(ZAMBIA) My newsletter today is a little different, but bear with me as I hope it will give you all some insight into who I am as an individual, my faith, and my motivation for service as well as what a great privilege it is to walk this land in service with our partners.
My blog post today is a little different, but bear with me as I hope it will give you all some insight into who I am as an individual, my faith, and my motivation for service as well as what a great privilege it is to walk this land in service with our partners.
Throughout my time working and serving in Zambia, I have been privileged to visit, live on, and work from many “mission stations”. These mission stations were in the large part set up in the latter part of the 19th century by our missionary forebears. I am always struck by these missionaries’ incredible dedication and sacrifice to God and the communities they served. The attrition rate of these missionaries was huge, close to 100%. Very few ever returned to their homeland and loved ones. In those days you left home with the knowledge, understanding, and expectation that this was going to be a one-way trip.
While the reasons for service may be different, I guess the closest modern day comparison you could make is to NASA’s plan to send a group of volunteers to Mars on a one-way trip. Setting aside the ethical arguments and different theological reasoning attached to this, the circumstances related to the two “journeys” are similar: both involve journeys of great distance in the service of others that have no guarantee of return.
I have always used the stories of these missionaries’ service and sacrifice as a motivational tool.
Many times when faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges, I would visit the graves of the missionaries who preceded me, look at their sacrifice and the sacrifice of their families and children, and draw strength and comfort from the fact that they had walked before me. 
They experienced similar challenges but paid the ultimate sacrifice in doing so. I am always humbled and left feeling bereft and still swallow back the lump in my throat at the thought that my daughter, who is now five but at the age of 3, was the longest surviving child of missionaries at the station where I served. To wander through the cemeteries and read the gravestones of those gone before, looking at their names and their ages, always provides a huge grounding experience for me and gives perspective to my own seemingly “insurmountable” challenges.
World Renew’s partners in Zambia are the greatest legacy of these founding missionaries; our partners are the testimony to the work of these great men and women, and they continue to provide missionary service to the people and nations with which we work.
It was only while serving in Western Province that we accidently unearthed the story of our own family member, William Waddell, my great -great-great-uncle who, unbeknownst to us, served at the same mission station as me almost 120 years ago. His story is an incredible one that I live to try to honor today.
Originally from Lanarkshire, Scotland, William travelled north across the Zambezi from Bethlehem in South Africa with the famous French missionary Francois Coillard in the early 1880s to bring the Gospel to what is now western Zambia and eastern Angola (Barotseland). He was a skilled artisan carpenter and cabinetmaker who set up the Sefula Trade School, which is still in existence today. It is said that he is responsible for the development of thatching as a skilled trade in the area. As a result, the Lozi thatchers are still the most sought-after roofers in Zambia today. William became engaged to the daughter of Francois Coillard, but their thoughts of marriage were cut brutally short when William contracted leprosy and returned to Scotland. The young couple never saw each other again. William requested that his betrothed remain in Africa so that “she would be spared the sight of him suffering” and remember him as he once was.
She was never to marry and died a spinster.
For me, the words of his sister Isabella speak of his strength of faith and the dedication that we all in service aspire to:
I last saw him about three years before the end, and he spoke of the words which had finally led him to volunteer for the Zambesi, "I beseech you there-fore, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice… which is your reasonable service." As he sat there, a man in the prime of life, crippled, helpless, blind, and suffering constant pain, an involuntary question sprang to one's lips, at the thought of what that living sacrifice had been.
"Tell me, do you ever regret it?" I asked him. He replied with unforgettable emphasis, "Never! Yes, and if it was to be done over again, knowing all that it was to cost, I would do it and count it an honour, for the sake of serving Christ."
So where am I going with all of this? Well, it is to our partners. The missionaries of two centuries ago brought the Gospel to Africa and established the modern church with whom we all work with today.
In January I was privileged to attend the Golden Jubilee of The United Church of Zambia (UCZ), the largest Protestant Church in Zambia and one of World Renew’s partners here. The UCZ was formed in 1965 with the amalgamation of four “Missionary Societies:” Francois Coillard’s Paris Evangelical Mission Society; The Church of Scotland’s Mission; The London Mission Society; and the Methodist Mission Churches. Our other church partners in Zambia, the RCZ and CCAP also share similar backgrounds.
World Renew’s partners in Zambia are the greatest legacy of these founding missionaries; our partners are the testimony to the work of these great men and women, and they continue to provide missionary service to the people and nations with which we work.
They deliver education, healthcare, social services, and are often at the leading edge of crisis and humanitarian response. They continue to be at the forefront in the battle against HIV and AIDS and are often to be found leading the way in championing calls for social justice, political accountability, women’s and children’s rights, and bringing the cause of those downtrodden and disadvantaged to the fore.
I think that this is a legacy that all those who walked this land in service before us would be proud of. That brings the greater comfort to me. I am not walking in the footsteps of giants but indeed standing on the shoulders of giants. It is their great legacy that carries us all: staff, partners, and most importantly our relationships, forward today in continued service with the nations our forebears all served before us.
If any of you are interested in reading more about my forebear William Waddell his story can be read here (pdf download).
Blessings,
Ruairidh Waddell
Image above: Ruairidh and his dad stand in front of WIlliam Waddell's house at Sefula in Western Zambia.