Our time in Arusha, Tanzania, running the Celebrating Children’s Workshop, was an absolute highlight. I had expected this letter to capture that. But then there was a terrible road accident. Our dear friends, John Mukolwe and Vicent Kazungu, were killed along with ten others. John and Vicent were 2 of Loom’s critical partners in East Africa. We have decided to use this article to honor our friends and capture a little of their essence.
We honor John Mukolwe:
How do we capture who this man was? A friend told me that he explained John like this. If God decided that a second ark was necessary, John would be Noah. And he would ask God if he is sure he only needs two of everything. John’s heart was that there was always room for more … one more widow, one more child in school, one more clinic, one more girl protected, one more hour of prayer and sharing with one more person about Jesus.
I first met John Mukolwe in South Africa in 1998. He attended a course with his wife, Jacinta, and their daughter 10-month-old Miracle, who had just started walking. Miracle adopted me first, following me around the campus. We all became friends. Years later, John attended the Celebrating Children Workshop in Portland, Oregon. John deeply loved Jesus and had a radical commitment to widows and orphans. As a speaker at a Loom Banquet, I remember him reciting the William Booth quote, which captured his motivation and compass
“While women weep, as they do now,
I’ll fight
While little children go hungry, as they do now,
I’ll fight
While men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now,
I’ll fight
While there is a drunkard left,
While there is a poor lost girl upon the streets,
While there remains one dark soul without the light of God,
I’ll fight-I’ll fight to the very end!”
And that is what he did.
John initiated projects across Tanzania and Western Kenya to care for widows and orphans. In Engikaret, Tanzania, he launched a school that now has over 400 pupils. He fed children from Pokot, Kenya, where he had recently started work, in Matala, Tanzania, where a new preschool started, and back to Tanga on the coast where they pioneered. He had a huge heart, constantly seeking out the forgotten and neglected places.
Others knew him because of his strategy to end childhood marriage by keeping children in school so they could be protected. He had a slow, wise approach of working with communities that would sell their daughters saying, “Give me 20 years here, and they will do it no more.” We could list the names of girls he rescued, but we would run out of space.
Others would tell of John and his boxes for widows – ensuring at Christmas that widows had flour, oil, tea, matches, sugar – a box of basics to testify that God has not forgotten them. He also built broken-down homes, seeing widows often take care of grandchildren in a safe home again.
When we arrived in Arusha – many times over eight years, and walked out of the airport, he would be there to fetch us. We would drive the 60-90 minutes back to the YWAM training center, and Jacinta would welcome us into our “home” for the time we were there. They were our neighbors and we would hear laughter, sometimes loud prayers, and endless knocks on their door – with a resounding “Karibu” (you are welcome) in response.
John loved God, his family, and his friends. He was equally partnered by his wife Jacinta and was so proud of his children – his daughters, Miracle and Faith, and his son, Promise. He was a father to many others, working with all his might so that no child went to bed hungry, every child thrived.
We honor Vicent Kazungu
John was a man who invested in younger leaders, one of whom was Vicent Kazungu. Vicent was a senior leader in Arusha. In choosing to follow Jesus, he had to leave his home as a teenager. He was married to Mary, and together, they worked to understand how to be a family and meet the unending needs that are literally on their doorstep in Africa. They were pioneering a new project hours away in Matala. Despite being rejected by his family, he still pursued a relationship with them and, at the time of his death, had been given the responsibility of paying for the education of three of his brothers. When we asked, “How did this come to be? You were kicked out of your home, yet you are now educating your brothers?” He simply explained that he wanted to model Christlikeness, not responding as expected but loving them by modeling Jesus. The cost was high – financially, emotionally, and mentally. I remember a prayer time when he just wept before the Lord, handing over bearing the weight of all he was doing and yet coming to peace at the feet of Jesus.
Vicent loved debating everything, with a big smile and an easy laugh. The Bible, life, African politics and strategy. I had a long heart-to-heart conversation with him just a week before he died, and we discussed the challenges he was facing, the future of African mission and leadership. Vicent was a worship leader. I remember how the Tanzanians stood up and sang “God Bless Tanzania” in Swahili, their national language, and how his powerful voice led the group. Walking past his home in the evenings, we would hear the family singing together as they had their devotions.
As a young Tanzanian mission leader, Vicent was setting a new course. He courageously went against the tide, fighting for work to be done well and finding African solutions to African problems. He was a strong thinker but not a theorist alone; he engaged hands-on with people and communities.
Vicent would laugh loudly and easily; he cared deeply for the lost, widows, orphans, and those who had no way forward. Vicent and Mary took care of their own two children, Theophila and Jed, his three brothers, and then many young women to keep them from being married off as child brides.
He was John’s second in ministry, with John telling him – “When I am old, you must do this work.” Vicent was smart, humble, funny and kind. He wanted great thinking, he loved greatly and we will never see the full reach of his capacity.
While Africa has lost an incredible leader, our prayers are with the Kazungu family – Mary lost her best friend and partner, and Theo and Jedd, their loving dad.
