Gifts of joy - Guest blog by Peter

In the midst of our recent spate of hardships, God sends gifts of light and joy every now and then. The first strawberries from our garden melted in our mouths at lunch time. And this afternoon I received a visit from one of my participants (students) who eagerly shared all about his experiences during his Easter break back in Tanzania.

The theme he kept returning to was not so much what he had done as what has happened to him, particularly after taking the two-week module I had finished with them before the break: Third Party Intervention: Theory and Practice. He gushed on and on about how what I had taught in that module and how the skills he had learned have changed him. His wife, friends, and colleagues noticed that he was a different person. By the time he was through thanking me and telling me how wonderful I am for coming to MEF to impart this training in mediation skills, I was pretty sure I could walk on water and change some water into wine.

Sardick is a bright, passionate man, a preacher and a missionary in the Mennonite Church of Tanzania. When he gets going in class, you can hear the mounting undulation of his preacher's voice coming through. He 'lapses' into Swahili when he needs just the right phrase and we all laugh, which reminds him to translate back into English.

In the 7 days that he was in Tanzania (not including 48 hours on a bus to get there, then 48 back), he told of mediating several disputes. He was quite engaged in class as we learned about how to use the skills of mediation to help people move out of their positions into productive problem-solving. Using role plays was a powerful tool for participants to wrestle with applying the theory. And though he was engaged in class, he confessed that he retained some reservations about whether what I was teaching would really work in the real world. So, his visit to me was a veritable testimony time in which he recounted how he used the skills that he had learned—active listening, paraphrasing, seeking common interests—and how people responded positively.

As many of us do when learning something new, he was reacting kind of strongly to his 'old ways' of reading Scripture and the previous counselling training he received through the church. But as we discussed these matters, it became apparent that what he had found was a fresh appreciation for Scripture as he was able to see new connections and read texts in new ways because of his recent discoveries in peacebuilding. Thus, when mediating a rift between some folks at an Assemblies of God church, he found himself drawing on several stories from Scripture to help the parties see things and each other in a new light.

Sardick would like to pursue further education in mission studies, since he has a heart for sharing the Good News throughout the villages of Tanzania (he notes neglect of mission in the rural areas). But he is convinced that his work as a church planter will be furthered because of what he is learning about peacebuilding in the course of this diploma program.

I don't know if I can really capture the joy of this whole interchange—for him or for me. But it certainly is worth recording because these are the kinds of interactions that make me feel like my efforts in Zambia have real meaning and impact. (Something I wonder about from time to time.)