to Kenya gave me a fresh passion and the deep- felt hope that defeats the impact of the negativity of our world. As long as my health and money hold out, God willing, I plan to go to MCF for a month or two every year. MCF and Dr. Mulli, discern- ing the hand of God at play, have endorsed my new chaplaincy.
In 2023, I returned to Kenya as a volunteer chaplain and taught leadership to MCF staff, faculty and students. Rarely have I felt such fulfillment. For me, it is truly a mystery that I, a white man from middle-class Canada, after a great ministry in military chaplaincy
and congregational life, ended up finding a fresh hope, forgiveness, compassion and faith in the back- woods of Africa from children.
Presbyterians in Canada may invite me in worship and presen- tation to share this Easter resur- rection story with my anecdotes, videos and photos about MCF. These presentations instil Chris- tian hope even in the bleakness that dominates our world today. I am convinced, amidst the chaos of our broken world and stressed church, that we need to be ex- posed to more life-giving stories. With no expectations or fees, I am delighted to do so.
It is my prayer for all who have lived out their lives serv- ing the church that they may feel the presence of God in a fulfill- ment beyond understanding. I have been truly blessed that God placed me in the cradle of human- kind to know the hope of resur- rection. Such was my inter-mis- sion at retirement after 45 years of ordination. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
means “Born of God.”
I visited schools in areas where
tourists never go. There, I met the poverty that kills but also the first- century church, as envisioned by Jesus of Nazareth. In these slums, there are 9.5 million suf- fering Kenyan children. I lunched in the church mission schools of Githorgoro and Githorai. The efforts of the Kenyan Christian churches serving these slums promote an optimism that goes beyond human understanding. Their ministry is devoted to mak- ing a difference among the tens of thousands of young people trapped in terrifying conditions of malnutrition, sexual preda- tion, environmental filth, open sewers, drugs, glue sniffing and homelessness where there is little health care, skills training and education.
Finally, I lived for two weeks at the Mully Children’s Family (MCF) of Ndalani. MCF is a Christian- based, registered, non-govern- mental organization dedicated to
When our moderator asked the president of that theological col- lege about LGBTQI+ inclusion in the church in Taiwan, it wasn’t possible to tell where the faculty stood on the question. But one woman we met on our journey left an impression I’ll never forget.
We met Maelyn at a dinner on a restaurant terrace overlook- ing a mountain valley near an Indigenous village. There were a few of us Canadians and a few local people at my dinner table. Speaking to us with the help of Paul Wu’s translation, Maelyn suddenly asked the Canadians at the table: “What is the position of your church regarding people of multiple gender identities?” When
saving children’s lives. Over 34 years, its founder, Dr. Charles Mulli, once a Kenyan slum street child himself, has successfully rescued, rehabilitated and rein- tegrated 26,000 children. During the summer of 2021, I met Dr. Mulli online after I had seen the Mully Movie. He invited me to visit MCF and judge for myself. I added it to my inter-mission plan. With skepticism, I arrived at MCF Ndalani in January 2022. There, among the 1,200 rescued chil- dren, to my delight and wonder, I experienced the real presence of God’s love for us, God’s children.
From these encounters there arose in me an authentic, mysti- cal attachment to the rescued children of MCF. I recognized that this was a genuine gospel call to a chaplaincy empowered by a Pres- ence greater than myself. I saw, unequivocally, the ministry of the first-century church success- fully addressing the core issues of Jesus: oppression, injustice, narcissistic power-mongering,
we explained to her that LG- BTQI+ people are included and respected as equals, she burst into tears. We were all quite con- cerned, not knowing what was going on. Was she angry? Then she said some words to Paul in Mandarin, and he explained to us that she had a child who was assigned a male gender but who liked to dress more femininely. Her child, who still lives with her, had been excluded by her church, and to make things worse, her fa- ther was one of the church lead- ers. It felt so moving to listen to her and encourage her; to tell her that I was gay, and to see relief in her eyes after a desperate search for recognition.
Children supported by Mully Children’s Family (MCF) in January 2023.
“Walk with me,” said Louise Gamble, an 84-year-old Canadian mission staff who worked at a school on the outskirts of Taipei, transcribing archival documents. She told me about joining a diaco- nal order in 1965, when women were not allowed to be ordained, studying Mandarin and flying to Taiwan. “They had me teaching. My limit was when they asked me to teach a high school ethics course entirely in Mandarin!”
Over dinner one evening, an- other traveller in our group told me how he once spent summers in his youth working at an upscale resort in rural Quebec. I imagined him absorbing some of the lais- sez-faire atmosphere that comes
with an environment of holiday and excess, of summer, still lakes, peaceful nights, crickets and moonlight, wind in the leaves. Somehow, the busy asphalt world of Taipei was a similar departure from the confines of regular life. The trip, with all the new places and people who moved into and out of our lives in a matter of days, had all the strange power of circumstances that could never be reproduced.
Occasionally, with some peo- ple, in some places, a kind of door opens, and it has been so long since it last opened that you for- got it was there, and you walk right through the door into a new life that was waiting for you all along.