“The cross has power which I can’t explain,” said a 72-year-old Malawian pastor who has been accompanying evangelist Reini Coetzee during the Malawi stretch of his Crosswalk Africa trek from Cape Town to Jerusalem.
Pastor Bernard Frera Mlombwa, who has been with Reini for much of the time since he crossed the border from Mozambique into Dedza, Malawi on April 22, said that as soon as he helped Reini lift his heavy wooden cross, pain he had been experiencing in his legs left him. Thereafter he had no difficulty walking 21km with Reini on the first day of his Malawi crosswalk.
In a video call interview yesterday, in the Chikangawa area, he said his spirit connected with Reini from their first meeting and he hopes to be walking alongside him and the cross when they step over into Tanzania for the next stage of the mission next month.
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Pastor Bernard is part of the logistical support backup team arranged by the Evangelical Association of Malawi which has been facilitating Gospel outreaches in each town and village along Reini’s route. He said: “I have seen so many people giving their lives to Jesus, which doesn’t happen much in churches. But as we go along the road, there are so many people who see the cross and then come forward to say: ‘I need to have Jesus with me.'”
Bishop Amin Mwamulima, who was also with Reini, said: “We really appreciate the vision [to seek the lost and to bring hope, peace, and the love of Christ to Africa through the cross] which God revealed to Reini. As the Bible says in Habakkuk 2:2: ‘Write down the vision, make it clear so that the hearer may run with it.’ So, as the Malawi Church we are running with it. We have accepted the vison for the glory of God.”
Reini said that in each country he has been so far, God has raised people who have supported his mission. The backup and ministry has been uniquely different in each country, he said. In Malawi he has been surrounded by people of all ages throughout his journey. He has been kept busy preaching more than ever before, praying with people who are hungry for God and playing with children. He commended his local ministry supporters for arranging for somebody to shield him from visitors during his rest periods, allowing him time to recover after long days on the road and prepare for the next day’s ministry.
Reini said the people of Malawi he has encountered have been living up to the nation’s reputation for being “the warm heart of Africa”.
“And there is order here in the way that they do things,” he said.
During our conversation Reini said that a truck driver he had met on the road in South Africa had just stopped to greet him. He said that during his long walk, truck drivers have not only been his “biggest fans” but they have also brought him food parcels sent by Maryke Fourie, who serves Crosswalk Africa’s administration in South Africa.
He said that during the latest stretch of his journey he has done a lot of climbing onto a high plateau where he is experiencing very cold weather. He said he was about to enter the Chikangawa Forest, which at 1 150 sq km is considered to be the largest man-made forest in Africa.
Reini said: “And as we are speaking the Lord has already put people in place in Tanzania. There is a pastor there who is already working on immigration, so those doors are opening now.”
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