We are another year into our journey and the Mahafaly are another year into theirs as God continues to do a work among their people. This time last year, church growth was booming as over a hundred Mahafaly churches sprang up overnight. By the end of last year, we were starting to experience the issues that naturally come with hundreds of churches full of people being made new.

Recently, two of our Toliara pastors who help train the Mahafaly leaders got back from a training down south. They checked in on the leaders and refreshed them on what they will be teaching the other leaders at the next leadership meeting. Our Mahafaly leaders continue to grow in their understanding of the Bible, their ability to teach others, and their passion for reaching those who still have not heard the gospel.

So, as we start this year, we thank God for the great work he is doing and many, many lives here. Please pray for two things:

1. Pray that the gospel continues to spread into other areas (especially the larger towns of Ampanihy and Androka).
2. Pray that as the gospel spreads and churches are planted that leaders and new Christians alike would continue to mature in their relationship with God.

When we think about sharing the gospel with people or being a faithful child of God, what comes to our mind? When you think about things you can do to make an impact or potentially change the trajectory of someone’s life, what are those things?

I (Nathan), found it interesting that on this past bush trip two different answers to those questions were given of our collective work as missionaries among the Mahafaly.

First, a visiting pastor from elsewhere on the island came to learn what he could from the Mahafaly. He came away with many insights, but this was what he said about us as missionaries: “I can see from you and what I know about Grant that you love this people. You are not afraid to stay out here with them, eat their food, and sleep in their villages. You have humbled yourself and they can see that you love them.”

The second answer came from Emanda, one of the Mahafaly leaders whose life has most radically changed (murderer to man of God type story). He said, “When Grant came we knew he was different from the other people who had tried to get us to follow God. The others came making it clear that the authority would always be theirs. From the beginning, our missionaries made it clear that we would be responsible. They didn’t keep the authority, they gave it to us and taught us how to teach ourselves. And now look, here we are hosting our own meeting, organizing ourselves, and teaching ourselves!”

Intentionally loving people, and giving them dreams and responsibility. These are two  big things that stick out to our brothers here that enabled them to hear the gospel, tell others, and start over a hundred new churches. (1) We set aside our personal preferences and comfort to be with them and (2) we gave them a bigger plan for their lives and expected something out of them.

Now there are a million caveats that come with that–the first being that this may apply generally but it only really helps when we’re talking about the good news that Jesus did this for us first. (1) He humbled himself to our place so that we could have his life, and  (2) he gave us a bigger plan and responsibilities for that new life–to reach the world with the good news!

What makes us successful Christians? What changes lives? At least according to people here, it’s relationships and responsibility.

That was surprising to me. I expected to hear how impressed people were with our language, or how clear our teaching had been. Instead our impact has been (at least by these accounts) relational and inspirational. To the people we work among, we are not successful because we work hard, or because we are really smart, or brave. They have listened because they saw our love lived out among them. They have listened because we presented them with good news and a better plan for their life. They listened because we expected them to be responsible and taught them how to be, instead of just running things ourselves.

Take the time to love people, especially those different than you. Invest in them and teach them how to be responsible with what God has given them, especially the good news of Jesus. This is a challenge and encouragement for me and I hope for you too.

Having come back from meeting with our Mahafaly churches in the bush, we wanted to give you a little update.

This meeting is where the original (what we call 1st generation) churches Grant planted meet together for teaching, reports, strategizing and camaraderie. These meetings have been going on over the past 5 years. But this was the first meeting hosted, organized, and taught by Mahafaly. We were still there to encourage and facilitate, to make sure things ran smoothly and to still have eyes on the teaching. But this was their show.

There were three men teaching, three men whom we call Mpandime–the Replacements. Now we’re not talking football replacements like Keanu Reeves but rather Paul’s replacements in Acts 20:17-38. In that story, Paul tells his disciples and leaders of the church in Ephesus that he is moving on and they will never see his face again. And yet he is convinced this is ok because he has taught them everything he knows and, even more important, he has given them the whole story–the whole Bible. He warns them that false teachers will come to try and destroy the church and dismember the believers like wolves devouring sheep. But the same thing Paul did to give them the truth is the same thing these men will do as they replace him. And Paul knows that God’s Word is able to grow them more like Jesus and keep them victorious.

