God's story through Lenie

I am still learning to know her story and which I can tell it in detail.

I visited the farm with the name: "Mooiberg" where the Family church are doing God's work.

Lenie is a lady that I can see the potential to be a great influencer of the community. Two weeks before I talked to Lenie and asked her if she are not ready to share to others about what God teached her through her tough life as she endured and is growing as a christian. She responded immediately that the Lord is talking to her to start witnessing.
This Sunday during the service she stood up and started to share some of her story to about 20 people sitting there.

She told them about her alcoholic parents and the suffering she had to go through. Her mother tried to protect her, but she herself drink a lot. Lenie worked from a very young age and could not go to school. She later married and her husband was also an alcoholic. She handled it well, till the point when her daughter became the victim, that hurt to much. She could not protect her own daughter. As she was talking, her daughter was one of the members in the congregation as both of them came to the Lord. The Spirit of the Lord made her very enthusiastic about the new life, but she could not read the Bible. She so much wanted to read that book! On an age of 50 she started to sneak from the farm, to ashamed for the others to see, to the school a few kilometers from there. She sat with the grade one learners in the class and started to learn ABC. She told church how she Lord feed her from so many things. Today she is 54 years old and she wanted to share with everyone that she now can read Psalm 23 for the first time in her life. She picked up the Bible and started reading while we could not stop the tears. She told everyone that it is the work of the Lord and gave all the honor to Him.

On the other side of the hall, Bok was sitting and listening. The morning early I arrived and sat with him and his friends under a smoke coated little roof where they sit and drink cheap wine around a fire. I started talking to them and they told me how the business people sold them a 5 liter can of wine for R50. If you want to pay cash they ask them R60! You should have debt with them. Bok was somewhat drunk but told me that he is also going to chuch. He never missed a service. On that stage I did not believe him, but when I walked to the church he came along. I heard from the others that he never missed a service and that he is always playing the "tamboryn" with great enthusiasm. He even gave another to a girl to play with. Then he sits down very quietly listening to the message. The accept him totally and I believe that it must have an influence on his life.

Share the life of some Mozambican pastors

(For confidentially, the photos does not coordinate with descriptions of pastors and I joined some conversations heard in Mozambique).

To survive in Mozambique, it is crucial to have good relationships. To be insulted is to be killed, you life depends on relationships. The challenge now is because the Kingdom of God often brings you in conflict with your community.
"I know that I were sent to the community and that God called me here" one wise pastor explained. "The people belong to the church for a long time, but because of the remoteness, never had a permanent pastor. The pastors that visited here, were here for a few days on the most and could not build relationships with the community. I started here permanently 2 months ago and discovered that the members got used to some traditional ceremonies that do not fit with faith in Christ. People for example love to have a ceremony three days after a funeral where they give sacrifices to the forefathers. These ceremonies are deeply rooted in the culture and goes with deep emotions. In the culture you are not allowed to change anything. The one that brings about changes is disrupting the relationships and because of that is causing pain and suffering, like fighting, drought, accidents and death. This will cause that person to be expelled from the community and that is one biggest punishment anyone can get. It is better to die than being expelled. Explaining the consequences of the gospel any way may sometimes make you an enemy of the community.
To work in an community you have to became part of the life of the community and trust one another. The gospel of Christ will bring radical changes and God uses the life of His messengers. The message brings conflict into the culture when it changes customs. The messenger is part of that conflict and it can destroy the relationship. My strategy is to Biblical training and handle relationship with care. For the rest I have to trust the work of the Holy Spirit."

 

He continued: "Before I arrived an elder with his wife were in charge of the community. They were seen as the owners of the community and had built strong relationships with the community by also using traditional customs. I am now entering as a leader and is disrupting this fixed community. They as leaders are hurting and are sometimes  already reacting negatively. This can make it impossible for me to work in Lugela. I need to interact wisely and out of Christ's love. Some things need to change,  but the important thing is the way it happens. Pray with me."

A pastor also shared: "The relationship between me as a pastor and the elders are very important, because the Lord use this relationship. This relationship can make or destroy a congregation. I work in a area of up to 100km from side to side. It sometimes takes 3 days of walking to reach some of the prayer houses, because many times other transport is not possible. You have to sleep along the road, sometimes with people you know and sometimes you just have to find a place for the night."

This pastor told us how he walked three days to a meeting and found nobody there. He waited a few days and then walked back. He then walked around all the prayerhouses and arranged another training. They promised to pay his taxi fees for a certain date. He borrowed money and when arriving there, there were again no one. He had to walk back and find ways to pay back the money where he borrowed it. This is a challenge to continue and to try again. He sort of lost hope, but the visit from people from South-Africa gave him courage to go and talk again and find new strategies. 

