The following letter has been received from Dale and Mary Patrick, members of Glen Echo Christian Church in Des Moines, who are experiencing a two-year ministry in Zimbabwe. Please read and enjoy!!!
23 April 2010
Dear family and friends,
We send you greetings again from United Theological College in Harare, Zimbabwe where the sun is shining and the poinsettias are in bloom, whole trees of them. We don’t think Christmas is coming any time soon and we were under the impression poinsettias grew in Mexico. Bu they definitely are poinsettias and we are easily confused these days.
Easter passed very quietly. We succeeded in locating a Good Friday and an Easter Sunday service in English for which we could manage transportation, but we missed Maundy Thursday and the Vigil of Easter. On Palm Sunday, however,we processed with palm branches 3 feet long, lost bigger than any we’ve ever used.
The week after Easter we went to a Pastors’ Conference at Mt. Selinda, 7 hours away in the SW part of Zimbabwe, our first trip out of Harare. Mt. Selinda was the original mission station in Zimbabwe for what is now the UCC. It has a hospital, nursing school and boarding high school. The hospital administrator and her husband are UCC lay people from Minnesota, the only other people in Zimbabwe associated with Global Ministries. They have a 3 bedroom house and were able to accommodate us fairly easily. The cell phone tower is out of range so both phone calls and emails are done from the car parked in a village a mile away.
The Pastor’s Conference consisted of short presentations in English followed by long discussions in Shona. They all wore suits and sat in a classroom with backless benches all day every day. We dressed informally (hope they weren’t offended) and attended about half their sessions.
Socializing with our missionary colleagues was more fun. They took us on several walks and a trip over impossible roads to an outpost at Chikore. Another day they took us to a tea farm where they grow and process tea; the plant gave us a lot of very good tea. We exchanged our novels for some of theirs. They gave us an extra fly swatter went them from home.
On the way back to Harare with the UCCZ president, we bought 40 bananas for $1.00. Unfortunately, they were pretty well cooked by the time we got home (we salvaged about two-thirds, we think).
A young colleague named Nyoni, who just received his MA from the University of Zimbabwe, threw a graduation party for which he insisted his colleagues wear full academic regalia and sit with him on the stage. Dale did the devotional and Mary one of the prayers. There was a guest speaker; friends and family toasted and roasted (just a little).
Dale has preached 4 times in 4 months, a record for him. Evenings and early mornings are cooler now and corn, dried in the field, is being hand harvested and the kernals shelled by hand and stored for milling as needed.
Peace,
Mary and Dale Patrick