Three-nation crusade for WWC
By JOHN BUTTERWORTH
2008 started with a flurry of activity for Worldwide Crusades as evangelist Bill Smith headed to East Africa with a team to preach in three nations where he had preached before – this time in different cities.
That journey took the team to a major city in the war-torn region of northern Uganda, to the city of Eldoret, Kenya, where near civil war conditions awaited them, and finally to a Satanic stronghold in the nation of Tanzania.
Smith was joined by his wife Judy, son Derick, and Cap and Lavern Marks. Cap had recently retired from the position of district superintendent for a major denomination and held teaching sessions with the crusade pastors in each city. They met up with WWC coordinating teams in each nation who had taken care of all preparations.
UGANDA
Unity, joy and the love of the Lord shows in these Ugandan ladies during the Arua crusade early in 2008.
Two things come to mind when Smith thinks of the crusade nights in Arua, Uganda – the sheer size of the crowd and the apparent hunger present in the crowd for the things of Christ. Local pastors estimated the crowd size at 70,000 people each of the last two nights of the evangelistic outreach.
“From what we experienced, they were prepared for us,” said Smith. “They were welcoming and friendly, a credit to our organizers. The crusade was held in the biggest area around, and it was a good thing because we wouldn’t have gotten them in any smaller place.”
“The response to the crusade was tremendous,” he continued. “Thousands made commitments to Christ. They said that after we left, the crusade continued without us and even the newspapers in Kampala (capital city) picked it up and reported it as a great success in a Muslim town.”
Estimates put the Muslim population of Arua at 85 percent.
Pastors said that even if the nation’s president paid $10 for each person to show up, they wouldn’t have gotten 20,000 out to meet him.
With Uganda being the first stop for this outreach effort, Cap Marks came away impressed with what he saw.
“My impression is that this is definitely Africa’s hour,” he said. “I grew up hearing how tough it was as missionaries, listening to the old timers talk about how terrible the darkness was they had to deal with.
“And now to see the obvious hunger, it didn’t matter where you went. This is Africa’s hour.”
As the visiting Bible teacher during the days of the crusades, Marks caught a clear view of some of the needs.
“There is a hunger for the Word of God and teaching and leadership,” he said. “Their training and tools are so sparse. I asked in one place how many of them had Bibles. Twenty out of the 70 or 80 there did not.”
Smith wholeheartedly agrees on this being Africa’s hour.
“While we were there, our Ugandan coordinator Drake Kanaabo got a cell phone call from a guy who had picked up one of the gospel tracts we published and told him he gave his heart to Jesus and that on the back of the tract it said to call this number, so he called,” Smith related. “Derick and a couple of young guys were out the first day of the crusade putting up a sign and four young men stopped and said they wanted to know Christ now.
They knelt down by the side of the road and received Christ right there.”
KENYA
Despite fears of the past weeks’ horrors, Eldoret people crowd the platform during an altar call for salvation and healing.
The decision to push on from Arua to a nation torn with post-election civil and tribal strife did not come easy for the Worldwide Crusades team. The city of Eldoret, site of the scheduled outreach, had seen men, women and children killed in pitched battles and barbaric forms of annihilation.
“We didn’t know if we could get in,” Smith said. “They were still burning homes, blocking roads and so on until the last minute.”
Three members of the WWC Kenya committee ventured the several-hours journey from Mombasa to Eldoret and then on to the border to meet Smith and the team. With their help they were able to enter and start traveling toward the destination. Smith saw God’s timing and hand in all of it. The hour they slipped past the border, all the roadblocks set up the night before had been removed by the military, and their three-hour journey got them to Eldoret before the next round of violence would begin.
Smith, his son and one of the Kenyans learned the following morning that in one part of the field where the crusade was to be held that the blood from about 700 people killed in the previous few days had drained into that ground. During the day gunfire erupted periodically, at times very heavy. It lasted until about 4:30 that afternoon, but when the crusade started at 5:30 it ended. It never returned during the crusade and since the crusade, very little of it has been heard in Eldoret.
