“Rejoice greatly oh daughter of Zion!  Lo your King comes to you, triumphant and victorious, humble, and riding” ... on a bicycle?!

 

In DRCongo, churches celebrate Palm Sunday and Easter with as much energy and as they do Christmas.  Where neither donkey nor horse are known, Jesus rides a bicycle, but palms are abundant, and hosanna’s spirited, as “daughters of Zion” lay cloths down the aisle and the church rejoices.  Palm Sunday found me in Vanga, the place I grew up and where my parents served God with International Ministries, for 35 years.  Strategically, I got to church early to find a place in the teen girls section because once I was a teen at Vanga. They sing with abandon, their joy uninhibited, with beautiful faces and rhythm in their bodies.  They took immediate charge of me - offering me a palm branch (I hadn’t brought one), then leaning into my bible to read along with me because they didn’t have one.  Dancing with my palm amongst them, I prayed for them.  Their vulnerability is real: beauty, youth, poverty, meager education, few expectations, and the pressure around them to redefine God and purpose in human terms.

 

My trip to Vanga only coincided with Palm Sunday.  I went to celebrate with the community there the life of my father, Daniel Fountain, whom the Lord welcomed to glory last month.  Mom (Miriam) and Dad called the people of Vanga “our people”.  My brothers and I spent our formative years amongst them because Mom and Dad invested their lives and careers there.  Hundreds, if not thousands of people’s lives in DRC changed forever, because of God’s impact on them through Mom and Dad.  In fact, for this reason, many of our Baptist colleagues wish all “their” missionaries would be buried in Congo, to be properly honored by those they loved and served.

 

Typically, end of life in Congo is more a celebration of death than life, with exorbitant expense to satisfy cultural expectations, so when I arrived at Vanga, with the leaders, we decided on a Monday (March 25) service of “thanksgiving” for life, and to reflect on the difference Dad’s life made in Vanga, and thank God for eternal life.  The morning of the service, left-over palm decorations fit the occasion perfectly and the church filled:  including ten choirs, and people sitting in groups: hospital staff, resident doctors, nursing students, school teachers and directors, pastors, church leaders, women, school children, contingents from Vanga village, and neighboring villages.  Each institution made a financial contribution to pay for the electricity to have microphones and loud speakers.

 

When Mom and Dad arrived at Vanga in 1961, the medical work consisted of a 100 bed “bush” hospital, a skeleton staff, and Mr. Musiti, a capable surgical nurse who, upon the evacuation of missionaries in 1960, became the defacto administrator.  In 35 years, it grew to a 479 bed teaching hospital, with two training programs, (a nursing school and a medical residency), community based primary health care via 52 health centers, and a unique emphasis on integrating care for both the physical and spiritual suffering of people and communities.  There was much to “remember” together.  After the requisite choirs, circumstantial word, biography, and sermon, came testimonies, and there were many.  A retired pastor’s widow remembered the distress of her first pregnancy when she nearly died, and care through Dad’s hands, which saved her life.  Today, with her husband in heaven, this child takes care of her.  A lanky staff doctor remembered his residency and “supervision” trips to village health centers.  Curiously, Dr. Fountain insisted they stoop and enter all the latrines in the village, flash light in hand.  How else to know people use them?  Not only did he need to bend over double to get into a latrine, he experienced people being involved in their own health, an integral part of the practice of medicine.  The health zone director, a graduate of the Vanga nursing school before becoming a doctor, remembered Dad’s visit just last year.  Facilitating my father for one last “mission of service”, Dr Lay admits having no idea what he was getting into.  In three days, they visited 16 health centers and gathered the chiefs, leaders, and staff at each one to discuss hygiene, water, forests, conflicts, the Kingdom of God, and living according to God’s laws.  Dr. Lay takes students on all his supervision trips to help them integrate belief and faith with skills and daily life.  Someone from the village, with a leafy branch in hand, remembered Dr. Fountain “prophesying” that without vigilance, the forests would disappear (cut for planting gardens) and the “ancestors” could not be blamed.  Indeed, in places where used to be forest, this weed now grows rampant.  The locals call it “Fountain”.  An administrator remembered having a consultation for epigastric pain.  After a thorough exam and laboratory tests, Dr. Fountain carefully discussed the negative findings, and wrote out a “prescription” - a bible verse – to take three times a day.  Only out of respect, did he bother to comply, but at the two week follow up appointment, he’d experienced complete pain relief.  That consultation changed his life. 

 

The last choir sang an old, well loved, Kikongo language song about heaven, while many in the audience came forward to sing with them.  The head pastor also rose, but instead of joining the choir, he continued down the aisle to the back of the church where Mr. Paul Musiti had just entered.  Now 91 years old, the man who welcomed Mom and Dad to Vanga 52 years ago, came to remember “Tata Fountain”.  With assistance, he climbed the front stairs and took the microphone.  He’s a living library in Vanga, and the church rocked to his stories.  He spoke of working with “Tata Fountain” for 30 years, in “kimvuka” (togetherness).  “Tata” Fountain was an expert because he studied God’s and culture, and learned to communicate.  Co-workers with the Lord in “kimvuka”, they shared mutual respect and liberal amounts of humor, and developed a team and the health care services of Vanga.  We heard stories of beginnings, compassion for patients, training nursing students, visiting neighboring villages, and the promised distribution of medicine (for intestinal parasites) village by village, after every house had a latrine.  People never felt so well!  Like a great choir, the whole church began singing the community health favorite:  the one who doesn’t’ use an outhouse is the real “sorcerer” because that’s the person who makes children sick.  I'm sure Dad sang along from heaven!   As a grandfather speaking to children, numerous times Mr. Musiti admonished people to work together in ‘kimvuka”, that they would accomplish much, as “Tata Fountain” did, and Vanga would have a future.  God's tenderness, in events like this, helps take the raw edge off the reality. 

 

It is truly a privilege for Wayne and me to serve God in this country, where our parents served, and where Jesus rides a bicycle on Palm Sunday.  For financial support generously given, and which makes our ministry here possible, we are grateful.  As God welcomes the previous generation of missionaries into glory one by one, we pray that more of you will come to this part of the world to work in ‘kimvuka” with us and our Congolese brothers and sisters, making a difference in DRC for Christ’s sake, for the harvest is great, and the laborers are few.