Moving forward, these three Mahafaly men (Emasike, Emora, and Estifihezy) will be learning from us how to interpret and understand God’s Word for themselves, and therefore how to defend against an onslaught of false teaching. We’ve already seen Emasike grow as we’ve been personally teaching him over the past few months. He now speaks with confidence from God’s Word. Estifihezy and Emora are recent attendees, but they were able to learn from Emasike and then turn around and teach others at this meeting.

They will no longer be waiting on us to give them a new Bible story or a new teaching. They will be feeding themselves and feeding their sheep straight from God’s Word. Just as they started to do at this last meeting.

He had just found out his cousin and brother-in-arms, the man on earth who probably knew him best, was dead. Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist had been beheaded. It’s a lot to take in and, understandably, Jesus needed some alone time.

But as soon as he sets off he is mobbed. Seeing his alone time as an opportunity, everyone who needs his attention comes running. And what is Jesus’ response? He has compassion on them. He does not stand up for his right to solitude. He does not even apologize and then take his needed time away. Instead, Jesus embodies the Old Testament words he has been reminding the so-called religious people, “I desire compassion and not sacrifice, says Yahweh” (Matthew 9:13; 12:7; from Hosea 6:6).

God’s people have always been much better about making sacrifices than compassion. It’s not a new problem. It’s so much easier to, on your own time—when it’s convenient for you, go out back and pick out a cow you don’t mind handing over to God, throw a small percentage of your resources at a problem, and feel like that’s the right thing to do. But that’s just pragmatic; you haven’t learned how to love any better.

The Hebrew word the prophet Hosea used was hesed. What God desires from his people is hesed—the word used for the love God shows his people. It is the kind of thing that is slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and full of compassion (Exodus 34:6). God wants us to love him and others the way he loves us and others.

In Matthew 14:13-21, Jesus walks the talk. In a moment of great personal need, he does not put off 5,000+ people until it’s convenient. He doesn’t make up for it with a donation afterward, or by praying for them, or pay down his guilt in some other way. He loves them and has compassion. He is the only human being with a heart capable of knowing God’s word and living it out—loving a mob of 5,000 rabid peasants with a host of extreme needs fueled by desperation.

This is precisely what makes him our God, worthy of all our effort and praise. He is the only one who actually loves. “We love him because he first loved us,” (1 John 4:19). Jesus is the only one who can actually fulfill God’s desires for the human race. God isn’t waiting for us to do something, to sacrifice. He wants us to have compassion; he wants us to love him and others the way he loves us and others.

The only way that you or I can actually help anyone is if we admit we are not Jesus. We do not have compassion and we do not love like this. And we have to fall at the feet of Jesus, who has done what no one else could do, and beg him to take away our hate, our guilt, our unworthiness, and fill us with his love and compassion. He will do it.

Jesus is the only way we (Nathan and Tessa) can really help here in Madagascar. He is the only way I can have compassion on all the desperately needy here and meet their needs. And as the story continues, he is the only one who can simultaneously meet all the desperate needs in my life and the thousands of people we are trying to help.

I’m absolutely certain that my least favorite thing about working here is cleaning up puke out of the car after giving someone a ride. Imagine taking your Grandma, who was alive before Ford, for a ride through a rock quarry in West Texas. That’s kinda what it’s like giving someone from one of our villages a ride here. Most of them have never ridden in a car and definitely not that fast or that bumpy. The end result is not pretty, and smells worse.

I’m going to try to explain why I get one part mad and two parts desperate when someone tosses their cookies in the backseat . . . but it’s complicated:

#1. People here are desperately in need of help.

Almost every time we get ready to leave a village a stream of people make a run for the car with their luggage. It’s hard to get between villages and so taking advantage of someone going anywhere close to where you are (especially in a car!) is top priority. And we have one of the only cars.

