Vancouver church prays for African pastor

Bob Hill, pastor of Vancouver’s Renewed Hope Ministries, and his wife, Kristi, visit twice a year with a pastor serving in both Botswana and Zimbabwe, the Rev. Future, pictured here with his extended family. (Photos by Bob Hill)

Bob Hill, center, and his wife, Kristi, of Vancouver helped the Rev. Future, right, a pastor who serves in Botswana, establish this general store in Mvuma, Zimbabwe. (Bob Hill)

A villager is employed at a sewing shop in Zimbabwe that’s supported in part by Renewed Hope and the Hills.

A meager tent in a Botswana village is a far cry from Bob Hill’s Vancouver church.

Seven years ago, the pastor visited that remote church to help establish better housing, business and medical options for the members of its congregation.

But they ended up giving him more in return than he could ever expect.

“I saw their joy — their passion for life,” Hill said. “When you experience their heart, you have to ask yourself, ‘How, in America, do we miss this simplicity of life?’”

And so a friendship formed. Ever since, Hill, pastor of Vancouver’s Renewed Hope Ministries, his wife and their 100 parishioners have pledged money to the Botswana church and a second church in Zimbabwe planted by the same pastor, the Rev. Future (as he’s known to Hill). The money pays for church and business planting.

Yet this holiday season, grim news has given Hill’s church a new task: To pay the hospital bills for the pastor’s three daughters, who contracted cholera, a serious diarrheal disease that’s sickening tens of thousands of Zimbabwean villagers.

Based on reports from the Rev. Future, Hill estimates the death toll is far greater than recent American news reports on the epidemic suggest. A Dec. 26 statement from the World Health Organization said nearly 25,000 cases of cholera have been reported in Zimbabwe, including 1,518 deaths.

The Rev. Future’s daughters are critically ill. And Hill’s congregation is looking for a holiday miracle.

“Pray, pray, pray … and then pray,” Hill wrote Dec. 4 in an e-mail to church.

So far, the church has donated $1,000.

Hill’s overseas outreach started seven years ago when he and his wife, Kristi, were praying for ways to start an international ministry. At about the same time, Hill received an invitation to Africa from a Kenyan church leader visiting the Portland metro area.

After traveling overseas and attending a church conference in Botswana, Hill met the Rev. Future.

“He walked over to me and said, ‘I want you to come to my village,’” he said.

Hill took the prompting as a sign the church was his new mission. He started taking twice-yearly trips to Botswana to help create an orphanage, businesses and schools to sustain Future’s family. These resources also provided jobs for villagers.

As the new ventures took form, the Rev. Future’s family decided to open a church in their native country of Zimbabwe. The village of Mvuma was poverty-stricken, with few jobs and no readily available food.

For the past two years, Hill traveled to Mvuma to help plant the church, start a general store and build homes. His work continues.

On Dec. 3, Hill got both a call and e-mail from the Rev. Future detailing his youngest daughter’s bout with cholera. The 10-year-old nearly died before her father managed to get her to a faraway hospital.

On Dec. 22, Hill learned that Future’s two 17-year-old daughters contracted cholera while at their boarding schools in Zimbabwe. The last he heard, on Dec. 23, the father was driving them to an out-of-town hospital for treatment.

All they can do is hope and pray for the family that Hill says is now like his own.

Hill can’t visit anytime soon because he’s sent all the money he has to pay hospital bills.

“I am stepping out in faith today,” Hill wrote in the e-mail to his congregation. “If we all do something … we will have helped avert a tragedy.”

Laura McVicker: 360-735-4516 or laura.mcvicker@columbian.com.