Baptism - one

My wife (Debi), our two kids (Audrey and Micah), and I had been in Tanzania only a few months.  We had moved to Shinyanga during the dry season.  As a rule of thumb, it did not rain a drop for seven months, then it rained every day for five months.  The response to the gospel was overwhelming!  During the first few months of gong from village to village we had seen over 800 nationals put their faith in Jesus, many of whom had never heard His name before!  When the rains started coming and the lakes and rivers began to fill again, we decided there was enough water to have our first baptism.  There were two men who had emerged as leaders.  One was a refugee from Mozambique - Dunstan Matuta, and the other was a Sukuma tribe member - Robert Cheyo (their personal stories will come later).  Since they had become some of the first Christians on their introduction to the good news and had grown in their faith during the following months, I had a study with them to expose them to the concept and teaching of baptism.  We read over the scriptures relating to baptism and then we set a date for the first service to take place at Lake Songwa.    After we finished reading about the subject of baptism, they ask "how do we do it?"  I answered, "I don't know", the Bible does not really tell us how.  I proceeded to ask them what they think baptism means and they explained that it is obedience to Jesus command and illustrates what has happened to us.  Namely that we have died, are buried with Him, and are risen to walk a new life.  I said I thought that was an accurate description and they should decide how that should happen.  I resisted telling them how we do it in the USA because I wanted them to own whatever they came up with.  I was curious to say the least.  The day we gathered the 800 plus new believers by the shore of Lake Songwa, I had encouraged them to baptize each other, then together, they could baptize all the others.  So they marched out to the center of the lake which was a trek through mud for about fifty feet until they got deep enough for it to be up to their chests.  I watched as Dunstan Matuta first told Cheyo that Jesus commands us to be baptized and gets Cheyo to recite his confession of faith in Christ.  Then.... wait for it..... he reaches up and puts his hand on top of Cheyo's head and pushes him straight down into the water.  after he is completely covered with water, Dunstan removes his hand and Cheyo comes up out of the water.  It really was a beautiful site.  It occurred to me that they had concluded that the rising to walk in a new life was more the emphasis than the burying (like we are accustomed to)!  As far as I know, that set the precedent and everyone who has been baptized in the Shinyanga region since then has been baptized in that way.  The baptism of the 800+ took two full days.  When it started getting dark, the new believers all just laid down next to the shore and went to sleep.  the next day, they started again when the sun came up.  I took videos until my battery went dead.  We have moved and if I can ever find that video I will see if I can have it transferred to digital and include a portion of it in this story.

1985