Africa

Fritz Lehner, Gränichen, a furniture maker by profession, received the call from God to serve him in the mission on New Year's Eve 1947. In 1950 he traveled to Tanzania with his wife Myrtha and his two small children.

Here he worked with a missionary society for four years. After this time he returned to Switzerland with his family, who had been blessed with three more children.

Fritz had no intention of going back to Africa. But God did not leave him in peace, and so he returned to Tanzania alone in 1956. After a few months, he had his family join him. Before his second departure, he joined the Evangelical Baptist Church in Basel.

In Mbalezi he was able to buy 120 acres of land from an Indian on which there was a disused soap factory. The site is conveniently located on the main Cairo-Cape Town road and is only 12 kilometers from the provincial capital Mbeya.

Fritz Lehner not only brought the Good News of God to the residents, but also built a carpentry school that was very popular among the black population.

In 1980, the mission received the status of an autonomous Christian community recognized by the state.

Over time, the small village of Mbalezi around the station has grown into a town with over 10,000 inhabitants.

In 1970, Markus, the son of the Lehner parents, and his wife Hanni entered missionary service. With youthful energy, they supported the growing work that their parents had started.

Through the evangelistic work of the missionaries, who proclaimed the good news Sunday after Sunday, partly supported by a brass band, over the years around 100 Christian congregations were established within a wide radius of 200 km, which are looked after by local leaders and evangelists.

Many of the newly established congregations are now engaged in evangelism themselves. The spiritual center is located in Mbalezi, along with the administration, a clinic and two craft schools. These schools train carpenters and auto mechanics over a three-year apprenticeship. A further 60 apprenticeships for carpenters are available in three outlying congregations.

Mbalezi Secondary School is also run by the Mbalezi Evangelistic Church. The school has been expanded again and can now accommodate 700 students. Dormitories are currently being built for those students who live far away from the school.

The mission also runs a youth and community center that includes conference rooms, guest rooms and a restaurant. A bookstore has also been set up there. It is called "Karibuni," which means "welcome" in English.

Over time, the mission was able to acquire a farm of around 60 hectares. It is located 15 km south of the mission station and contains fields, lots of pasture and some forest. A Bible school was built on this farm. There are currently 25 Bible students here. The number of students is increasing.

Much attention is paid to women's work in the center and in the villages. In addition to Christian instruction and devotions, the women hear practical information about hygiene and nutrition. Those who want to can learn to sew and embroider under expert guidance.

The clinic is also at full capacity. In the morning, sick people are examined and given medical care, wounds are treated, vaccinations are given and whatever outpatient treatment is possible. The trained nurses and midwives working at the mission station also train medical assistants. The afternoon is reserved for mothers and children.

The entire missionary work is led by the "Grand Committee", which includes eight African and one Swiss missionary.

God has blessed the missionary work. Many natives found faith in Jesus Christ through the tireless missionary work. The Mbalezi Evangelistic Church, with its many outposts, has around 7,000 members. Every year, hundreds of Bibles are sold in the local language, Kiswahili, and various tribal languages, tracts are distributed, and good Christian books are distributed.

The majority of the missionaries come from our congregations in Switzerland and Germany. The work maintains close relations with the Evangelical Mission Service in Basel and Ludwigsburg. The Mbalezi Evangelistic Church sees itself as a partner church to the Western European Evangelical Baptist congregations.

In mid-1967, Isaac Rex Noi from Accra/Ghana (West Africa) attended the service of the ETG congregation in Basel and made friends with other brothers and sisters there. He had come to Europe as a devout Christian to further his professional training. During this stay, he received God's call to become a preacher and to serve his country by preaching the gospel.

After a year of working as an assistant in what was then the Bürgerspital Basel (now the Kantonsspital Basel), he went to the Prairie Bible School in Three Hills (Alberta Province, Canada) for training. He successfully completed his studies in 1973. In the meantime, he had found a place in our churches in Edmonton (Canada) and Portland (USA) and had been called upon to perform various ministries.

The Western Missionary Committee (the missionary work of the American Baptist churches) sent him to Ghana to do missionary work. Isaac Rex Noi began house-to-house evangelism together with a childhood friend. They were soon able to establish a church. Today (1994) the Faith Evangelical Church has over 5,000 baptized members in around 30 churches, most of which are located in the Greater Accra area, which is increasingly becoming a population center in Ghana.

Overall responsibility lies with a team of four elders, of which Isaac is a member. The congregations are usually led by two pastors. From the beginning, the congregation was very outreach-oriented, with street meetings, evangelistic marches in city districts and various social aid organizations. Isaac always encouraged the congregation members to give what little they had to the poor. With the help of Canadian brothers and sisters, they founded a primary school that is very popular. The congregation runs a "clinic" that offers care to the sick, both to congregation members and outsiders, at favorable conditions. The "HILFE" cooperative supports the clinic with deliveries of medicines from Switzerland. The EMD Basel and Ludwigsburg make contributions to the mission's evangelistic work.

The community in Ghana is going through a difficult time. A good 10 years ago, this once flourishing country fell into a deep economic crisis from which it has not yet recovered. A few years later, Ghana was hit by a drought disaster. A famine followed.

The government is now on a pro-Islamic course and treats the Christian communities with clear reservations.