Ministry Reflections on our Time in Mauritius

Why I Went

I arrived at Ontario Bible College in 1978, the first of my four years in a Bachelor of Theology programme. While I had no idea of what God had in store for me after those four years, I anticipated that I would be a Presbyterian minister somewhere in Canada. This had been my ambition since I was about six years old.

At that time, Africa Evangelical Fellowship was holding a Sunday afternoon missionary meeting with a lunch to follow. I had been invited by my friend, Michel David, who was studying at the school. He was from Mauritius.

To be honest, I was not particularly interested in the prayer or missionary presentations. It was the free food that attracted me to the meetings. Missionaries came to the meetings and shared their presentations. Nothing seemed to speak to me, although some of the pictures they showed of their work were interesting.

By 1980, I was struggling with some personal issues. My position on infant baptism was being challenged, and I began to wonder whether my goal of being a Presbyterian pastor could ever become a reality. Because I had never considered missions, the idea of being a missionary never entered my mind. If I could not be a Presbyterian pastor, I did not know what I could do. I even began to wonder why I was studying theology. This was a trying time for me.

It was at this time that I attended one of these, the Africa Evangelical Fellowship missionary prayer meetings. Although I did not know it, God was going to do something in that meeting that would change the direction of my life. 

Kamyl Cadinouche from Mauritius spoke about his work and showed slides. Nothing he said struck me. I can’t remember anything about the slide presentation. As he spoke, however, I felt another voice speaking to me. That very afternoon, God began to address my confusion about what He had in store for my future. It was as if, for the very first time, my eyes were opened to something other than the Presbyterian church in Canada.

That afternoon, God showed me that He had not abandoned me. He opened my mind to see that He was working all around the world. I began to realize that if God did not have something for me in my denomination, He might have something for me in another country.

Looking back at this now, it is hard to understand why I did not see this sooner. I needed my eyes opened to something bigger than myself, my ideas, and my goals.

It is hard to convey what this new understanding did for me. God did much more for me that afternoon than open my eyes to the mission field. He showed me personally that He had not abandoned me. He had a purpose for my life. While I did not understand that purpose yet, I left that prayer meeting with hope. I could see that God might have a purpose for me after all.

The experience of hearing God speak to me in this way was powerful. Over the coming days, weeks, and months, I began to seek the Lord more directly about what all this meant for me practically. God began to answer my prayers. While this is another story, He again spoke powerfully and convincingly to me about His missions calling on my life. Convinced of that call, the challenge for me then was to understand where God wanted me to serve and how to get there.

As I reflected on where the Lord wanted me to go, I could not get away from the fact that God used a Mauritian to invite me to these AEF meetings, and another Mauritian to speak on the work in Mauritius. Many other missionaries shared in those meetings, but it was not until Kamyl Cadnouche from Mauritius spoke that God opened my eyes. I found my mind and heart zeroing in on this one particular country and determined that I would pursue this to see if it was truly from God.

Having determined to seek the Lord about going to Mauritius, the next decision related to how to get there. This decision was relatively simple. There was only one mission working in Mauritius. That was the mission whose prayer meetings I had been attending — Africa Evangelical Fellowship. I would, therefore, speak to them and seek their advice and counsel about serving as a missionary in this country. They would ultimately confirm my decision about Mauritius and guide me in what further training I needed. Both Diane and I would eventually be accepted to serve under the Africa Evangelical Fellowship in a church in Rose Belle, Mauritius.

The Road To Mauritius

I was twenty years old when I received a call to missions and a particular leading to go to Mauritius. It would not be for another five years, however, that I would set foot on the island. I was going into my third year of Bible school and had two more years to complete my Bachelor of Theology. It was also at the end of that third year that Diane and I were married. We would have our first child before leaving Canada.

After Bible school, I enrolled at the University of Waterloo and completed a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies. This degree challenged me in my commitment to evangelical faith, but proved to be a vital part of my training and preparation for service.

