All month I have found myself thinking back to a message my pastor once preached about stewardship. Using an illustration he said that often as we grow in our lives God gives us monkeys to take care of. At first we pour our energy into those little monkeys; we clean the cage daily, give them baths, tie bows around their necks and feed them buckets full of banana’s. Then one day your neighbour pulls into his yard with a large gorrilla in the back of his truck. Enviously you watch as he pushes a wheelbarrow full of banana’s up to the cage and starts tossing them to the gorrilla. Suddenly your little monkey starts to look just a little bit lame. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a gorilla?
Maybe you dream of doing something big for God, I know I do. For as long as I can remember I have dreamed of starting my own ministry in a land far, far away. At 23 I have a lot of ideas, energy and enthusiasm but I struggle with patience. I want to do everything now and see immediate results. I want my very own gorilla and I day dream about the fancy purple and gold top hat and matching vest I’m going to buy for him.
As I have spent time working alongside the boys here at Hope House I have realized that they too dream of having their own gorilla. They think about all the nice things that gorilla’s can do or all of the money they can make you. After all gorilla’s really do make very nice, practical pets.
And, why wouldn’t we want to start our own ministry, own a business or our very own house? All of those are really good, practical things. But they are also a very big responsibility. When I asked God for a gorilla, he asked me how my monkey was doing.
Well, honestly…
He’s a little skinny, his hair is matted and no one wants to go anywhere near the stench that is coming from his cage. Apparently I can’t have a gorilla until I can take care of my little monkey. Be faithful with a little and God will give you much.
The truth is if you own a gorilla you have to shovel a lot of crap and wheel a lot of bananas into the cage. It’s hard work. Not only are there big things to deal with there are a lot of little things that pile up and make it hard to get to those big things before they become really big things. It really isn’t something you can just jump into on your own. This month our team has lived with an amazing woman of God who has learned how to simply hold on, keep going and trust God to tame the gorilla.
Again and again we have watched Angie face trials and troubles that are continually circling back around to try and take her and her ministry down. Things that look kind of like this…
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-Popo (Angie’s son) goes to the internet provider to try to get the internet fixed. It comes on for about an hour, long enough for Popo to get back home, and then goes off again.
-Popo goes to run errands and pick up more supplies so that our team, along with the boys from Hope House can finish a construction project on the house. Goal number one – running water in the kitchen.
-Our team and the boys tear apart the kitchen and create holes in the wall so that the room is prepped for when Popo comes back. Meanwhile no one has heard from Popo…
-The day goes on… We’ve done all we can do in the kitchen so we send the boys out to the field to pick rocks so we can extend the garden.
-Evening. Angie finally gets a text from Popo. First he ran into trouble in town trying to move a shipment of coal across the boarder, no time to pick up supplies. Then, on the way back his car broke down. It is now dark outside and he’s stranded in… Popo’s phone dies.
-The next day. Someone goes outside the house and realizes that the sewage has backed up in the yard. The only one who knows how to fix it is Popo… No one has heard from Popo…
-Cole’s knowledge in plumbing finally comes into play. He figures out that the reason the sewage is backed up is because when the tank was constructed the drain to the sewage field was placed too high. In order for the drain to work the sewage would have to be close to the same level as the house. Instead of picking rocks the boys get to learn about sewage tanks!
-Next morning – The truck arrives and starts to pump the tank. A man comes in and asks for money. A few costly communication errors later and the tank is pumped…mostly.
-Angie bakes peanut butter cookies to make everyone feel better.
-We laugh at the stupid things we had to deal with all day until we can’t breathe and there’s a very real chance we just might pee our pants.
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That’s a typical day here a Beacon of Hope. Sometimes it feels like people are just running in circles trying to get ahead but Angie doesn’t allow it to get her down. She knows that God has called her to Mozambique and she believes in the vision he’s given her for Beacon of Hope. There are a million other things that Angie could be doing with her life – she could be living comfortably in a nice house back in the states working as a nurse – but she knows she is exactly where God needs her to be.
It’s hard, it’s stressful and often what she deals with is unfair but Angie is not fighting a losing battle. Her ministry here is breaking down walls and setting people free. Each of the 7 boys living in the Hope House made a decision to accept Christ as their Saviour during the first week that we were here. In the weeks that followed our team watched as each one of them began to blossom and grow in their faith.
The truth is the people here at Beacon of Hope are fighting a battle not just for the success of the ministry and the lives of the boys who come to Hope House but for all of Mozambique. The boys they take in are going to become nation changers, men of a generation of truth seekers. They are going to become a catalyst for radical change. And, as lame as it sounds, right now the main battle they are fighting is to care for their own little monkeys.
God has big plans for each of them but for right now he has given them smaller responsibilities and battles to win. Like David they’re going to have to fight a lot of bears and kill a few lions before they step into the roles they’re meant to walk in. For example they have to finish school and they have to take the program here at Beacon of Hope seriously in order to save money to invest in their business when the finish.
I too have a few lions and bears to wrestle with. Beacon of Hope is so similar to what I hope to one day create and through working here with Angie I have realized how much work it’s going to take to see that happen. I spent a good deal of my time here writing curriculum and coming up with teaching strategies and lesson plans. All of those tasks presented me with problems and questions I would not have thought through if I was coming up with a plan back home.
Each new problem I was faced with pointed me to my own little monkeys that will need to be fed and cared for in the years to come. This will be the hardest ministry to leave so far. I have become so comfortable here in Mozambique, our whole team has literally become a part of Angie’s family, but I know that there is more for me to discover in the 3 months I have left and I’m ready and excited to find out just what those new discoveries are.
