Posted: 8/22/03
Texas team bikes among villages
Four college students from Texas spent a month in Zambia doing mountain bike evangelism.
Justin Childress, Richie Conry, Randy Kelley and Mickey Matlock served through the Baptist General Convention of Texas Baptist Student Ministry and the Southern Baptist Convention International Mission Board.
Childress is from Texas A&M; Conry from the University of North Texas; Kelley from the University of Houston; and Matlock from Midwestern State University.
| Student missionary Mickey Matlock rides into a village on his mountain bike, greeted by local children. |
Mountain bike evangelism is a relatively new ministry in Zambia in which volunteer teams visit remote areas and unreached people groups. The students camped in the bush and biked from hut to hut in the villages sharing the gospel.
“God made me dependent on his word for my words, because when we would come upon a house there were times when I had no words to say but Scripture, and it was powerful,” Conry said.
Their other objectives besides telling people about Jesus were to discover what the spiritual background and practices of the people.
Zambians are considered eager to discuss spiritual things and often follow the first religion that comes their way, mission workers report. Cults such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism and the New Apostolic Church have a foothold there.
The students discovered most Zambians have heard of Jesus but don't understand he is the Son of God and “the way, the truth, and the life,” as the Bible states.
The first place the four Texans went was a sparsely populated area near the Democratic Republic of Congo. They biked within a few hundred meters of the border. There is one Baptist church in this area, with a membership of about 50.
When they first pulled up, the Zambians were so excited they did not stop singing and dancing until well into the night. Some of the locals brought their children by so that they could see a mzungu (white person) for the first time.
The mountain bike team camped the majority of the trip. They ate military rations, drank filtered water and went for days without bathing. They tried to fight off mosquitoes, but half the team still contracted malaria.
While tough, the students still found the trip rewarding.
“You are always seeing the glory of God personified through the incredible landscapes and animals,” Kelley said.
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