Many of them are sick and need to get what little medical attention there is here. Many of them are trying to buy food because they are unable to grow any. Many of them are on their way to bury a loved one. There are almost always good reasons why they are imposing on us.

Yet we know we cannot solve this desperation. We can’t solve their problems; we are finite and their problems are infinite. So even though we want to help and see that they are desperate, we feel we are not really helping. The problem is bigger than us, and I’m not helping the problem because . . .

#2. I am a sinful American who wants his privacy, cleanliness, and control.

I am American: I like my privacy. I don’t mind riding back alone (though that is impossible for our Malagasy friends to understand) and decompress the day with some English songs, a podcast, talk in English with my wife, or just plain non-linguistic silence. But I don’t get to make that choice–not when every person in a village of a 1,000 has a family member who needs to take a 5-hour car trip with us.

This last bush trip we arrived in town from one of the villages, I opened the door to let the eager, old woman out of the car. She immediately threw her lunch at my feet.  I don’t care who you are, missionary or not, cleaning ick off your toes gets old. I did not intentionally choose a career path that included this. I have not yearned for this close, messy community. I like clean, healthy boundaries and not being thrown up on.

And yet it’s not the physical challenges that really get to us here. For sure, the disease, the poverty, the gross, the heat, the grind, they all do their part in making it difficult. But the hardest part is a complete lack of control. As I said, we can’t change a thing here. We can do some good, throw a starfish back in the sea or whatever, but at the end of the day things are only getting worse for these people. And then when they mob me for a ride in my car my first thought is for myself. Because I am part of the problem.

Essentially, every time someone hurls I am reminded of the gross injustice of sin in this world. It has corrupted everything in this world from bacteria to governments to my heart. And there’s really only one thing I can do to help: I can let Jesus change my heart and lead others to him for the same. Jesus has been guiding me for a while now and I’ve thrown up on him quite a few times. He knows I’m desperate, and he doesn’t shy away from helping.

We’re not here to be superstars or better Christians or something. And this is hard for us. But we are not alone.

When we left here in 2013, there were three churches–all had issues and only one had gone to share their faith with another village. But over the years the gospel gained momentum.

We began telling the story of the church from the book of Acts. The original Mahafaly churches began saying, “If this is what God’s people do then this is what we will do.” From the model of Acts 2:37-47 they began meeting together for prayer, teaching, giving money for needs, appointing leaders, remembering what Jesus did for them through the Lord’s Supper, Baptizing new believers, and continually telling their wider community.

Eventually, a church was started in the one new village which had been evangelized. Then the other two churches caught the vision. More churches were started. By 2016 there were over 30 churches and more groups meeting. Then, through BGR (the relief arm of the Southern Baptists) the Mahafaly churches handed out many seeds to stave of the terrible famine that is ravaging Southern Madagascar. That was last October. Now that the dust has settled, there are over 100 churches . . . and they are still spreading. This movement has already crossed a river and spread into a neighboring (and enemy) tribe.

The simple idea that it was, and is, their responsibility to not only share the gospel with their friends and family but also teach them how to conduct themselves as a Christian and as Christians living together (church), revolutionized the Mahafaly–and their culture. The custom of sacrifice is one of the strongest Mahafaly indicators. And yet, at a recent meeting, we heard leaders testifying that because of their conversion to Jesus as their final sacrifice and Savior, sacrifice and worship of the ancestors is nearly non-existent in their villages.

Wow! You are talking about people that have sacrificed as long as they can remember. But the powerful good news of God dying on their behalf to save their lives is transforming their culture. And because these people are learning to live in service to God together as a church, this is a change that will continue transforming them.

Now, as we drive down the winding, bumpy bush road that leads to the Mahafaly, the majority of the towns we used to pass and pray that God would save have a small band of believers meeting as a church. Slowly, like a small, insignificant seed growing large over time, these churches are changing everything.

