On June 22, I went down to the southeast coast of Madagascar with a group of 11 seminary students to whom I had taught missions this year. The trip was their voyage d’etudes, putting into practice the things they had learned by planting a new church among the Antesaka people group, a highly unreached group. We worked in an area called Masianaka, about 35 km south of the city of Vangaindrano. A neat thing about this project is that one of the students who has just graduated will be staying to pastor the new work. His name is Josefa and he is actually from this area and tribe (see his photo above). He worked many years as a gendarme, but is now retired and will be living off his pension (he just turned 60 on this trip).

We left Tana about 11 am on Tuesday, me driving a mission pickup with 3 people riding and the rest of the group riding in a taxi-bus. Can you believe we drove all through the night (not my plan!) and didn’t arrive till the next day at 2 pm! Yes, that was a record for me. All told, we probably actually were on the road about 23-24 hours, but with 3-4 hours of stops, the total trip time was a whopping 27 hours! Towards the end I decided to ask the seminary director Mamifeno (riding with me) to take over the wheel because I was so drowsy. He was the only person on the team who has a license, but of course he forgot to bring it. Finally, he did agree to drive for about 20-30 minutes on a stretch where there were no gendarme stops, so I did close my eyes for about 15 minutes but then he woke me up saying we were getting close to a checkpoint and that I needed to drive again.

Our first stop on the trip was to eat at a Malagasy hotely for lunch. We also ate at one of these for supper. A hotely is not a hotel, but kind of like the Malagasy version of fast food. The ones we went in to were almost like cafeterias. There were only a few choices and they were already cooked, so it was just a matter of placing your order and the waiter bringing it to you. All the waiters were male, which is not what you get in most restaurants here. Anyway, the food was always rice with some sort of meat. Our next stop was in the city of Irongo, the crossroads after the rainforest where you go either north or south to the east coast. I’m not sure why we stopped there, except that maybe the taxi bus driver needed some coffee. There was no electricity at any of the stands there, only candlelight, so it was hard to see what was going on. The next stop was actually in Vangaindrano. We stopped there for breakfast in the market and for Josefa to pick up his pension check. We arrived a little after 6 am and went in to the main market area. People were sitting down at tables there to drink coffee and eat a piece of bread and/or rice muffin (mofo gasy ). I passed on the coffee since I wasn’t confident of the cleanliness of the mug or the drink, but did have some bread.

After breakfast, we had to just wait around till the office opened where Josefa could get his check. I parked the truck up the hill from the market and then joined 3 or 4 of the students to wander around. We ended up in a neighborhood and decided to gather a crowd and one of the students (Ernest) preached. He issued an invitation and several people came forward, then he had the rest of us counsel and pray with each person who had come forward. Towards the end it started raining, but we didn’t quit till we’d prayed with everybody.

Finally we left Vangaindrano and started out toward Masianaka. With the exception of about a 45 minute stretch between Vohipeno and Farafangana, the road all the way down had been pretty good, but the road out to Masianaka was horrible and it took us about 3 hours to go only 35 km. The taxi bus went ahead of us because I’d had to go back into town and get gas in the truck before leaving. When we caught up with the taxi bus, it was stopped beside the road and the students out beside the road in a crowd that had gathered around a 14 year old boy laying in the grass who’d just been hit by a motorcycle and whose leg was obviously broken (there was a big hole in his shin and part of his bone was missing). Mamifeno and I got the boy and his older brother and sister into the truck with us and turned back toward town to take him to the hospital. Every time we went down into a pothole in the road, the boy would moan with pain, so I drove as carefully as I could and eventually we got him into the hospital. The district head had gotten word we were coming and came out to escort us to the hospital and help prepare the way. We left after the boy was carried into the hospital and once back on the road had several people walking on the road to thank us and to ask us how the boy was doing and whether we got him to the hospital.

Once we got to Masianaka, we set up camp in/at the local commune (county) offices. The students stayed in one of the small rooms used as an office, the lady who came to cook for us stayed in another, and Mamifeno and I set up tents to stay in. There was no electricity or running water. Our source of water was a small stream down the hill from the commune. That was also where we bathed and washed clothes. Two students were assigned everyday to work with the cook on meal preparation. A quick note about meals...On these kind of trips, I know it’s best to just join in with the group and eat what they do. Usually that means big mounds of rice at least 2 times a day with a grisly bone or whole fish body on top. To me, it feels a little like playing Russian Roulette as I eat each meal and wonder if I’ll get sick from it or not, but on this trip I did fine!

Our morning program in Masianaka was generally this: individual devotions, breakfast, group meeting for worship, teaching, and prayer, door-to-door (actually “hut to hut”) evangelism in groups of 2-3. In the afternoons we held evangelistic meetings, each day meeting in a different neighborhood. During these services the students would do a lot of music (very upbeat with a drum and 2 guitars), then one of them would preach an evangelistic message. After the services we would return, perhaps continuing with some door-to-door evangelism before getting back to the “camp.” Once back at the camp, there were activities for the children, led by Ernest and Daniel, as well as soccer for/with the youth. In the evenings after supper and before bed, we would have a time of sharing/reflecting about the day.

The first day I was asked to take the cook and her two helpers for the day across the river to the market. We rode across the river on a barge packed with people. The Masianaka River is so wide there is no bridge. From what I’ve been told, one reason it takes so long (a full day) to drive south from Vangaindrano to Fort Dauphin is that there are about 10 rivers or streams that require a barge for crossing in a car. Sometimes the barge is working, sometimes not! Our barge was working fine, and we even got to ride for free once the people running the barge heard why we were there. It was on our trip into the market that it hit me that I was definitely in Africa--the greenery all around, the market sights and smells, the live chickens for sale. Everybody from 10 miles around there on market day to see what was going on. There were t-shirts for sale with Bob Marley, the Scorpions, or John Cena on them.

