Divining for Water

 

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Proverbs 20:5 Good News Translation

5 A person's thoughts are like water in a deep well, but someone with insight can draw them out.

 

Dad was president of Solusi College, Rhodesia. The college had a huge problem—lack of water. In that semi-arid land, there was little water to be had. He persuaded the government to send out two experts who suggested that he drill wells in two likely spots at the government’s expense. They found some water but only a pittance for what a college needs. Later Dad got Melvin Sparrow, Sr. to come out to divine for water. He used a forked stick and had the reputation of being able to find water with the stick. The government said they could drill where Sparrow said, and they would pay the expense—if he got more water than they had with their experts. So, Dad drilled where Sparrow said, and they got three times as much water as the previous two wells. The government paid, but it was still only a pittance.

Sometime later Melvin and his wife and their teenage daughter Elaine came out to the college for a visit. Elaine was attractive and very blonde. I was nineteen and very happy to chat with her. In our conversation she admitted that she could divine for water like her dad, however, neither of her two brothers could do it.

Highly skeptical, Ï told her that I didn’t believe that it really worked. I pointed out physics reasons why it couldn’t work. She listened. She had heard this scientific approach before. She stuck to her guns.

We got a forked stick from a nearby tree, and she asked me where the water pipe was that came into the house. She walked across it, and the point of the stick pointed directly at the pipe and continued to point at it whenever she walked over it. Then I took the stick and walked where she had walked. The stick didn’t move at all! I knew it wouldn’t—after all science had no physical laws that would make it do so.

She suggested that she put her hands on mine while I did the same thing. I took the stick, and she laid her hands on the top of my hands. I couldn’t help but enjoy her touch. They were not even close to touching the stick.

Then we walked towards where I knew the water pipe was buried. I was absolutely determined that the stick would not move. It was a macho thing, almost like I was defending my manhood. I clutched the stick with all my strength. As we walked over the pipe, the stick twisted in my hands, almost tearing the skin off the inside of my hands. It continued to point towards the buried water pipe. She removed her hands, and the stick didn’t move no matter where I walked.

I became a believer that she had that power even though I knew of no explanation for the phenomenon. To this day, I have met no one who had any credible explanation. I have met many people who look at me askance and question my sanity when I mention it. I just remember that stick rotating of its own accord in my grip. Was it a dark force? Who knows! Was it a miracle of God? I highly doubt it!

Dear reader, what kind of phenomenon would cause you to believe that Jesus is Almighty God and that He will save you? Think seriously about it. There is no scientific explanation. If you ask for that, you won’t get it.

Thank You, Lord, that You are not willing that any should perish but that all should be saved.

 

 

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https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/pri_60726738.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0px,0px,2500px,1313px&resize=1200,630

Solusi University - Africa

[1]

Philippians 2:1-2 New International Version

Therefore, if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.

 

 

Solusi: First founded in 1894, almost 130 years ago, as Adventism’s first attempt at reaching people who had never known Christ.

Solusi: Long a symbol of mission, Adventists, progress, adventure, sacrifice. Adventism’s flagship university in Africa.

Solusi: I first visited there in 1948 and remember nothing. We moved there 1954, 60 years after its founding, C. Fred Clarke, my Dad’s mission was to found a university to train Christian leadership for an independent Africa. Solusi became home for me as a teenager. Years later I enjoyed working with a Solusi graduate in Tanzania in 1969 and 1970, where he was my principal. I last visited Solusi a few weeks ago.

Solusi: The only university in Zimbabwe to remain open during the worst of civil war and raging riots in other universities of the land.

Solusi: The graveyard of saints, almost since its beginning. My mother, “She loved much,” rests here since 1974, 80 years after its founding.

Solusi: Surviving decades of tribalism, which generates hatred between people.

Christ wept bitter tears when he lamented Jewish rejection of his mission to save all tribes, not just Jews: “Look, your house is left to you desolate,”[2] as He turned His back on them.

Paul lamented, “Oh Foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth;”[3] as their church was being torn apart by Judaizers who insisted on circumcision and that all believers become members of the Jewish tribe.

Atlantic Union College (AUC) was gutted by a president who forcibly replaced his faculty by his fellow islanders, his fellow tribesmen. Founded in 1882, many of its graduates went as missionaries to the world. His tribalism forced its demise in 2011. It was reopened in 2015 but couldn’t recover and was sold in 2018.

Solusi: You have long battled tribalism. In 1956 your acting president had himself deputized to take major action when students of one tribe threatened to murder those of another tribe. But what riotous students couldn’t do in the 1950s, the actions of those above you are destroying you now. Will 2024, your 130^th anniversary, be your last?

Solusi: I plead as Paul did with the Philippians: “Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.”[4]

Lord, I pray that Your Spirit may so fill Solusi constituents that they may be one as You and Your Father are one,[5] in spite of our varied human backgrounds. Lord, Save Solusi!

 

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[1] Solusi University ©2023 Uni Clarke

[2] Matthew 23:38

[3] Galatians 3:1 NIV

[4] Philippians 2:1-2 NIV

[5] John 17:21-23

Pioneer African Educator

 

Ecclesiastes 3:11

GOD’S WORD Translation (GW)

¹¹ It is beautiful how God has done everything at the right time. He has put a sense of eternity in people’s minds. Yet, mortals still can’t grasp what God is doing from the beginning to the end of time.

