Help Pastor Crispin Provide Church Transportation

I am the Reverend Pastor Crispin ILOMBE WILONDJA. I have been the Mission Developer of Good Samaritan Lutheran Ministries since 2018. We welcome refugees coming to the United States; we help them find a cultural place to worship and to be touch with God. But it has been very challenging for all these years. Please ready these few paragraphs and please help us.

CRY OF A POOR PASTOR

It is Sunday, November 3rd, 2024. We are celebrating All Saints Sunday. On this Sunday, as on other Sundays, I led two worship services. One for Faith and Grace at 10am and another one at 1pm for Good Samaritan Lutheran Church. These are two different congregations. They are different in many things.

It is 9.20 am. I leave my house to go to Faith and Grace. All is okay, a normal congregation. Members of the congregation are ready to celebrate All Saints Sunday. People came to church driving their cars. As Pastor, I just entered the sacristy and I was ready for worship. We had a wonderful service; we felt the joy of celebration. Our musician was filled by the Holy Spirit, we felt the communion with all the saints.

The worship service ended at 11.15 am. At 11.30, it is time to think about Good Samaritan. All members live in Clarkston and Stone Mountain. I start calling members to remind them about attending church. Everybody is very excited. Yes Pastor, this is a special day, we need to go to church. “Are you coming to pick us?” No one of our Good Samaritan people has a car. Everybody depends on the Pastor’s car to go to church. This is a Honda that has only 8 seats.

“Yes, I am coming to pick you up,” I was replying to calls. I went around and I met families ready to go to church. The first family had 5 people, the second 4. That is already more seats than what my car can take. I drove to church (the same sanctuary Faith and Grace uses at 4664 Covington Hwy, Decatur). It takes at least 20 minutes to drive to church. I drove to drop the two first families.

Then I went back to Clarkston. Another family was waiting. 3 people in the family. Another family was also there with 4 people. Everybody was dressed up for a special Sunday. The honda was full again. Two other families with more than 11 people were still waiting for me. I went to see them and let them know that we did not have enough seats in the car and I could not come back to Clarkston. I was already late for the worship service. These families were ready for church, they wanted to go to church but we did not have a car, a van, or a bus to take them. They wanted to go to church, to worship, to celebrate and to praise God. There was no transportation.

As a Pastor, this is the experience I go through every Sunday. My heart as well as my eyes were filled with tears. I felt ashamed, I felt that I was failing to provide proper means to members of my church to go to church. This is a hard and traumatizing experience for me. We are poor, we cannot afford a van; we are poor but we really want to worship. These images are still in my memory and my heart. I still hear the voice of that little girl who just came to America from Zimbabwe and who was badly willing to go to church: “Pastor, are you not coming back to pick us?” I did not know what to say.

Last night I was very sad. I cried, I prayed. My son asked me: “Papa, why are you very sad?” I told him: “People could not go to church today because I don’t have enough seats to take everybody to church.” He said: “How could that be possible? Are we not church? Are we not supposed to love one another? Is not there anyone who can help us get a bus to take everybody to church?” I told him: “It is very hard, my son! We are a church; we are a poor church. We look like Lazarus trapped in that tomb and in great need of someone like Jesus to take him out of the tomb and to unbind him.”

Even this morning, I am still in tears. I don’t know what to do. It is getting more and more frustrating to see these brothers and sisters willing to go to church and not being able to go because we don’t have transportation for everybody. With our maximum of 10$ in offering each Sunday, I don’t know how and when we can hope to get a van or a bus.

I am a Pastor crying because I am unable to provide transportation to the members of my poor congregation. I cry again to the church, to the friends who may be willing to help us. Please help us, please pray for us. We need transportation; we need a bus. Please, please help us. I still believe that we are church together; we are church for the sake of the world. I truly believe that even the poor need a pastor, they also need to worship, but they need to attend the worship service. Please help us.

Pastor Crispin ILOMBE WILONDJA