My Siafu Story
Ants and Christmas
Okay, here's my premeire blog post.
From June, 1999 to June, 2000 my family (me, my wife, 3 kids) served as ELCA Global Mission volunteers in the Konde Dioese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania at the Manow Lutheran Junior Seminary (how's that for a mouthful!) Anyway, here is an experience we had that year that I think relates to Christmas- with connections to Matthew 1 (the name Jesus, Emmanuel). This is what I wrote back then for the folks at home...
Tanzania has some incredible wildlife, including huge spiders and biting ants called siafu (Swahili, pronounced "see-AHH-foo"). These biting ants have a one track mind. They march in a straight line from their home to their food and back. If you get in their path, if you get in their way, ifyou step on them, they WILL bite you. And it hurts!
Well, one night they must have found some food in CJ's (our oldest son's) bedroom. Unfortunately, CJ's head was in the path of those biting ants. So they started munching on him. He woke up, stumbled into our bedroom, whimpering. Ann picked the ants out of his hair, destroying them. Next we discovered big trouble. The ants weren't just in CJ's bedroom. They started marching from the kitchen to the living room, to CJ's room, to our bedroom, to our bathroom. We had been occupied by a "siafu army"!
I launched a counter attack. I tried to kill them, but I didn't get very far. There were too many. I'd kill 10, fifty replacements would arrive. I'd kill 50, one hundred substitutes would join the line. I'd kill 100, one-thousand recruits would enter the fray. So at 3am Ann went to wake up our "friend at midnight" (a la Luke 11), Martin Mwakaje. He brought a supply of kerosene, soaked the line of ants on our concrete floor, and lit some newspaper to burn them out. The invading ant army was repelled after one hour. Didn't get much sleep. The next morning it was Ann's turn to preach at morning devotions.
Ann was planning to teach the students about sharing "highs and lows", the best and worst of the day, and then to pray for these "highs and lows". The dark night gave some excellent illustrative material. He low was the siafu invasion. Her high was Martin's willingness to rescue us.
What does all this have to do with Christmas?! Well, Martin had to arrive in person to rescue us from these ants. He couldn't help us by staying at his home. He had to personally come to our house to liberate us from our predicament. The next day we had Martin over for dinner, repeating thanking him for his delivering us from our plight. We couldn't have eliminated the siafu without him.
In a similar way, 2,000 years ago there was a "sin problem" where sin was biting us, marching over the entire human race. No matter what we humans tried, we couldn't get rid of those biting ants. God needed to come down in the person of Jesus. God couldn't stay in heaven to defeat sin; he had to come in person. Here in Tanzania we are learning that we cannot do it by ourselves. At home in the USA we live with the illusion that we can do everything ourselves. Here in Tanzania we are re-learning to trust God, and to give thanks to God, that He once came down to this earth to get rid of those "biting sins".
My you be flooded with blessings! Tim, the Duh-sciple
Okay, here's my premeire blog post.
From June, 1999 to June, 2000 my family (me, my wife, 3 kids) served as ELCA Global Mission volunteers in the Konde Dioese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania at the Manow Lutheran Junior Seminary (how's that for a mouthful!) Anyway, here is an experience we had that year that I think relates to Christmas- with connections to Matthew 1 (the name Jesus, Emmanuel). This is what I wrote back then for the folks at home...
Tanzania has some incredible wildlife, including huge spiders and biting ants called siafu (Swahili, pronounced "see-AHH-foo"). These biting ants have a one track mind. They march in a straight line from their home to their food and back. If you get in their path, if you get in their way, ifyou step on them, they WILL bite you. And it hurts!
Well, one night they must have found some food in CJ's (our oldest son's) bedroom. Unfortunately, CJ's head was in the path of those biting ants. So they started munching on him. He woke up, stumbled into our bedroom, whimpering. Ann picked the ants out of his hair, destroying them. Next we discovered big trouble. The ants weren't just in CJ's bedroom. They started marching from the kitchen to the living room, to CJ's room, to our bedroom, to our bathroom. We had been occupied by a "siafu army"!
I launched a counter attack. I tried to kill them, but I didn't get very far. There were too many. I'd kill 10, fifty replacements would arrive. I'd kill 50, one hundred substitutes would join the line. I'd kill 100, one-thousand recruits would enter the fray. So at 3am Ann went to wake up our "friend at midnight" (a la Luke 11), Martin Mwakaje. He brought a supply of kerosene, soaked the line of ants on our concrete floor, and lit some newspaper to burn them out. The invading ant army was repelled after one hour. Didn't get much sleep. The next morning it was Ann's turn to preach at morning devotions.
Ann was planning to teach the students about sharing "highs and lows", the best and worst of the day, and then to pray for these "highs and lows". The dark night gave some excellent illustrative material. He low was the siafu invasion. Her high was Martin's willingness to rescue us.
What does all this have to do with Christmas?! Well, Martin had to arrive in person to rescue us from these ants. He couldn't help us by staying at his home. He had to personally come to our house to liberate us from our predicament. The next day we had Martin over for dinner, repeating thanking him for his delivering us from our plight. We couldn't have eliminated the siafu without him.
In a similar way, 2,000 years ago there was a "sin problem" where sin was biting us, marching over the entire human race. No matter what we humans tried, we couldn't get rid of those biting ants. God needed to come down in the person of Jesus. God couldn't stay in heaven to defeat sin; he had to come in person. Here in Tanzania we are learning that we cannot do it by ourselves. At home in the USA we live with the illusion that we can do everything ourselves. Here in Tanzania we are re-learning to trust God, and to give thanks to God, that He once came down to this earth to get rid of those "biting sins".
My you be flooded with blessings! Tim, the Duh-sciple
posted by Duh-sciple Tim at 6:06 PM
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