By Melaney Austin, Graydon Baker

Have you ever loved someone before you met them? I have a story for you.

Years ago, before Graydon and Sarah Baker made that first journey into the Rufiji, before the safari company and East Africa River Mission, there was a young couple, locals of a Rufiji village called Ngorongo living in much the same way as their neighbours. They had two baby boys at the time. His name was Hasani, a proper Muslim name, a true native of the area. His wife came from a tribe further south in the country, yet equally immersed in Islamic teachings and adherence. They could not know the one true God’s plan for their family.

By Faith, a Tanzanian evangelist, led by God’s spirit, made the trip into the Rufiji. He stopped to begin his work in the village of Ngorongo, the village of Hasani and his wife. The evangelist planned to build a church, to plant the seed of faith among a tribe where there was not.

The ground was hard, covered over by decades of brush and thorns and baked for centuries by the hot African sun. Even so, one plants, another waters, but God causes the growth.
In a village not known by the church at large, within a tribe unreached by the Gospel of Christ, a seed sprouted from the dry, cracked earth. A plant grew up within the household of Hasani, past the weeds, past the thorns; the little plot surrounding their mud and stick home, among a multitude of mud and stick homes, was cultivated into good soil.

By Faith, Hasani accepted the role of ‘shepherd’, in Swahili ‘mchungaji’. The evangelist built a physical church building in the Rufiji village of Ngorongo, he also built into the life of his local convert Hasani, and then he left ‘Pastor Hasani’ to continue the work under the Good Mchungaji.

By Faith, Pastor Hasani and his wife, now named Elizabeth, dutifully shepherded the church in their village left to them by the evangelist. They had a third boy, and named him ‘Baraka’, which means blessing in the local tongue.

By Faith, they continued in the work they’d been given. Through the lean years they laboured, years of silence; though their former friends despised them and their native village shunned them; forgotten by the evangelist and the Tanzanian church that originally commissioned the evangelist. The global church did not know of them. They lived in a wild isolated place called the Rufiji, where lion and elephant roam, surrounded by bush and a tribe that wanted nothing to do with Jesus Christ; a tribe notorious for unbridled witchcraft and Islam.

And though the challenges of life in a place hostile to their faith, in unyielding poverty led them to lean on their new-found Father; God was going to allow them to experience the severe sickness and almost death of their eldest son and teach them how to cry out to Him. Only He could see them. In a setting unknown, only He could orchestrate rescue.

They were excellent students, Hasani and Elizabeth and their young family began to boldly and tirelessly ask God for a new request; an audacious and unlikely request. Their family was living in squalor. Their mud and stick walls left some to be desired and the roof of their home was no match for the rains of the wet season. They desired a shelter for their young family. They wanted their boys to grow up strong in faith and in stature. Just like the persistent friend who came at midnight, continually begging for bread, they entered into an unrelenting knocking on the door of heaven, for help from the hand of God.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1

By Faith, Graydon and Sarah Baker, a couple with two small boys in tow, left for Tanzania from Canada to establish a safari business in the wildest parts of the country. From a young age, God had planted a love for wild things and adventure inside of Graydon. It started in his father, who studied Animal Biology in university and later became a pastor. Graydon studied Zoology, and was leaving for Tanzania with his new family to pursue the delights of his heart. When he and Sarah arrived in the wildest parts, what most impressed their hearts was the need for Christ in a remote district called the Rufiji, the same place where lion and elephant roam, where Christ was not – or so they thought.

By Faith, Graydon and Sarah, their boys and their third, a daughter named Ruby Mae, built a safari company and a life in the deepest village along the banks of the Rufiji River. They established East Africa River Mission, in obedience to the leading of God’s spirit.

By Faith, they built up a church and into the life of a Tanzanian pastor, Leonard, who was imported from another part of the country by the same spirit of God to work alongside the Bakers in seeing the deepest village in the Rufiji, the heart of the Rufiji, transformed by the light of Christ.

By Faith, Pastor Leonard, as the work of God pulsed from the heart of the Rufiji, traveled one day to the village of Ngorongo, 40 kilometres up the bush road, and stopped into an old rundown church he had seen on his journeys in and out of the area. This church had been built before his time. There was a big crack running from the foundation up on the church wall facing the road.