Because we were still young and inexperienced in ministry, Africa Evangelical Fellowship recommended a one-year internship with Missionary Internship in Farmington, Michigan, U.S.A. Hespeler Baptist Church in Cambridge, Ontario, agreed to take me on as an intern for that year. We therefore served with them and traveled to Farmington for the classroom part of the programme.

Being part of the Hespeler Baptist Church was a very important part of my preparation. I had time with the elders and pastors who took a special interest in me. Times with these men of God over a two-year period were vital. To this day (more than 40 years later), I still appreciate the impact of their wisdom and counsel.

This period of time also included a year of French language study at Bethel Bible Institute in Sherbrooke, Quebec. We would need this language to be effective in our ministry in Mauritius.

Throughout those seven years of training, we also needed to raise the funds required to get us to Mauritius and provide for our ministry and personal needs for the three years we would spend in ministry there.

The final requirement of the mission before going to Mauritius was full immersion in the French language and culture. For this, we were sent to Reunion Island. The mission did not put a time frame on this. This would depend on our ability in the French language. We remained three months on Reunion Island before permission was granted for us to go to Mauritius. We arrived in Mauritius in 1985.

What We Found

It was not long after we arrived in Mauritius that we began to understand that things would not be easy. I suppose the first hint of this came when we were taken to meet a national pastor in an outreach point in Centre de Flacq. Upon seeing us, this pastor was a bit confused. In his mind, we were so young he thought we were the children of the missionary who was going to work in Rose Belle. I heard later that he was concerned about having someone so young in this church.

The work in Rose Belle began when two single English ladies came to Mauritius as teachers. They began work among the children in the region, and a number of these children came to the Lord. We met Miss Minton and Miss Groom when we arrived. As their work expanded among the children, the ladies began to have some concern for their parents and began making efforts to reach them also. This was the beginning of the Evangelical church in Rose Belle.

By the time we arrived in 1985, the Rose Belle church was experiencing division among its members. I remember speaking to a young lady who attended the church on an occasional basis. She told me that she could feel the division when she came to the church.

While I had not been there when the problem began, I could sense that members were very hurt. Some relationships were strained. It was a low point in their church history.

As I questioned people about the cause of the conflict. I understood it to stem from a clash with the leadership. A group had formed in the church with a burden to share the gospel. They would go out onto the streets, distribute tracts, and speak with people about Christ. While this was a good thing, the leadership of the church reprimanded them because they had never received church approval for the ministry. Those who were part of the group responded by telling the leadership that they did not need permission to share the gospel. The situation escalated to a point where at least one of the group members was disciplined and refused communion because he was not perceived as being submissive to church leadership. Family members were hurt, and the church was divided. Some even left the church as a result. Members were frustrated, and many issues remained unresolved. I am sure there was more to the situation than this, but that is how I understood it when I arrived.

I wish I could say the matter was easily resolved, but it wasn’t. It took 3 years to address the issues this conflict created. For a good while, the church committee met every week trying to resolve the various issues. We would meet with individuals affected by the division, trying to find some type of resolution. Some accepted our efforts, others didn’t. One individual was accused of dishonesty and agreed to apologize publicly to the church for his actions. When the day for the apology came, he spoke out against the church instead.

The constant struggle between believers began to take a toll on me. I remember working in my home office one afternoon. We lived beside two Muslim brothers who did not always get along. On this occasion, they had a disagreement and verbally expressed this by loudly yelling at each other. As I listened to these two men yelling, tears began to well up in my eyes. I had had enough of people arguing with each other, and this was more than I felt I could handle. I remember weeping as I prayed and talked to the Lord about all the division and confusion I was experiencing.

A friend of mine, serving as a missionary in France, sent me a cassette tape describing his ministry. He was involved at that time with a Billy Graham crusade in Paris. He was working with the crusade choir and told me about it. He described the wonderful things God was doing as he travelled from place to place. I remember sitting on the floor in the living room listening to that cassette tape. Suddenly, the tears began to flow. “Don is all over the place. He is seeing you work in wonderful ways,” I told the Lord. Then I went on. “I’m sitting here spinning my wheels, getting nowhere.” That is how I felt.

