Renowned for its spices, beautiful tropical beaches and corals, Zanzibar is also famous for its notorious slave trade.
The Island boasts of its 90% edible vegetation and a rapid growth in tourism. While that is so, we bemoan the less than one per cent Christian population. Even though slave trade was abolished hundreds of years ago, spiritual slavery and bondage is rampant. Traditional churches are vegetated and most clergy seem enervated. It's difficult to carry out work of our Lord. It's cumbersome to minister openly and in return to get converts who will profess and confess their conversion publicly and freely for fear of severe persecution from families and society at large.
Witnessing and ministration in this part of the world calls for adequate PATIENCE and sheer commitment coupled with a deep passion for the lost. More so, doing church differently.
So, is there hope for Zanzibar?
Who will free the Zanzibari from mental and spiritual slavery?
Spending 21 days on the Big Island I got to meet great people as well as reunite with charismatic friends. My team and I spent two exciting weeks at our highly hospitable couple near the Presidential Residence (how is that for a trip such as ours? ). Zanzibar is very humid and the first week we were there was almost unbearable when we were cocooned in baking tents! Thanks for the various exotic fruits we ate that definitely boosted our immune systems.
Living with this amazing couple was highlights and each moment I spent with them was so precious. Our time together was packed with laughter, childhood stories (embarrassing moments and all), spicy, delicious and nutritious dishes, snorkeling in clear water, prayer-walking and -driving among many other rare moments.
The most amazing and amusing was just how our hosts managed to do church in a manner married to their lifestyles. Everything we did was undivided from simple church. I loved how integrated their ministry is and just how church is integral to family and all they do. Small things such as shopping were woven together with prayer-driving. The other time we drove to this village well-known for its practice of powerful black-magic and the horrific stories of people visiting and not coming back. I write because we made it back home safely. On other occasions we gathered with new believers and ate lunch and supper together respectively.
It was during such times we had anointed moments of testimonies and opportunities to prophesy over our new friends. This is a positive way of encouraging them to continue living as the Body of Christ.
Humbled was I when we visited Martha who has been bedridden for over five years after malaria left her paralysed. Her father who happens to be a witch doctor (quite different from a traditional healer or herbalist) has tried potions and spells, throwing bones and flying on brooms and all that a person like him with spiritual powers can do, but to no avail. He is seeking something greater and someone more powerful... and has since opened up his house for studying the Word. What the Lord can do!
I was also privileged to meet another family whose sibling is a hydrophiliac. Our host makes special equipment for the disabled and this girl is one of the beneficiaries. This family is Islamic and thank God they have started asking questions about our Lord and what it means to be His follower.
All the time we spent in Zanzibar with our host families was to get well acquainted with how to minister to our muslim friends. It was all fruitful, inspiring and motivating.
God has a plan for Zanzibar and it's people. He is freeing them one by one from the enemy's hands and releasing them from bondage to freedom. The truth is setting people free. Free from generational curses and spiritual slavery. And God is using great men through simple unconventional (which is actually the very roots of church by the way - I mean very biblically conventional) ways of doing church - living out the Word out loud in all aspects of life.
There is hope for Zanzibar!
"You have seen everything the Lord your God has done to all these nations because of you; for it is the Lord your God who has been fighting for." Joshua 23:3