But Smith still remembers the faces.
“What struck me most was the blank look on all of the young men hanging around the field. You knew good and well that they had been in the battles,” he says. “We’d wave or smile, and they wouldn’t respond.”
He met the same thing at the crusade. Even though the pastors and church members hadn’t taken part in the violence, many had friends, families and neighbors who had been killed. Tribal and political division had entered the hearts of the believers, even the pastors, and it came to the crusade.
“They were scared and traumatized, fearful of the gathering,” Smith says. We reassured them that everything would be fine. God really moved that night, but a lot of them headed for the bush when darkness came near. They wouldn’t stay after sunset.”
Despite the small start, the crusade saw more in attendance each night.
“The last night 10,000 came out and to see them cut loose,” said Marks. “I think they felt like they were under divine protection. We left after dark, and they were still out there dancing and carrying on. Then to hear this guy say again and again, ‘I can’t believe you guys came. It has to be of God.’ ”
“When we got to Eldoret we could see the fear,” Marks continued. “The first couple of days you could cut it with a knife. The hotel guy said he left for home each day at 4 and didn’t come out until morning. They had it in their minds that we were some sort of heroes because we came anyway. I hated to leave”
Before the final night ended, many of the pastors had fallen into the arms of each other, weeping and asking forgiveness. “It was a tremendous healing for the church,” Smith said.
Smith credits the Kenyan team for the success of such a crusade in a land ripped by violence. “Johnson (Mauta) told the commissioner that God said we were supposed to be there so he just as well give us the permit,” Smith said with a smile. “Eldoret was the only place in Kenya where an outdoor meeting was going on. I thought it was interesting that we planned this crusade a year ago, and we ended up being in the hot spot of all Kenya, a big country.”
That is one reason Judy Smith felt so much peace, despite a few bouts with anxiety. “We were there to win people to Christ,” she said. “I knew that some bad things had happened, but it brought people to the Lord. Traveling back, it was a good feeling at the border.”
When they informed the church leaders that they were back in Uganda, many were relieved.
“One said he was happy but surprised that we made it out,” Bill Smith said. “When we left Eldoret, the police commissioner called Johnson and thanked us for coming. He thought the crusade was instrumental in calming things down.”
TANZANIA
In the city of Morogoro, Tanzania, many came to receive Christ as their Lord and Savior during the crusades held their early in 2008.
Morogoro, Tanzania is considered by some to be the witchcraft capital of East Africa. That made it the perfect site for the last of three crusades. In the mountains behind the city they used to make their sacrifices, at times human sacrifices.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Smith said. “Hundreds were delivered from demon possession. I just started my first sermon there, and a woman to my left started screaming out under demonic control. I told the crowd not to worry about and that we know how to take care of the demon possessed. That started the landslide.”
After finishing his sermon, he found he had to help train even the local pastors on how to set people free from demonic possession. But once they got some on-the-job training, they grew very excited about dealing with the situation.
One of the greatest victories in Morogoro, according to Smith, was to see a fractured church reunited. One pastor of a large church decided to not only boycott the crusade, but to have one of his own during the same nights, or to shut down the scheduled crusade by legal means.
God had other plans.
“Before the crusade two military people showed up and told him that if he tried to shut down the crusade or hold another one at the same time, they would arrest him and put him in jail,” Smith said with amusement. “I don’t know who they were, but he cancelled his crusade and came to ours. Before the crusade was over, he was in the crowd laying hands on people and praying for them. Later they found him behind the platform reconciling with the pastors he opposed. That was fun to see.”
Smith wasn’t the only one enjoying it.
“The churches were ecstatic to see their pastors asking forgiveness,” he said. “Personally, those were a couple of the best altar services I’ve been in, very powerful.”
For a town the size of Morogoro, Smith started out a little disappointed in the turnout, but before it was over about 15,000 showed up for the last night.
“We had a great time,” Smith concluded.