Yesterday we returned from a two-week adventure in Mozambique. We stayed with a church in a small community called Machava right outside of Maputo. Part of our time was spent painting rooms and digging a long ditch at a property down the street. The property is being prepared for a new YWAM base with an orphanage and the ditch will deliver water to the house! It was a lot of physical labor and tiring in the heat, but it was an enjoyable time talking with our group and also building a relationship with Alice and her son, Mahle, who are living on the property now. Mahle is almost 3 years old and full of energy. His desire was to help us, but when a 3 year old grabs a paint brush or hoe, there is no way to know where the adventure will take him! In addition to enjoying helping though, Mahle could play chase for hours so we would take turns chasing him. By the end of the time, he would come to me, whisper “Vamos a correr” which means, let’s run, and run off just giggling. One day, while I was chasing him, he kept falling and telling me he was tired, but when I asked if he wanted to sit down, he would enthusiastically say no and keep on running!
The other part of our ministry in Mozambique was helping with Youth For Christ’s work in an even smaller community than Machava. We went with Lauren to a church for a feeding program. When we drove into the community children ran from every direction to catch a ride with us in the bucky (that is what they call trucks here). Lauren said that on some days they pile 30-40 children in the back. They all are just thrilled to get a short ride, even if it is only 5 minutes. The church is a simple concrete building—no windows or doors or any furniture. About 100 children came and were fed a bowl of porridge. After each child was given a bowl, they put the pot the porridge was served from in the middle and the children sprinted to it to get as much of the scraps as they could. One of the most difficult parts of the feeding program though, was seeing young children, 4 or 5, carrying their younger siblings, 1 or 2, on their back. I watched one girl who shared a bowl of porridge with her sister. She would take one spoonful for herself, give her younger sister 3, and repeat it until the bowl was gone. Another girl fed her younger brother then turned and he jumped right on her back and I never saw him get off the entire time we were with them. Although it was difficult to see, John pointed out to me how much you can see that they care for one another. No one is alone and I think they demonstrate the brotherly love Jesus calls us to have with each other in a beautiful way.
After spending the morning with the children, we split into groups and went with a translator to visit homes. (They speak Portuguese and Shangan) Brittany and I visited four different houses and each was unique, yet similar in some ways. Each house was very formal in our visits. When we walked in, they greeted us and immediately found chairs for us to sit down in. Even when we visited a one-room house made out of straw and had a tin roof, the woman living there found water containers for us to sit on. Many of the houses we visited were broken families, with either no father or a father that worked very far away and only came home once in a while to give money. I would like to share with you the story of one particular house we visited. Living there was a mother and daughter. When we were first speaking to her, she wasn’t opening up much about her life. I asked her what growing up in the community was like and she said she enjoyed it very much. However, I really felt God was telling me to ask her what dreams or hopes she had for her young daughter. When I asked her the question, she opened up to us and her story broke my heart. Her husband works in a mine and comes home every other week. When he is home, he abuses drugs, which makes him a “mad man,” as the mother described to us, and he beats her and their young daughter. Her desire is to leave her husband for her daughter’s safety, but a fear is controlling her. Her husband’s uncle is involved in witchcraft and the husband has threatened to put a curse on their daughter if she leaves. We asked if her family supports her and she said they are too scared to say anything. We spoke with the mother and encouraged her that God is stronger and more powerful than any witchcraft. We talked with her about not allowing fear to control, but putting trust in Christ. Before we left, we prayed with her and she was very grateful, explaining that she was feeling hopeless with the situation. Not having grown up in a culture where witchcraft has any real influence, it is hard for me to understand how it can have such control over a person’s life. Hearing this woman speak though, broke my heart and gave me a taste of the power of lies being spoken to the communities. I know that God is more powerful and I know His heart is for them to experience the fullness of His love. So my prayer is that these families choose to turn to God and trust Him. I pray that God will work in her husband’s heart and change his life in a radical way, so their family may be united and their marriage could reflect God’s love for us.
While we were in Mozambique, we also had some time to explore. The community we were staying in was very small with bumpy dirt roads. A short walk from our house was a market where you could buy anything from a live chicken to fruits and vegetables or a deck of cards. We didn’t have any car to drive us around, so when we wanted to get into the city we had to find a chappa, which is a taxibus. Luckily we rented chappas to use because I do not know how I would have breathed in a normal chappa. The chappas are 15 passenger vans, but on average about 25 people squeeze into one! In one chappa all you could see was a bunch of butts pressed up against the windows. Other times, when we did not have to rent out a chappa, we were fortunate enough to make friends who drove us in their bucky, but that was never a dull experience either. As a group, we are now professionals at pushing a truck to get it started. We went to the beach one day and swam in the Indian Ocean and also were able to eat Mozambique prawns, which were delicious. Overall, the trip was wonderful! We are now staying here in South Africa for 2 days and on Wednesday morning we will leave to fly to Uganda for 4 ½ weeks.
