Greetings Friends & Family,
I need to start off by saying thank you for all the prayers for my family and our team over the past two weeks. I know your prayers moved hearts and protected us, but only eternity will tell the full extent. We left on the 18th and traveled to the Zambezi River on the first day and slept there for a few hours then crossed the ferry at day break. The second day we stopped in Quelimane were we stayed with some missionary friends. We arrived in Gurue 2200km and three days later. Saururua is the village where Dinis is from, it is about two hours off the paved road from Gurue, in some of the most beautiful mountains.
The team was made up of five people Raul, Juca, Dinis, Melvin, and myself. Juca and Raul are the ECC coordinators. Melvin is an OMS missionary. He is an engineer from Ireland and is in charge of all construction on this field. Dinis came to Maputo in 2000 to continue his education. He was not expecting to come to the knowledge of Christ, and return to his village to plant churches, but we serve a mighty God. Through the seminary here and much training & discipleship over the next four years of his life Dinis felt the call back to reach his village and the greater Zambezia province for Christ. He is an ECC team member and was a leader in the Sao Damaso church here in Maputo province.
We were welcomed at the village school by some of the church body in song. We had a great time meeting each one and Dinis’s family. After some time of fellowship we got settled into our home for the next week. In that part of Mozambique the houses are constructed from mud bricks that are baked then mud is used as mortar, and grass roofs. We then prepared to showed the Jesus Film, where approximately 300 people attended. There where about fifteen people that came forward that day to accept. The next day we showed the film again and about 1000 to 1200 people came, and around 25 people came forward to accept Christ, but none came to church the next Sunday. The seed was planted and He does the growing.
The rest of the week we settled into a structured training program with the leaders and church body in two different classes that were held everyday. The classes would range from 2 to 4 hours each and there were great steps taken by each person in their commitment to follow Christ. There is a need for training and understanding of Scripture amongst all the people in that community. The language spoken there is Lamwe, and currently only the New Testament is available in there language. There is hope to have the complete Bible in Lamwe in the next year or two.
There is a hug misunderstanding of Scripture and Christianity in this country. It is wide spread, but these last couple weeks just confirmed my personal convictions of training nationals to reach their country. That has been OMS’s commitment from the start, and is true here. Religion here is common but the understanding is shallow. One might say I am an evangelical Christian, but that means little to me now until we have a chance to talk about their faith and understanding of Gods Word. In our first few weeks in Mozambique a person told me that, ones faith here is a mile wide and inch deep. This is now becoming a reality to me.
We lived as nationals and thank God for the opportunity. It gave us great insight to the life of the average person. The women there work very hard, and are not treated fairly in my opinion. The poverty level in that province is below the national average, but they have great soil for farming. Each family grows much of its food needs, and goats and chicks are common to see running around the huts. Medical attention is a day’s journey away by foot or 4-5 hours by bike. We did have the chance to serve the role of an ambulance a few times in our time there. On one of the occasions we transported a person a 2 hour journey through the mountains. He had been diagnosed with a “blood disease that has no cure”, most likely AIDS. At the end of the trip we had the man settled in on the floor of his house and Dinis shared the gospel to him and his family very boldly. They had all the scares and paraphernalia of traditional worship, but that seemed to only make Dinis more passionate in his words to the family. We prayed with them and returned to Saururua in time for training.
This was truly a life changing experience for me. God changed me and grew me through this adventure, and as we shared on the way home each person that went was changed by the Master discipler. You can not help but see His hand in all the work started there and pray for his continued guidance and protection as we move forward in that beautiful place. Please email me with any questions you might have. I could write for days about the people and adventures over the past couple weeks, but do not want to bore you with all the details.
Ooh, I do have one funny language story to share. While traveling through the mountains one day we came across some people hunting with some rather large spears. So… I stopped to talk with them in hopes of getting a photo of them. So what would you naturally ask? What are you hunting? So I started in with the questions… I thought I asked them “are you hunting monkeys” (macaco – monkey in portuguese), but what I said was mussuco (meaning white person in Lamwe)….. The scary thing is that he just shook his head up and down….. I did not realize what I had said until I shared the story with the other people on the team later the next day. (there is a photo of the hunters below)
Prayer Requests:
- Please be praying for Dinis and his new ministry, Spiritual warfare, safety, strength – both physical and spiritual.
- Sao Damaso - that someone inside the church would rise up and help with the church in Dinis’s absence
- For the people of Saururua and the neighboring villages, that this church could be a light to the community and a start of a great movement of the Spirit on the province.
- Please pray for the seminary students here and the construction project that is in the funding process.
- Pray for the ECC teams working here and their training and application of the Word.
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