Another pastor shared the relationship with the community. He serves the community when they are ill, carry some on his motorbike to the hospital, pray for them and explain God's goodness when they are afraid. I cry with them who are confronted with death and other pain. He have to give more attention to the once that are expelled from the community or from their families. Associating with the outcast, sometimes is risking yourself to be an outcast. To be expelled from the group is culturally the worst thing that can happen to you. An outcast is dead and there is a big fear for that. He explains that they as pastors are also struggling with this fear. He said: "We also get ill and we also need the community to survive." Their families are mostly out of reach. They are dependent on the community to give them food and money to life by. The fact that they have friends in South-Africa complicates it even more, because most people still think that the South-Africans are very rich and because they are friends, the pastor will share it. Therefore it is not necessary to give him anything. A pastor said:"I have maize from my own harvest, but do not have money to take it to the mill." Some families even have to stay days without food. One pastor told me that he can not give his children food before they leave for school and when they return they are very weak. This is the extreme cases, but relationships in this cultural setup is sometimes very complicated and you need a lot of wisdom to handle them as a christian leader.

The wifes of the pastors are living in very difficult. They stay in another culture and language group. The physical situation is not easy, with water that needs to be fetched from wells, sometimes no medical support, have to walk to serve in the congregation. To stay in another culture create very high stress levels. There were even attempts for suicide. 

In spite of all these, I am regularly encouraged by the amazing endurance that the Lord is giving his servants.

We can pray, we can visit. It is not our words or even gifts that encourage the most, but to be there in the name of the Lord. You hear them say: "Through your visit we know that the Lord did not forget about us."

Malnutrition of children in Mozambique and proposed solution

I am no expert on this, but I believe that malnutrition have a big influence on the developement of a child, especially in the forming years. I believe that any improvement here, can make a great improvement in the life of the people in Mozambique.

In Chili a whole community were changed by better nutrition for children and helping parents to stimulate the children. All this in the first 1000 days of a child's life. They found that this input changed crime in such a way that the jail's that were over capacity full, only have 20% occupation and many such changes.

They talk about Zambezia province. We have good contact with the church in this province and I know this province very well. There is a medical project that is supporting a doctor and then there is the Anamed project. They teach people how to produce and use medicinal plants. One plant they use for malnutrition is the Moringa tree that is miraculously hige in all the amino acids, Vitamins c, Calsium, Potasium and more. When used with malnourished children, the effect is close to miraculous.

This tree grows very well in Zambezia province and you even find it growing wildly in the veld.

If you use this and treating the medical world view of people, I believe we can make a big difference.

May be there are people touched by this challenge? I would help where I can in a initiative like this!

Look at this article in the paper:

allAfrica.com: Mozambique: 43 Percent of Children Chronically Malnourished

God used the Annlin Reformed Church in Mozambique

Annlin congregation drive from Pretoria and visited the first prayer house Niquide, where they plan to build a church building.

The congregation already has a relationship with the prayer house, and visit them to strengthen relationships and encourage them. They started the church building and found that the people there has very little background of construction and therefore it is not about the building of the church, but the development of people and their leaders. God gave us patience to not just do a job to finish it, but to focus on the process of development of people. Small successes become very important and we see Him working.

The minister's son comes along and his presence and personality helps a lot to reach children.

Annlin build relationships with evangelists and youth workers in Mocuba and here Elisa is proudly showing of her training certificate in children's work.

The team is part of people's lives, but they also have to make sacrifices!

I joint the team and my luggage were added on top!

Food is shared and we experience eating with our hands.

We visited the prayer houses with the pastor. Normally it take three days on foot to reach here.

The team helps with training especially with basic evangelism and where they request training on topics like families.

The real value of these visits is because it is remote places and the visit encourage the members. They see in the words of an old man "God still remembers us". Also the pastor get new energy to try again. He works under a lot of pressure, it is not easy to promote a Biblical kingdom in a very traditional kingdom. He afterwards testifies that the visit gave him new initiative to make new plans.
The team visit houses, pray for the sick and learn a lot about life in Mozambique.
The Theological student accompanied the team as a translator, but also as an gifted teacher. He teached the team about culture in an very honest way and lived Gods love.

The pastor told us facinating stories about the history of the work and about complicated relationships. He is confronted with immense challenges and we pleaded with Him with God for the people of Gile. Pray with us for Estévao Philima his wife and five children.

For a long time we will be grateful to have taps to open, you can then even drink the water!

To God the honor for a meaningful time with the people of Mozambique.