I was at a loss to know what to do in those days, but I sought the Lord for direction. He answered through a mental picture he gave me. In my mind’s eye, I saw a battlefield. As I looked around, I saw soldiers lying lifeless on the ground. They had clearly been through an intense battle. As I walked among these fallen warriors, my eyes fixed themselves on the hand of one in particular. As I looked, I noticed a slight twitch of the finger. I remember feeling my heart jump for joy at that slight twitch. It revealed that there was life in that soldier.

I remember sensing the Lord telling me that it was not for me to go up to these soldiers and condemn them for falling on the battlefield. Instead, I was to look for and rejoice in any signs of life he would reveal in these wounded warriors. My role was to get these wounded soldiers back on their feet and help them walk again. It was not for me to judge who was right or wrong. This became my battle plan. I don’t know how well I did this, but one incident stood out to me.

At the end of three years, Diane and I were preparing to leave on furlough. At that time, God provided a national pastor to take my place. Before I left, the church decided to have a youth camp at a centre some distance away from Rose Belle. They invited this pastor to speak. I was also present at that event.

As the national pastor spoke, the Spirit of God seemed to move in a very special way. I watched one youth after another rededicate their lives to the Lord. I was overwhelmed by what I saw before me that day. More than that, however, I began to wonder why I had never seen such a work in the three years I had been ministering among them.

The emotions I felt were so powerful, I had to leave the meeting, find a place to be alone, and seek the Lord. Finding that quiet place, I asked God why I had struggled so hard over those three years and never seen the kind of response that this pastor was seeing in one meeting.

The Lord answered that prayer right then and there. One of the church committee members saw me leave and came out to find me. Coming over to me, he said: “Wayne, I know what you are feeling, but I want you to know that if you had not been here these past three years, none of this would have been possible.”

The Lord spoke powerfully through him that day. I came to understand that we all have roles to play in the work of the kingdom. God had called me to help the people to their feet. Someone else was to take it from there.

Why We Left

As our first term with Africa Evangelical Fellowship came to an end, we knew we had some important decisions to make. For me, one of those decisions related to what the Lord had for us and our second term. We had no sense that He was calling us away from foreign missions. The question at that point, however, was whether we were to return to Mauritius. I sought the Lord about this, and my reflections all seemed to lead me to the same place. 

First, the Lord had provided a national pastor at the precise moment I was returning to Canada on furlough. The position I had occupied was now filled. This pastor seemed to be well-received by the people, and I felt he was God’s man for this time. If I did return to Mauritius, it would not be to the same position.

Beyond this, the church was in a very different place now. Old hostilities had subsided, and the church was ready to move on. I asked myself the question: “Knowing what I know about this church and where I feel it needs to go, would I vote for myself to lead it in that direction? My answer to that question was, “No”. I felt the church needed someone else.

I would return to Mauritius two years later for a short visit. I was astonished to see the growth under the leadership of this national pastor. As I reflected on this, I truly believe that this kind of growth would not have taken place under my leadership. God had another purpose for me.

The final part of my reflection in those days had to do with whether I had done what God had asked me to do and completed the task assigned to me. As I thought and prayed about this, I truly believed I had.

The church sent us home with an official invitation to return, but I knew that if I was to return, I would need a new mandate from the Lord.

These reflections were confirmed to me in the words of a missionary prayer letter that came at that time. The words seemed out of place, and I wasn’t sure why they were in the letter, but I remember them still. They read:

“How often has the work of God been hindered by well-meaning servants who have simply stayed too long.”

Those words seemed directed at me. God used them to confirm that I needed to close this chapter of my ministry, leave Mauritius, and seek Him for the next.

Our time in Mauritius was a very special time in our lives. Two of our girls were born in this country. I was profoundly stretched in those days, and what I learned there had a powerful impact on my future ministry. I continue to look back fondly on my time there.