Walking and Praying

Stephen Hawthorne describes "prayer-walking" as "praying on-site with insight." The idea is that rather than praying for ministries in particular areas at a distance, you walk through the area, keeping your eyes and ears open and your heart attentive to God. You pray for those you see as you pass through, observing the needs that become evident. You listen to the Spirit of God as you walk, and you converse with God and your prayer-walking partners as you go.

As we prepared to come to Africa, we knew that prayer-walking would be one of our activities here. We read Stephen Hawthorne’s book on the subject and talked about it. Andrea Stephens prepared a study guide for us on the subject. And we put our learning into practice. Some of the team met at Emerald Pointe on a Monday evening and "prayer-walked" the apartment complex. Some of us met on a Wednesday morning and prayer-walked the neighborhood around Whitcomb Elementary School.

So far we have had three opportunities to do prayer-walking in Mbarara. The first was done last Wednesday. A group walked from the edge of the city to the Bishop Stuart University, an Anglican school where Spencer Essenpries (an IMB Journeyman) is developing a ministry to students. This is the path walked by these students daily.

On Friday a team did prayer-walking on the campus of the hospital where Dr. Larry Pepper works. They prayed in the new AIDS clinic that will open in a couple of months. This clinic has been build largely by funds coming from your tax dollars (more on this later).

This morning I was free to participate in one of the walks. Three groups of us walked down the hill from University Baptist Church and into the village of Kashanyarazi. Jenna and I walked with Aloysius, who preaches in the Runyankore service at UBC.

The village is made up of brick buildings covered in plaster or cement with tin roofs, each about 15’ x 60’. Some were slightly shorter. Each building was divided into apartments about 8’ x 8’. Some had wooden doors that could be locked. Some had only a sheet hung in the doorway. In the "courtyards" separating the buildings from each other there hung colorful garments drying in the warm morning sun. Outside the doorways sat women peeling matoke or washing clothes in red plastic basins. Small charcoal stoves boiled water for cooking red beans. Children ran and played, in various stages of dress, pointing at the bazungu (plural of mzungu, white person).

Aloyisius knows many of the people in the village and does not meet a stranger. We approached people and simply asked if we could pray for them. One woman went into her room and came out with a bench for us to sit on while we listened to her story and prayed. At another home, the woman brought out a red, white, and blue mat for us. We were invited into four other homes, where our hostess offered us the best seat in the room. We stopped where a group of men were gathered. One lay on his back in the sun on a straw mat. Another worked hard repairing old shoes to resell. Another fellow was removing dried red beans from their hulls.

We heard the same heartbreaking accounts from one after another. No job. A job that doesn’t pay enough to make the rent payments on the 8’ square room. Abusive husbands. Husbands with more than one wife. No money for the school fees for the children. HIV infections. Pregnancy and HIV. Had we visited every single dwelling, I sensed we would have heard the same stories repeated often. The sad eyes and downcast faces told the story of life in this Ugandan village.

The tragedy of poverty is not just a financial matter. No money means not enough food. It means no money for education for children. It means no money for healthcare. It means parents who do not have time to give to their children. It means dealing with survival issues day after day. It means being stuck generation after generation in the same hole.

At the top of the hill stands University Baptist Church. A few hundred yards below is life being lived at its rawest. I prayed as we ascended the hill to return to the church, asking that God would make that church a source of life, like Ezekiel’s vision in which the life-giving river flowed from the Jerusalem Temple into the desert, changing everything in its path.

I thought about University Baptist Church back home. I thought about the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of people who live only a short distance from the place where we gather to worship – the families at Emerald Pointe, or the Pakistani and Afghan families living in apartments in the Whitcomb district. I prayed that we, too, like UBC Mbarara, would be a source of life from Jesus Christ, flowing from us to the valley below. I remembered what Jesus said: "A city set on a hill cannot be hidden."