Here we are continuing the story thus far of the work among the Mahafaly . . .

After people decide they are ready to follow Jesus they have to know how. After telling them the good news, Grant returned to the villages and taught them a handful of important lessons. It was basically, Now that you have a relationship with God here’s how you talk to him (prayer), tell others what he’s done for you (evangelism), gather together as God’s family (church), grow as a Christian (knowing and obeying God’s word), endure hard times and temptations, etc., etc.

At the end of this time we baptized those who were ready. Not everyone who had first decided to follow Jesus made it. This was no magical process. It was hard and messy, but there were those who now understood what it meant to follow Jesus, had counted the cost, and buried themselves alongside Jesus in baptism, “raised to walk in a new kind of life.”

After these short term lessons, Grant would take much longer going back through the stories of the Bible from creation to Jesus’ resurrection and take time to help these new believers wrestle with God’s word. Doug Campbell and I were part of this process in Andremba  2012. Doing it this way actually helped them understand their own life and land better (as truly understanding God’s Word always does). By the time we got to the stories of Jesus, they were enthralled with Jesus. That a God who owed us nothing would love us so much that he would remain involved with us over centuries and eventually become one of us in order to take our place truly changed their hearts!

The last step was teaching them what it meant to be God’s family as a local church. We continued through the story of the Bible through the book of Acts. I think we all learned going through these stories and seeing things, making connections, and understanding God’s long reaching plan that started in the beginning. For the Mahafaly, once they saw the church formed in Acts they intrinsically knew they needed to do the same. “If this is what God’s people did in the stories then we need to do the same,” they would say. In those days, three small groups decided to become churches–people meeting together and committed to treating each other like God’s family.

Thank you to those of you who are joining us in fasting and praying! We’ve just returned from the bush again, this time training men who will be the future overseers of the work.

There are two of these men, Emasike and Estifihezy, but only one of them has been able to attend the training thus far. As of now, the Mahafaly churches are deciding together whether to appoint another man who can attend next training. We give thanks, however, that the churches, though very busy and struggling with issues from many different sides (theological, physical, interpersonal, logistical, temptations, etc.) are healthily working through these issues and taking responsibility as leaders.

So, with that update, would you please join us in lifting up these specific prayer requests (if you already received our prayer guide these are the same, with some updates):

The towns Ampanihy and Androka.

This is the last Mahafaly area to reach for every section of the Mahafaly region to be saturated with a gospel driven church presence. Our leaders (from Besatra and Andremba) already have family in these areas. Pray for opportunities to share there and plant churches before the end of this year.

The two Apprentices: Emasike and Estifihezy,

These two Apprentices mentioned above. Pray for wisdom as the leaders decide who to send to the next training. Pray for the two Apprentices that they would learn how to rightly handle the Word of Truth for themselves and be able to teach others how to interpret God’s Word.

Pray for all involved as we train these men to truly understand, apply, and teach God’s Word–especially as we try to equip them to understand context and find the main idea of passages of Scripture using oral methods. Pray that God’s Spirit would take their deep desire to lead their churches and equip them to rightly handle God’s Word.

Pray for these two Apprentices to be faithful stewards of the money their churches have collected for them, and for us to be wise mentors for them in this.

The Mahafaly Churches

Pray for the new churches to faithfully pass on the stories and teaching they’ve received to their children churches. Pray for time and energy as older churches help the younger churches, and that they would have wisdom in gathering leaders from these churches who can clearly pass on true teaching all the way down.

Pray for all the church leaders: for conviction of sin, for faithfulness in persecution, for perseverance in suffering and temptation, often during difficult times (the famine ravaging the area, sickness of children, etc.) the leaders are tempted to return to their sacrifices and witch doctors to find help and freedom from fear.

Pray for the intense physical needs of the Mahafaly: the famine of the last several years, the lack of access to water, the simple illnesses that often plague especially the young and very old.

