As the ministry among the Mahafaly developed, we looked toward trying to address the heavy physical needs of our people. We enlisted community development specialists to help us and our people to evaluate their needs. Through the advice of these specialists, we began offering medical teachings and assessments, and distributed medicines. We introduced moringa trees and trained in their care and use. As people in the villages came to Christ, they became the conduits of these resources to their wider villages. We had many opportunities to share the Gospel through these endeavors. We certainly saw people join the group only to receive the resources, but we also saw, concurrently, developing groups of believers ready to share both the Gospel and material resources with their villages. With each project, we focused on the needs of the village as a whole, rather than just the church. This helped alleviate false professions of faith and people joining the church for wrong motives. We continued to pray about our role--our people are still suffering greatly.

 

As the years went on, more and more of the Mahafaly in our villages came to Christ. We felt the great burden of, now, brothers and sisters in Christ still struggling with food, water, health care. As our believers shared Christ with other villages, and “children churches” began, these first generation churches assumed responsibility for even issues of physical needs in their new churches.

 

During a time when most of East Africa was facing a drought that lasted several years, we worked with Baptist Global Response to coordinate a seed distribution. We gave the seed to the first generation church leaders, and they oversaw sharing it out to all their children churches. They shared the Gospel with each distribution, and held their leaders accountable to faithfully and fairly distribute all the seed to the villages. God used this distribution to bring the Gospel to many villages who hadn’t yet heard--praise the Lord!

 

Our efforts have not lifted the Mahafaly out of poverty. We are continuing to pray and evaluate what we can do, as well as to connect our villages to others who can help them. More importantly, though, we’ve seen our Mahafaly believers apply their natural leadership and influence to help their own communities in Gospel-honoring ways. One of our leaders, a man once infamous for violence, proposed a monetary retribution system to try to limit the occurrence of cattle thieving. Among the Mahafaly and surrounding tribes, thieves would come to villages at night to steal cattle. Then, the men of the village would chase after them to get the cattle back. Bloodshed almost inevitably followed. This Mahafaly leader, after becoming a Christian, sought a way to end this cycle. He suggested heavy fines for not only the thieves, but for their entire villages. The region accepted this plan, and the social pressure and heavy burden of the fines has now nearly eradicated the cattle thieving that was once a hallmark of Mahafaly culture. Our team had nothing to do with this solution. In fact, truth be told, we lay awake at night wondering how to help with the problem of the cattle thieves. But instead, God saved a strong, influential man, and he followed God in obedience to pursue peace for his region.