By Faith, Leonard found Pastor Hasani, his wife Elizabeth, and their now five boys, Eliakimu, Antony, Baraka, Daudi, and little Emanueli, living in a ramshackle mud and stick home behind the old Ngorongo church, planted by the evangelist. All these years later, the family were still living by faith and were thrilled to receive the unexpected guest. His visit, appointed by the God who hears, set in motion God’s response to this family’s prayers and our involvement an ocean away.

By Faith, they invited Leonard into their home, and shared together from their meager supply, but the eyes of their guest were trained on the condition of the house. Leonard told Hasani that he should not live like this any longer, instead he needed a proper home with a firm foundation, walls, and a tin roof that would stop the rains of the wet season. By divine conviction, Leonard stated that no longer will Hasani’s boys, his wife and he wake up wet from the long nights of that season, because God is a God who provides for His children.

Pastor Leonard asked Pastor Hasani what he could do in faith trusting that God would provide the bulk of the materials for a new house – the only two pastors, for a 100 kilometre stretch along the Rufiji River among thousands of villagers in isolated villages, having a God-authored conversation – by faith, Hasani said he could start by making bricks, clay bricks formed from the earth of the land and baked by wood in the bush.

By Faith, Leonard returned to his church in the heart of the Rufiji, told his congregation that they would be building a house for their brothers and sisters up the bush highway in Ngorongo, and by faith the congregation responded by collecting an offering enough to purchase some tin sheets for the roof.

Graydon and Sarah were in Leonard’s congregation that Sunday. They considered the calling to build a house, they recognised God’s hand in this, and by faith they brought the challenge of raising the funds for the remainder of the materials back to the churches of Canada – to our church in Chatham, Ontario.

We heard the call. In the spring of 2018, by faith our church in Chatham invited Graydon to speak, to tell just part of the story I share here. We did not know the extent of God’s precise and intentioned orchestration of so many details. People, places, and events, seemingly unrelated and trivial in some cases, come together in such a masterful and loving way for God’s grandeur. We heard the voice of God, and He still speaks. Though it will be some time before we see clearly the full extent of God’s intervention in this story, faith lives in the absence of sight, and so by faith our church accepted the great challenge before us.

We saw a picture of a little boy, on a very small pink bicycle, both wheels were broken and sideways but the boy was pretending he was riding a real bike. This was Daudi, the second youngest of Pastor Hasani and Elizabeth of Ngorongo, Rufiji. The photograph struck a chord with our congregation. We loved the boy and his family, even though we’d never met them.

Over the months that followed we prayed, planned, and acted in order to raise both the funds to finish the pastor’s house in Ngorongo, and for a team of 13 from our church to join this church in the Rufiji, to build the house and minister alongside.

By Faith, we raised $120,000 through our church family and local community efforts in Chatham; our regular church offerings did not suffer. It was an impossible amount in an improbable timeframe! God rewarded our faith by teaching us in a dramatic and deeper way to trust Him. Nothing of God is impossible if we only have faith enough to act.

We would need this newly bolstered courage as we traveled, by faith, to the Rufiji, Tanzania, with East Africa River Mission. What a change of scenery, lifestyle; it was beautifully rugged. We’d been coached ahead of time to hold our plans and preferences loosely, to stay even keeled at such an extreme dichotomy of experience and emotion, and to always be prepared without guarantee of advance notice to share the hope inside of us.

By Faith, we laboured shoulder to shoulder with a hand-picked crew of local and experienced Tanzanian workers as the pastor’s house of Ngorongo rose from the same hard ground that Pastor Hasani and his wife Elizabeth had years prior.
The foundation, the walls, and the roof; in three weeks’ time a house stood next to the old church, which we also renovated. If we call ‘improbable’ the time God allotted to raise the full budget to fund this construction in Canada, then the time to execute the actual construction in Africa bottom to top was a thing of wonder. There was a supernatural resolve in the pace of the workforce. In the mornings, we shared tea and testimony together with the crew, some newly baptised by the mission and others had yet to know God personally.

The village came out in numbers to watch the spectacle; the faith materialized of ‘crazy’ Hasani who had broken away from the empty religions and practises of his fellow tribesmen and claimed to have an audience with the Almighty. Nothing short of a miracle of God could explain the series of events that led to a concentrated effort like this, unheard of in these parts.

Someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. James 2:18

By Faith, we finished a home for Pastor Hasani and his family. We worked, sweat, and laughed together. The tin roof that was provided in faith will shelter this family for many years. The walls were made of solid concrete. The beautiful clay bricks handmade by Hasani were installed in the kitchen, not only adding character to the home, but forever these will remind the family and congregation of God’s faithfulness and a Pastor’s obedience.

