Hippo Valley Christian Mission in Zimbabwe
August 9, 2022
Missions Update
Northwest member Donna Stroop visited Hippo Valley Christian Mission in Zimbabwe this summer to support the work of the mission, including promoting revival services. A portion of the 2022 Pentecost offering was used to purchase bibles in the Shona language spoken there.
Here is an excerpt from Donna's report. "We had been planning and praying for months leading up to the Revival at the mission station where I grew up as a missionary kid on the fork of the Mwenezi and Dine rivers, a place very dear to my heart. We went down in advance teams the weekend before to do calling and also to work with the children at the school. We told the kids at Dine school on Friday “vuya mangwana” “come tomorrow” and they did! I would say 2/3 of our attendance at the Dine revival were children. At one point, I looked at the line up for lunch and prayed, “Lord, multiply the sadza like you did the 5 loaves and 2 fish.” A big thank you to my niece, Jenn Burris, and her children’s ministry team! They have been wonderful, we couldn’t have done what we did and had the results we had without their valuable contribution to the bigger picture. One of the things that made our weekend revival at Dine so successful was not only the months of preparation and planning and prayer with our staff, it was not just that we had a great children’s ministry team who did such a fantastic job with the children, it was also that we did the hard work of putting in the miles and doing village to village calling. This is something that I learned from my missionary parents, Dan and Esther Burris. It was something I saw them do as I was growing up, and it is still a very effective tool of evangelism in rural Africa today. I told my dear friend Holly, who came on our team, we are going to give you a deep dive cultural experience, and we did! One of the highlights of the revival is the story about a dear man named Saul. After his wife died a few years ago, he became very melancholy and just gave up his hope. Saul was one of the preachers that my Dad had trained back in the 1970’s. He was tortured for his faith during the war years in Zimbabwe, but recovered and kept on preaching. In fact, the preacher at the mission right now is a Timothy of Saul’s. We lost track of Saul through the years but when I heard he lived in the area where we were doing village to village calling, I made it a point that we needed to call on Saul. Oh my, what a sweet reunion! We encouraged him and invited him to the revival the next weekend at Dine. It was after the Saturday night sermon about the prodigal son that Saul came forward and reaffirmed his faith in the Lord. We gave Saul a new Bible, and guess what, at 75 years young, Saul is back to preaching again! We drove to places where the dirt road petered out and then we went further on foot. We put in some miles on dusty paths and visited people in their space, in their poverty, in their need. We loved on them and prayed for them and we invited them to share in the joy of our salvation in Jesus Christ. That afternoon, our Revival at Dine culminated in 35 baptisms down at the river. Tears were streaming down my face as my heart was rejoicing with the angels in heaven!"
Here is an excerpt from Donna's report. "We had been planning and praying for months leading up to the Revival at the mission station where I grew up as a missionary kid on the fork of the Mwenezi and Dine rivers, a place very dear to my heart. We went down in advance teams the weekend before to do calling and also to work with the children at the school. We told the kids at Dine school on Friday “vuya mangwana” “come tomorrow” and they did! I would say 2/3 of our attendance at the Dine revival were children. At one point, I looked at the line up for lunch and prayed, “Lord, multiply the sadza like you did the 5 loaves and 2 fish.” A big thank you to my niece, Jenn Burris, and her children’s ministry team! They have been wonderful, we couldn’t have done what we did and had the results we had without their valuable contribution to the bigger picture. One of the things that made our weekend revival at Dine so successful was not only the months of preparation and planning and prayer with our staff, it was not just that we had a great children’s ministry team who did such a fantastic job with the children, it was also that we did the hard work of putting in the miles and doing village to village calling. This is something that I learned from my missionary parents, Dan and Esther Burris. It was something I saw them do as I was growing up, and it is still a very effective tool of evangelism in rural Africa today. I told my dear friend Holly, who came on our team, we are going to give you a deep dive cultural experience, and we did! One of the highlights of the revival is the story about a dear man named Saul. After his wife died a few years ago, he became very melancholy and just gave up his hope. Saul was one of the preachers that my Dad had trained back in the 1970’s. He was tortured for his faith during the war years in Zimbabwe, but recovered and kept on preaching. In fact, the preacher at the mission right now is a Timothy of Saul’s. We lost track of Saul through the years but when I heard he lived in the area where we were doing village to village calling, I made it a point that we needed to call on Saul. Oh my, what a sweet reunion! We encouraged him and invited him to the revival the next weekend at Dine. It was after the Saturday night sermon about the prodigal son that Saul came forward and reaffirmed his faith in the Lord. We gave Saul a new Bible, and guess what, at 75 years young, Saul is back to preaching again! We drove to places where the dirt road petered out and then we went further on foot. We put in some miles on dusty paths and visited people in their space, in their poverty, in their need. We loved on them and prayed for them and we invited them to share in the joy of our salvation in Jesus Christ. That afternoon, our Revival at Dine culminated in 35 baptisms down at the river. Tears were streaming down my face as my heart was rejoicing with the angels in heaven!"
