Gearing up for Africa

TBC missions director Ronald D. Gilbert is gearing up for his 13th pilgrimage to Africa — and sending over more Bibles, books and aid than ever before

By AMY DAVIS
for Tennessee Bible College

COOKEVILLE—The roof and walls were fashioned of sticks and straw. The floor, simply dirt.

But that was then.

Today, with support from several Cookeville-area church of Christ congregations and charitable individuals, it won't be long before a new three-room building for the Siamafumba School of Biblical Studies, located in the bush of Zambia, Africa, will be completed.

Quite the contrast from its humble beginnings just over a year ago — when faculty and student-preachers gathered for class meetings with only an elephant grass roof shielding them from the hot, African sun — the new school will have a concrete floor, tin roof and block walls. Plaster will cover the building's interior.

At this time, construction is nearing the halfway mark. But more funds are needed to get the job done.

That's where Cookeville's Ronald D. Gilbert comes into the picture.

Gilbert, director of missions at Tennessee Bible College in Cookeville, has been heading collection efforts in the Upper Cumberland area and beyond, urging church congregations and individuals to pool funds and see the Siamafumba school to completion, among other worthy endeavors.

It's an annual campaign for Gilbert, who has striven to raise funds for African mission works most every year since his pilgrimages to Zambia began in the early 1990s. His goal has been to provide the people with Bibles, song books, religious tracts, bicycles for preachers, food and general funding for various other needs.

For this summer's excursion, he hopes to have collected enough funds to help the Africans not only to complete the Siamafumba school, but also to provide its students with text books.

"It's a two-year preacher training school," Gilbert said. "They've sent me a list of their classes they'll be teaching, and we're trying to raise funds to buy books. They have about 20 students, so we need to send them 20 books for each class."

Ronald D. Gilbert, director of missions at Tennessee Bible College in Cookeville, is gearing up for his annual pilgrimage to Zambia, Africa. Gilbert has been working all year in preparation for this summer's trip, sending over more Bibles, song books, religious tracts and preacher school text books than ever before. He's also been collecting funds to help complete construction on a new building for the Siamafumba School of Biblical Studies in the bush of Zambia, Africa.

And with 48 classes to furnish, Gilbert says the price tag is around $5,000.

"We've just asked churches and individuals to give us money, and we have ordered the books from publishing houses and through Tennessee Bible College," Gilbert said. "We order them based on the funds we have."

So far, he's purchased and sent a third of the books.

Joining Gilbert on the three-week journey will be David Hill, public relations director at Tennessee Bible College, and Hill's daughter, Mallory. This trip makes three for Hill on African soil, and it'll be a first for 18-year-old Mallory, who just graduated from Cookeville High School.

The three of them will be temporarily leaving the comforts of home for a much more primitive way of life.

In the African bush, where the Siamafumba school is located, it's like a different world, Gilbert said.

"The average fellow lives in a mud hut with a dirt floor and grass roof," he said. "They could probably put everything they own in a basket and put it on their head and move to the next town."

It's there in the bush where Gilbert's crew will also be attending a large brush arbor meeting, in which approximately 2,000 natives from 50 church congregations gather each year for three days of gospel preaching, singing, and question and answer sessions. Most travel more than a day's journey by foot to get there and camp on the dry, sandy grounds for the duration of the event.

But the majority of the trio's time will be spent in the town of Livingstone, which is much closer to what Gilbert considers "modern." They'll lodge in a small brick house located next to another beneficiary of Gilbert's missionary efforts, the Zambia School of Biblical Studies.

While in Livingstone, Gilbert and David Hill will teach courses at the Zambia school, conduct seminars, take part in gospel meetings and preach on Sunday mornings. Mallory Hill will be teaching children's Bible classes and distributing reading glasses to Africans in need.

A graduation ceremony will also take place while they are there.

Two of the Zambia school's faculty members, as well as a local preacher, are completing studies through Tennessee Bible College's distance learning program — thus, earning a bachelor's degree in religious education. They'll be joining the ranks of two Zambian colleagues, who merited the same honor in the past couple of years.

In preparing for the trip, Gilbert has kept busy throughout the year gathering and shipping printed materials to Africa.

"When I first started, I worked real hard a month or two before the trip getting things together. But it's to the point now that I'm working 12 months out of the year. I try to send something about every month."

And he's sent more overseas this year than ever before, including more than 50,000 gospel tracts, 2,000 song books in the Tonga language, 300 Bibles and hundreds of text books.

But the pace could slow down in the coming year due to changes in postal service.

Until recently, Gilbert's mail was shipped by way of land M-bags, a special service in which books and printed materials are transported internationally at a reduced rate. It could take as long as three months for materials to reach their African destination, but rates were much lower that way.

But that option is phasing out.

"The Postal Service is doing away with the land M-bag," Gilbert said. "They're going to have an air M-bag."

And he expects shipping costs to go up 460 percent.

"So I don't know what we're going to to do, or if we'll be able to send much more when a hundred dollars' worth of stuff is going to cost $460 to send," he said.

But not everything is shipped overseas. Several items are purchased and distributed upon Gilbert's arrival, including Bibles in the Tonga language and bicycles.

"We'll be purchasing bicycles for the preachers," Gilbert said. "We always take funds with us to purchase about 20 bicycles and give them to the preachers who will use them to go and ride and preach and teach the Bible."

White corn — a staple food item in Africa — may need to be purchased as well, depending on whether or not the rains come this year.

"They only get rain certain times of the year," Gilbert said. "So, if during the rainy season they don't get any rain, there is a severe drought. They live from year to year on the corn they raise, and if they don't raise any corn, there are a lot of people who starve. So we're waiting to hear about what's going on there. If there is a drought, we'll be taking some extra funds to buy corn to feed the hungry people."

Gilbert also hopes to collect 20 "good, used suits" to take along for the student-preachers at the Siamafumba school in the bush.

And he'll continue raising funds in hopes of seeing a new, more efficient school building — one that's improving drastically from when he last saw it.

"They were in a hut to start with," Gilbert said. "And while we were there last year, they had dug the footer for the building. We gave them some funds while we were there, and we've sent funds back two or three times since."

Now the walls are up — they just need a roof.

And this time, it won't be built of straw.

To contribute to Gilbert's African mission fund, call Tennessee Bible College at (931)526-2616. For more information about last year's trip, visit the TBC Web site at www.tn-biblecollege.edu/news/ africa2006story.shtml.