Island-wide Focus

Pray for the Malagasy Baptists who are growing in their passion for reaching all of Madagascar. Pray for opportunities to continue discipling their evangelists. Pray also that we would be able to help facilitate a storying project that would potentially equip churches to translate God’s Word into the heart languages of the many tribes. Pray that all the tribes would have the chance to hear God speak to them in their own vernacular. Specifically pray for a potential group meeting in October.

Pray for Andakoro, our church in Toliara, to have strength to pursue their goal of planting 40 churches in Toliara. Pray for their bivocational leaders to balance family and ministry and that they are helped by every church member working towards the goal. Pray for cell groups already in existence to grow into healthy churches.

Pray for our team’s families to love and serve one another as spouses, and that we would raise our children to know and love the Father.

Grant and Jodie prayed through and chose to focus on 3 villages. But in a place where almost no one can read the Bible–or much of anything–how do you give them God’s word?

That’s where Tessa came in. My wife, Tessa, was chosen to lead groups of Malagasy from three dialects of the south to work together to create stories from God’s creation of the world until Jesus conquered death with his own. There are over 20 different dialects in Madagascar, sometimes making it very hard for different tribes to understand each other. These groups crafted stories that were true to the Bible but in the colloquialisms and everyday speak of the average Mahafaly person. In this way, God’s story became their story; like Jesus it took on a form they could understand, fit into their world, and began to transform it.

Grant shared stories like these with the 3 villages of Kilimary, Besatra, and Andremba: starting with the creation of the world and pausing after Jesus’ death and resurrection. Understanding the whole story helped the Mahafaly grasp what exactly Grant meant when he asked if they were ready to follow Jesus.

Grant had already shared the gospel with Kilimary and Besatra by the time my teammate, Doug, and I had come out. We got a chance to be there when Grant first shared the stories with Andremba. Every time after sharing the stories, the villages were asked to make individual decisions to believe and follow Jesus. And in every village, the stories were clear enough that a small group was ready to follow Jesus.

People came from all kinds of walks of life, from the respectable (teachers, village elders, local political leaders) and the dark paths (witch doctors, murderers, thieves). Sometimes it was both. One such man was Emanda, a local leader with a dark past as a cattle thief and murderer. We’ve heard him compared to an animal who, if you ever saw him coming toward you on the road, was to be avoided at all costs. But after being prepared by God as I described before, Emanda’s heart was changed listening to the stories. He knew his life needed to change–and he gave his life over to Jesus. His especially is a story of life change (though his eyes are still wild and he is still the Malagasy version of Chuck Norris!). His testimony is famous in the region, and many have seen the power of the Gospel through the change he’s experienced.

We recently returned from a bush trip. There is so much to tell! But first, we want to try and tell you the story of  how the gospel and churches living the gospel have reshaped the Mahafaly.

Grant and Jodie Waller arrived here in 2008. They had a background in church planting, working previously in Japan and Seattle, but had long felt a calling to reach the Mahafaly  specifically. They were eager to move to Southern Madagascar and be mentored as new missionaries, but instead, found themselves without a team. As the only missionaries then working with the Mahafaly, they began their work.

Mahafaly means “making taboos,” and the tribe lived up to its name. It’s a culture of respect for elders and the rules they’ve made–even if that means killing kids born on certain days and sacrificing 500 cows when the owner dies. They understood we are all covered by hakeo (a curse). Hakeo stops all life, and so in order to keep living, blood must be shed to lift the curse. Therefore, the Mahafaly sacrificed all the time. But little did Grant know that as he carefully built relationships with Mahafaly villages, God had prepared them.

One village had eight brothers at the helm. Their father had just recently passed away. Then the father came to one of the brothers in a dream, telling them to take religion seriously. Shortly after that, Grant showed up in their village telling them he wanted to share good news about God with them.

In another village, the president of the village was visited by his father–a fortune teller. This man prophesied that in three years a white man would come with news that would bless the whole village. It was three years later that Grant arrived telling them he had good news to share with them.

It wasn’t a new idea to spread the good news that God spilled his blood for the Mahafaly; God had been preparing things for a while.