C. Fred Clarke, my father, worked as a missionary educator in Africa for 42 years, starting in 1936. He loved Africa. He worked in South Africa for the first 18 of those years. He picked up enough Afrikaans so that he could communicate in it. This helped endear him to the people there. His sons were born in Africa. In 1974 he buried his first wife in Zimbabwe, just six weeks before they were to retire to the U.S.

He had pretty much a type A personality. Working in Africa north of the Limpopo helped him rein in his impatience. Africa is not to be pushed or hurried, ever. When people come to you about a problem, they normally will not broach the subject until they have enquired about your health and fortunes as well as that of your family and apprised you of their health and fortunes. This could take a half day to explore to the fullest. Only then will they bring up the topic of their mission.

Dad’s years in South Africa were used in developing a strong science program at Helderberg College. Under his leadership scores of his students were prepared to step into the rigorous medical program at the University of Cape Town and from thence branch out all over the southern sub-continent of Africa as doctors and hospital administrators. The rest of his years in Africa were spent founding Solusi University in Zimbabwe and carving a new school, Rusangu High School, out of virgin bush in Zambia. Rusangu has since continued to evolve into Rusangu University. Solusi has become a premier University while Helderberg has languished somewhat due to indifferent leadership. But it, too, has the potential to redeem itself and become a university in its own right. Dad firmly believed in the soon return of Christ, but his planning was long range—for eternity.

After my mother died and was buried at Solusi, Dad returned to America. He sought out an old college classmate and proposed to her: “Would you be willing to go to Africa with me for two years?” She accepted and became his worthy companion for another 28 years.

The picture shows C. Fred and his second wife Helen in their retirement.

May my endeavors and plans also be guided by eternity, O Lord, the initiator and inhabitant of eternity.

 

 

 

 

Loyal Friends

[i]

Job 6:14 

Good News Translation (GNT)

¹⁴ In trouble like this I need loyal friends—whether I've forsaken God or not.

In 1954 Dad was sent to Solusi, a ten-grade school in Zimbabwe, to make it into a four-year college. Naturally the Trans African Division of Seventh-day Adventists didn’t have all the money it was going to require. Raising funds was part of his assignment. Besides, Solusi had only a minimal amount of water available in its dams on seasonal streams. It was certainly not enough to support a college with many more students. Consequently, Dad built a new dam and enlarged an already existing one. He brought the government geologists on campus to search for good spots to drill for water. They marked out three sites, and he drilled at all of them. He even got a local water diviner to explore for water. This man pointed out another spot, and Dad drilled a well there, paying for it out of his own pocket. Interestingly, he got more water from that well than from all three geologist-located wells combined—but it still was not enough for a burgeoning college. Finally, the government built a very large dam on a larger, near-by river, and they brought water from there.

Many other major problems, such as housing and collapsing latrines, took much of his time to overcome. In 1956 Dad returned to the U.S. on a working furlough. He visited several retired church leaders and persuaded them to donate their libraries to Solusi. He visited John Fetzer, a radio-TV mogul, whom most people know as the owner of the Detroit Tigers from 1961-1983. He and John had been good friends and business partners before Dad went to Africa in the mid-1930s. When they parted, Dad became a devoted missionary, and John spent his skill and time becoming financially successful. John became very interested in Dad’s project to lift the educational level of Africans to that of world leaders. He and his wife, Ria, visited Solusi to see what Dad was doing and thereafter contributed toward the efforts to make it a working college.

Solusi University has grown and prospered over the years. During the terrible financial crisis Zimbabwe went through, it was the only university to remain open in the country. The number of students at that time was over 5,000. Currently 2,892 are enrolled there.[ii]

We are grateful, Lord, that You provide us with friends who can help us in times of need.

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[i] https://www.facebook.com/Solusi-University-441288199368674/

[ii] http://www.solusi.ac.zw/

Sharing Good News

[i]

Mark 16:15 

Tree of Life Version (TLV)

¹⁵ He told them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the Good News to every creature.

Saint Francis of Assisi is often depicted as taking this great commission in Mark literally when he preached the gospel to the birds and other creatures. Most of Christendom has considered the commission as meaning take the gospel to every human of every race, gender, language, status, and locality. Most Christians, however, have not necessarily considered the commission as applying to them personally.

The Adventist church has a huge worldwide educational system. One of its goals is to bring the gospel to its students. Every once in a while, we as teachers in the system were encouraged to bring the gospel to our students—to make the gospel an integral part of the class content. I puzzled some and laughed a little about bringing religion into factoring a polynomial or integrating a trigonometric function. That was way beyond my creativity, and I was not willing to contrive artificial applications that would not bless anyone. At one point I did publish a paper suggesting how infinity is one aspect of God.[ii]

In my first teaching position, Ikizu Secondary School in Tanzania, teachers were expected to conduct a 10-minute worship during each day’s first class period. That period was actually 10 minutes longer than the other class periods. Since I always had a first period class, I became accustomed to reading a text and commenting on what this text said to me.

Later on, when I taught at the university level in the system, I found it fulfilling to take the first 5 minutes of any class to read a text and explain the significance I found in it. Some students criticized me for doing so; however, many students told me that they gained much when I did this. I also gained a personal blessing.

Lord, thank You for asking me to proclaim Your gospel in my world.

[i] https://www.eternitynews.com.au/world/catholics-commemorate-the-feast-of-st-francis-of-assisi/

[ii] http://www.institutechristianteaching.org/vol_01/vol_01.html see “The Finite, the Infinite, and God” pages 29-46 (1989)