In the afternoon I was able to go door-to-door with Michel and Jean-Jacques. I visited several places and people over the next few days, but the visit that sticks in my mind the most is when on that day we visited with a grandfather, his 18 year-old grandson Honore, and several girls and children who happened to be around. We sat outside their houses on a straw mat set on the grass. Jean-Jacques started the sharing, then Michel. I followed by sharing my testimony using the Roman Road. It was amazing to sense they really understood (praise the Lord!). In the end, the grandfather said he was already a believer, but Honore (second from left in picture) prayed to receive Christ!

The next day a student named Gonzagne asked me to be his partner for visiting. Gonzagne is the only believer in his family and his father left when he was born. He and I visited several folks, and I remember clearly a grandfather who prayed to receive Christ as well as a couple of women who were very attentive and seemed to hang on every word as we shared the good news. I won’t go into detail about the other visits. Generally there was a great receptivity among the people; several times the students remarked how thirsty people were (spiritually speaking). Some of the students used the Evangecube as they shared the gospel (I’ve been giving them out to each student I’ve taught at the seminary), but we cautioned them about becoming too dependent on it. In other words, we didn’t want them to turn down opportunities for witness when they didn’t have such a visual aid with them. [The Evangecube is kind of like the Rubix cube and has pictures on it that depict the gospel.]

I think it was the next day in the afternoon when we got back in from the evangelistic meeting, I joined the guys playing soccer in the yard of the commune offices. There were probably about 9 teenage boys and 5 of us from the seminary. It was a blast playing with them, and I didn’t even get injured (at least not badly)! It’s hard to explain the rapport that comes between males when they do sports with each other, but somehow I feel it contributed to our connection with the teens.

Saturday June 26 was Malagasy Independence Day (50 years this year). The big celebration was to be held at the commune offices and in the yard. Late afternoon the day before a taxi bus brought a generator and sound system to be used for the celebration. Unfortunately they went ahead and set it up to play music for the people that night and played it loud until about 3 am! There’s nothing quite like trying to sleep in a tent with wild music blasting out of speakers and the noise of the generator right next to your tent. I had earplugs in but still couldn’t sleep. I could hear people yelling and dancing around outside the tent, many of them drunk as they danced around in the yard in the light of the full moon. I guess when electricity comes to a place where it’s so rare, they want to make the most of it!

Anyway, the next day was devoted to the Independence Day celebrations. I got to bring a message that morning to the students during our worship time. I had been so impressed with their zeal, boldness, and abilities in witnessing to people and preaching. As I prayed about what to share with such a “capable” group, I felt led to warn them based on the story of King Asa in the Old Testament about the danger of being overconfident in their own skills and forgetting to depend on God. Ministry is the one “profession” where the goal is not to become more independent, but to become more dependent (on the Lord) as you go along.

Afterwards I was asked to take the truck and bring over benches from the primary school for some of the dignitaries to sit in during the celebration (kabary). That took 3 trips of driving back and forth on a road with potholes/pools full of water. By the third time, I had a pretty good idea of where the water was shallowest. Don’t know how many officials spoke at the ceremony, but it was a lot. The highlight for me, however, was when Mamifeno was allowed to bring a word on behalf of our group and gave a clear evangelistic message to the several hundred people gathered for the public celebration. Oh, forgot to mention that the schoolchildren from elementary and upper grades paraded into the commune yard to open the ceremony. The stood in a large square around the Malagasy flag as it was raised by two local gendarmes and then sang the national anthem. It was a little weird to have so many people “invading” our “campground” for the celebration, but I guess in reality we were fortunate to be getting to use it as a place to hang our hat anyway.

After the celebration, we all went down to the river to watch the annual Independence Day canoe (lakana) race. Three boats with 5-6 teenage boys each raced across the river and back. It was fun to watch and felt somewhat like watching turtle races in America on the 4th of July! When we got back, our group served lunch to about 10 of the dignitaries and I got to join them in their meal, along with Mamifeno and Josefa. It was neat to see how the Lord has already helped Josefa to have a relationship with some of the people who wield political authority in the area, paving the way for a new church. Later that afternoon, we had our biggest evangelistic meeting there in the commune yard, with Mamifeno preaching a clear evangelistic message about what it means to be born again. The response was overwhelming.

In the evening, the local mayor decided to have a zebu slaughtered and divided among the people for the celebration. I didn’t quite understand what he was talking about when he approached me and asked if he could borrow a rope I had been using to secure the school benches I’d been hauling in the truck. I thought somehow a cow had gotten loose and they were trying to catch it. But as it turns out, they were wanting to get the zebu down and slaughter it. It was starting to get dark as they were dividing up the meat in piles on the ground where we had been playing soccer the day before, so they asked me to turn on and shine the headlights of

the truck on the yard so nobody would

steal more meat than they were supposed to have!

I left the next morning after breakfast (rice and french fries), needing to visit our missionaries in the rainforest and Antsirabe on my way home. However, the plan was to gather all the new believers that afternoon and the next for discipleship and the establishment of the core group for the new church. [Just talked to Mamifeno and he said there were about 30 new believers who attended each day, the core for a new church!] Pray this will be the beginning of a tremendous movement of God’s Spirit among the Antesaka and His glory pervading the lives of the people in a beautiful yet extremely remote area of this massive island.

Matt Spann