Further, there are the five boys of the pastor and his wife – Eliakimu, Antony, Baraka, Daudi, and Emanueli. They have since added a sixth, Nathaniel, another boy! For years, these boys heard their parents tell them of God’s goodness. And for years, especially for the older ones, they knew what it was like to be wet at sunrise from the rains that passed through their old mud and stick home. Even so, by faith, Pastor Hasani and Elizabeth told their boys of a good God, and assured each other that God would provide, then they thanked our God of the heavens for the rain. These boys are true Rufiji natives, growing up within a tribe classified as ‘unreached’ by the good news of Jesus Christ. These boys have tasted and seen that God is good in a most tangible way – a new home by the faith of their parents. Moreover, they have watched their parents trust God in times of struggle and silence. By a lifestyle of faith, Hasani and Elizabeth know God and make Him known. Their boys will be the reward of this faith and the harvesters of a time to come in the once unreached Rufiji. Though Hasani and Elizabeth may pass from this life, having not received the full anticipated yield of their service, they will see fields white for harvest from afar off, and they will welcome them. We are foreigners on this stretch of dusty bush road, but Children of God in a world to come.

Remember that photograph, the image that originally struck a chord with our church back home and singularly helped in raising so much money? We took home Daudi’s old broken pink bicycle from Ngorongo, Rufiji, back to Canada. We built it into a coffee table in our church mission café. It serves as a reminder to us in Chatham, Ontario of the faith of so many believers, both in North America and Africa, and the God who is much closer than we think. We traded Daudi and the other boys for new bicycles. The Rufiji congregation and local workers, our new Tanzanian friends who were with us that Sunday when we traded bicycles with the pastor’s boys joked that in place of taking that old pink bicycle back to Canada, we should take one of them to Canada in a suitcase instead.

There is no time to tell in detail of our team’s initial trip into the Rufiji, our first impressions, or our daily journey from the safari camp to Ngorongo village, of staying at Baker & Sons Safari or of the evening sunsets over the Rufiji River, our riverboat cruise, Tanzanian-style feasts, BBQ suppers with troops of baboons passing through, black & white colobus monkeys overhead and hippos grunting in the distant view, of our precious times with Pastor Hasani, Elizabeth, and their boys, their gentle smiles, all the laughter and even tears we shared, of volunteering at the government school in Hasani’s Ngorongo village, where hundreds of children had worn away the very floors of their cement classrooms, of the Jesus Film showing in Hasani’s village – the same village that had despised this family for so many years, by the plan of God in motion, now agreeing to hear the words of Christ amplified by antiquated equipment bathed in prayer over a loudspeaker in the people’s own language on an outdoor big screen, an unprecedented event, and of showing the Jesus Film two more times in neighbouring villages, of the many villagers that attended the film, some sitting out in the open and others watching in secret from a concealed location, of our first day in the bush, calling over 100 colourfully dressed local women together with their children to a nutrition seminar at the safari camp, of buying out the local market of its fruits and vegetables and preparing care packages to send the ladies home with, of teaching English to scores of children and Maasai warriors alike at The Rufiji Lighthouse, of the safari drive through the Selous Game Reserve, seeing the nimble impalas and the thunderous African beasts on their terms, gaining a greater appreciation for the mighty elephant, the graceful giraffe, the lion king of beasts, and the Creator who holds them all in His most capable hands, of the gifts of chickens and eggs presented by Ngorongo church for our service and time among them, celebrating with other believers and joining the family of God in the Rufiji to assure them that though their numbers are small, they are not alone.

We left Africa exhausted, wide-eyed, and satisfied that our talents and time were expended fully and without regret. We are the hands and feet of Jesus; God’s answer to another’s prayers. The work in Ngorongo, Rufiji is not done.

By Faith, we are raising funds to build a Sunday School and playground on the Ngorongo church property. These simple structures will bring children and adults out to hear God’s word and provide a safe place where people can gather.

By Faith, we are hoping to raise additional funds to dig a water well on the church property. We are believing that many from the village will stop at this well, not only to get water, but to hear of the One who provides Living Water.

In Faith, we look forward to our future relationship with Pastor Hasani and Elizabeth, their children, and the congregation of Ngorongo church. We loved this body of believers before we met them. Over our weeks together in the Rufiji, we deepened that relationship. God has joined us – Chatham and Ngorongo. What God establishes, let no man severe.