So, we pulled up on the side of a dirt road in the middle of Mozambique the other night after dark, parked the truck, and got out. There were no streetlights, but the fires going on the side of the road, coupled with the headlights, gave us enough light to set up. There were people milling about outside of the numerous bars lining the road on either side, but they walked up when they saw Americans climbing out of the back of the trucks.
We had gotten used to the set up the night before, so we all got to work setting up the projector and the makeshift movie screen. The crowds around us began to grow as curiosity set in. Right from the beginning, I felt like this would be a night of spiritual warfare and heaviness, and went right into praying in the Spirit under my breath as I mingled among the people.
We started out with African praise and worship music set to scenes of African nature on the big screen. Surprisingly, in a crowd of bar-goers, they didn’t seem to mind the worship music or make fun of it in any way. In fact, some people in the front, though slightly intoxicated, were dancing a little to the beat.
A man caught my eye and I grabbed two of the girls on the team to go and pray with me near him. His eyes were rolled back in his head and he was swaying and stumbling around in the middle of the crowd. We prayed over him discreetly as he stood there swaying. I was ready for anything really, but I assumed it would eventually escalate to him making some kind of scene. He was rocking back and forth, then all of a sudden he straightened up, turned on his heels, and walked right past me and out of the crowd entirely, as if he was fine! He never returned. It was amazing! I mean, we had all been praying, but I think it caught us off guard at how quickly and completely the Lord answered our prayers and sent the enemy packing! We had just been praying against any spirits that shouldn’t be there to flee, and we literally watched it happen!
After a few songs, it was time to do what we had come to do. We were there to show the movie “The Passion of the Christ”. I had my own assumptions as to how this would go, especially because the people on the streets had no notice that we were coming, but also because we didn’t have the movie in their language. We had to have an interpreter translate the movie word for word as it played! My role was just to keep praying and walking through the throngs of people who continued to show up and stand in front of the screen to watch.
As the movie progressed and the night went on, a few things struck me. For one, the temperature kept dropping, and the people were wearing a lot less clothing than I was, but nobody seemed to care. Also, nobody was talking. I was astonished to find no one laughing, nobody making fun of it, nobody really distracting anyone else at all. Some people had chosen to sit on the ground, but for the most part, there were hundreds of people just standing up watching this 3 hour movie.
There were people on either side of the screen watching, and I crossed over at one point and felt that I was to just stand there. After about 5 minutes, a young boy (about 9 or 10 years old) came from the other side of the screen, walking right towards me. He stopped about 2 feet from me, faced the screen, and resumed watching the movie. I thought this was a little odd, since he could see perfectly from where he had come from. I just went back to praying until the Lord asked me to reach out my hand and touch the boy. I didn’t know why, but I knew I needed to make contact with him. I reached out, rather awkwardly I must admit, and patted his back a few times. He looked at me for a second, then went back to the watching the movie. I felt like I had been obedient, but the Lord wouldn’t let it go! The boy inched closer to me, never taking his eyes off of the screen. Again I reached out and patted his back, this time letting my hand rest on him. He didn’t move, so I started to pray over him silently as we stood there. Little by little he moved closer until he was standing directly in front of me, leaning back into me slightly. I knew he must be cold, and it was about 2 hours into the movie already, so I sat down and pulled him into my lap. He didn’t struggle or even seem to notice.
I don’t know why I found this whole thing so odd. Maybe it’s because we hadn’t made contact before the movie started. Maybe it’s because he wasn’t a 5 year old I could just cuddle and think nothing of it. Here was this 10 year old boy who had made a beeline for me, almost like he had been drawn magnetically to me without knowing why. And there we sat, on the side of the road in Mozambique, watching the depiction of Jesus dying on the cross to free us both from our sin and shame. It’s true what they say, “The ground at the foot of the cross is level”. There were no distinctions between us as we watched Jesus suffer and die. We were there, an American girl and a little African boy, huddled together in the cold African night, comforting each other during the really graffic scenes of Jesus’ death. And his eyes never left the screen.
After the movie ended, I got up, and my new little sidekick walked with me to where everyone was being gathered for the altar call. Some of his little friends saw me with my arm around him and started to make fun of him, but he clung to me. He just stood with me quietly, and at one point he wrapped his little arm around my leg. We stood there as people went forward to give their lives to Jesus and the rest of the crowd scattered. Finally I felt a release…like whatever was supposed to have happened with me in this little boy was accomplished. I’d love to say that I know what that whole thing was about, that he ended up giving his heart to God or getting healed. But nothing like that happened. I simply knelt down, hugged him and prayed over him again, then walked away. When I turned back to wave goodbye, he was already gone.
I have no idea what happened in his heart that night or why he was sent to me, but I know I was right where I was supposed to be. If he was the reason I went to Mozambique, the trip was worth it, which doesn’t make sense to my normal thinking. I saw no change in his life, no results for my efforts, but I know in my spirit that something was exchanged between us. God did something in both of us, and I don’t ever have to understand it. I can only hope that one day in Heaven that little boy will come up to me and I will get to hug him again.
