24 Stories of Prayer #6: Missionaries to Dreamers - Wild Hope, TanzaniaLyndall Bywater - 3 Sep 2008

“I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.”
(John 10:10, The Message)

For the past few years, Byron and Lisa Borden have been much-loved mentors and leaders in the 24-7 Prayer movement. They bring the wisdom and experience of years in prayer and mission work, and their passion for God has challenged and encouraged 24-7ers all over the world.

This, though, is the story of their own 24-7 community in Unga, Tanzania.

Byron and Lisa met Peter and Tammy Russell while they were all studying at university in California. They worked together in Kenya for about 10 years in the 90’s, and have now joined their lives together again in Tanzania.

‘Wild Hope’ began in 2004, when Peter and Tammy felt it was time to return to Africa. They founded it as a non-profit organization, and the Bordens were part of the board. Byron and Lisa finally moved out to Tanzania to join Peter and Tammy in May 2007.

Lisa takes up the story:

"Wild Hope started when the Russells were searching for the right way to return to Africa, and we were part of a small group that encouraged them to follow their dreams, and launch something that would specifically fit who they are. It was only a matter of time before we followed our own dream to return to Africa and work with these long-time friends.

One of the most significant words we’ve been given is that, rather than being “missionaries” to a specific place, we will be missionaries to people’s dreams. This means  lot to Wild Hope, as our heart is to come alongside what we find local people doing (or dreaming of doing), and to use our resources and connections and giftings to help people see their dreams come to life.

This approach makes our work very diverse, because we are following relational connections, and joining in with multiple types of projects. We are assisting one area with water supply, another with practical needs for their school, another few areas with income-generation/fair trade work with local women. We are involved in micro-lending and assisting a children’s home. We help a group of widows in our local town, as well as reaching out to youth at risk through a football team. Our football (soccer) club is seeking to provide more than just sports (though we are 100% excited about what sports does for self esteem and self discipline). We put more and more into developing life-skills classes alongside.

We are passionate about people being set free to be who God created them to be, so we are also involved in prayer ministry and mentoring, and just walking through life with a number of people. As God opens those relationships up, we invest in them.

Byron and I were particularly encouraged by a series of dreams that I had, before moving back from Europe to Africa. I kept seeing that we were working with orphans, but when I woke up I would realize the orphans were all white. God was letting us know that our care for the generation growing up in the West was still going to carry over to Africa. He brings people to our very small community here in Tanzania, so that he can take them deeper with him, and we love to see that happening.

We feel very alive when God uses us, as a team or as individual families, to help people walk into new levels of freedom. We get very excited when we see a marriage strengthened and healed through times of ministry. We get very excited when God uses hospitality that we offer to young wayfarers here, to open their eyes to God’s love. For instance, a young guy who was volunteering with another group started hanging out round at our place and with one of our friends. Pretty soon, he was actively seeking to find out what it was that gave us such joy and strength in the face of all the trauma of Africa. God overwhelmed him with a revelation of love, and he’s a new person. We also get really excited to see destitute women earning a decent wage and providing for their families. This makes us totally high!

Our heartcry to God is that, through many different things, HOPE would become the dominant feeling in the area called Unga, where the rate of HIV/AIDS is high, the poverty is crippling and the youth are definitely without much hope.

To help you understand us more, you should know that we see ourselves as a fledgling community that desires to grow more into prayer and community life. Currently, we are 2 families that love each other and live about 10 mins walk from each other. We have been able to purchase property outside of the city, where we will eventually build and form a community that will do more of life together. We will continue to value personal/family space and won’t take all our meals together, or do that sort of community, but we will be more intentional in sharing rhythms.

For now, we share a meal together every Monday night, all kids included. We spend Wednesday mornings together in prayer, followed by a time of just catching up on how each one of us is doing. Thursday we meet for a separate planning time to keep all the practical things running, like who is organizing the next team of volunteers from the States, or what is going on in the drilling for water on the land, or what needs to happen to assist the women’s fair trade project . That’s the skeleton of our week, but we overlap constantly - just about every day ☺

Being honest, sometimes we fear that our friendship will be ruined by working together, because people often tell us that it will be! Some months ago, we seemed to be in a time when we were all dwelling in the fears that we were not going to be able to mesh and stay close, open, growing and free as friends. We went away for a weekend to intentionally talk it all through, and made the commitment again to our calling to be together. The conversations are not always comfortable, but we’re learning to trust each other better, deeper and more quickly. We can fall into the fear, and look at our differences, or we can celebrate our years and years of love and friendship, the core that we share that is so strong, and the joy of the privilege of working with long-time friends.

We’re learning more and more about how to keep our community healthy. We can’t do without Wednesday prayer, but we’re also learning that we can’t do without catching up on how each of us is doing. This is where we can come to God together, as well as come to each other with things like, ‘I’m so depleted right now’.  But we also know we need to play more together. Monday nights are supposed to be just for feasting and enjoying, and we’re pretty good at keeping ‘work’ stuff out.

We’re also learning to know more of our God … to know that he is faithful and he will do it. He leads, and we stumble along behind, and find, as we look back, that he has been in perfect control every step of the way. We’re amazed too by the idea from John that we did not choose him but he chose us and appointed us to bear fruit that would last—wow! This is his proven promise to us. We see our frailty and our clumsiness all the time, but he works in and around us!

If we could say one thing to the 24-7 Prayer movement at this time, it would be this: God wants us fully alive, growing more and more into the unique individuals we are, and chasing after the dreams he has planted in our hearts. He wants to use our particular passions, and that’s why he gave us those passions. He’s not into cloning. He’s into abundant life."