"Do Christians get Covid?"

“I heard a pastor say that Christians don’t get COVID,” Greg’s student interjected in the middle of Systematic Theology class. A tell-tale mischievous smile played at the corners of Greg’s mouth as he bellowed his reply to the group: “Well, I can tell you that everyone who has died of COVID-19 is a SINNER!” he proclaimed. As his students sat in stunned silence, began to murmur amongst themselves, and then started posing a few objections, he took a step back and re-oriented the group. “What do I always remind you about? What does scripture say about everyone?” He asked. “We’re all sinners” came the follow-up after a substantial amount of probing. “And every Christian in all of history up until this point has died.” Greg reminded them. “If you tell your church that Christians don’t die from COVID, but then someone from your church gets COVID and dies, what can you say to their family?” Greg worked with them as they processed some biases that those who stay sick lack faith, one of the basic issues of prosperity gospel that can cripple communities and believers. “And if you need an ultimate example that God doesn’t spare his children from hardship, what can you point to?...What or who is the ultimate example, the whole reason for our faith?” Greg asked. “Jesus?” came the tentative reply after a pause. True, Greg said. If God didn’t spare His own son, the perfect incarnation with whom He was well pleased, how could we expect to avoid all hardship on this earth just because we are adopted as heirs into God’s family? "We don't always have an easy answer for suffering, but we believe in a God who came down and has lived along side of us and has gone through suffering Himself, and is with us, supporting us, loving us even in the hardest of times." It’s not the first time Greg has had a discussion like this with his students, and it will be far from the last. But if these eight students grow into pastors who can shepherd their congregations through good times and bad, who can trust in God without demanding worldly returns for faith rendered, perhaps this region will be one step closer to wellness of soul and community.

Pastor's Retreat

Pastors Thokozani and Nixon Nzunga have attended four funerals and six tombstone unveilings in the past week. They sang as they buried their grandmother several hours away and they cried at the burial of an 8-year-old attendee of their Children’s Development Center who was hit by a car in Lilongwe. There has been no diagnosed Coronavirus in their area, but they say that old people in their village die without being seen by a healthcare provider because the hospitals are too far away and there is no readily available transportation. They stay up late and wake up early to pray for community members. Their long waking hours are filled with activities for their local churches and the businesses which help finance church programs. Tomorrow Nixon will travel East to preach and help re-establish a Nazarene zone in that area. As Nixon enters his second year as the Malawi Central District Superintendent, overseeing more than 150 churches in the area, these are busy times indeed for the couple.

But today is a day of rest. Thoko and Nixon made a special 2-hour trip out to visit us in Nkhoma, driving their personal vehicle which they bought after selling hundreds of hand-carved giraffe statuettes. And we’ve been pampering them ever since. It’s been a while since they came and visited us just to rest; we started these visits years ago when we lived in Lilongwe. We realized that these pastors work so hard and have a difficult time getting away, but planning a pastor’s retreat just takes too much time. So we invited them to our house, where they can enjoy running water, electricity, internet, and nobody coming to the door to see them for at least 24-hours.

And we have a lot of fun, too. Yesterday we started filling the small fish pond that our gardener built in our yard over the past week. It was warm, so we used it as a wading pool and enjoyed the refreshing cool. We rocked on the porch swing hanging from our big tree (which Thoko later decided to climb ten feet up for glamour shots.) We played ping pong and lounged on the day bed on the screened-in porch. Thoko and I roasted some marshmallows over briquettes made from recycled paper while the guys tried to solve an issue with electricity. Greg and I whipped up a quick dinner which we enjoyed between wall-projected nature video episodes. They went to bed early but said they slept better than usual because there were no interruptions. This morning we followed up with breakfast, tea, and scones on our front porch, where a rose garden is slowly blooming. I couldn’t stop Nixon from planting a few potatoes in our garden but after that it was resting on the couch, by the pond, and on the shady porch into the afternoon.

I guess you could say Greg and I have perfected days of rest here in this lovely house at the foot of Nkhoma mountain. Much of that was intentional – we knew we would need to rest well if we were going to survive the stress of the COVID pandemic and staff shortages. And it has been such a blessing to be able to share this place of rest with two of our favorite pastors. Sure, we also spent the time planning for agriculture and theological trainings for the pastors serving under Nixon, and we knew the two of them would need to be on their way before too long, heading out just 24-hours from arriving. But it was a great day – a chance to connect with friends and share a time of rest with them.

Orientation

Two new doctors arrived at Nkhoma last week. These were the first to come since most foreigners left our little community in March. They were in their final year of Tropical Medicine training in the Netherlands, and had been looking forward to this rotation for a long time. When they came, quarantine guidelines were still in effect, even though they had previously negative COVID tests. So as they spent their first week resting in the nearby lodge with minimal exposure to our community, I set about trying to use that time to start them off well.

Before they arrived, I dropped off a dozen books in case they got bored. I dug up books on Chichewa, Malawi’s history, and books on cultural tips for cross-cultural workers. After Catherine and I used Zoom to help orient them on their first day, I gave them a few more sessions myself on Sustainability and Prevention and Burnout and Resilience. We’ve had a few too many visiting doctors take too much on their shoulders too early, exhaust themselves, and leave the hospital not much improved from where they found it. So this forced quarantine time was my perfect opportunity to try and influence our new teammates before they moved into their work at the hospital and got too busy to think about long-term things.

My talks had been designed with people interested in long-term mission work in mind, so the fact that neither of these new doctors cited spirituality as a source of motivation or strength posed a bit of a challenge. But if they were going to serve alongside us for six months, they needed to understand the importance of Christianity to our community anyway, so I didn’t really adjust my slides at all. They had learned about he importance of community health, and so I introduced them to some of the opportunities and challenges around here. I shared how Greg an I were looking to pastors to lead their communities towards wholeness, in part because of the unique position of pastors in this country, and in part because of the difficulties with existing preventive systems on the community level. I’m sure that doctors coming from a part of Europe where less than 5% of individuals attended church would have a different perspective on the role of the church in grassroots wellness initiatives, but that didn’t stop me from sharing my vision.

We also talked about human suffering. Whatever it was that motivated these doctors to pursue Global Health, I knew that they were going to encounter brokenness and devastating health outcomes here on a level that few western healthcare providers have ever seen. Where I usually talk to Christian doctors about the theology of suffering and the need to not have Messiah complexes and take everything on our own shoulders, here I talked to these doctors about the importance of coming to terms with an understanding of good and evil, suffering and forgiveness. We even talked about the concept of grace, that it is a gift of healing and right relationships given when one deserves a harsher justice. We talked about the need to have grace with others and grace with ourselves.

Tomorrow they start work in the hospital. Over the last year, I have seen dozens of doctors starting out serving on our wards, and dozens of doctors leaving after their time is over. We will try to prepare and support them. We will pray for them. We will encourage them when times get hard, and I will continue trying to re-center them with ways of thinking of boundaries and sustainability. Only God knows the hundreds and thousands of lives these doctors will impact, both during these months with us and into their new careers. It would be interested to see if the intense lectures and resources during their week of forced quarantine at all impacts their perspectives and their trajectories.