If there was one month that looked exactly like I imagined the World Race to be, it was most definitely Mozambique from beginning to end. Our first days in the country were spent in a van, driving for 54 hours on a route that was only supposed to take 20. We spent two nights sleeping upright in our seats parked on the side of the road, and one on the floor of a team’s ministry site. Finally, after what seemed like an endless ride with minimal food stops and even fewer bathroom stops, we arrived in Mafambisse, got a look at our home for the month, and were swarmed by a few dozen children speaking Portuguese and eager to see the Azungus (white people).
For the first two months we had beds, western toilets, and the ability to speak English with most people we encountered. This was no longer the case – we slept shoulder-to-shoulder on our sleeping pads, used a roofless squatty potty for both bathroom and shower business outside (which was admittedly nicer than most others we saw), and relied on our host, Peter, as our sole translator. If we wanted to go anywhere, we were walking or riding on the back of a motorbike.
Although our living situation was a bit rustic, the general format of the month wasn’t all that different that our previous too, including a little bit of everything. We livd at a children’s home, but the majority of our ministry took place off-site. Our first project was helping build a house for a woman from Peter’s church. We quite literally started from the ground up – as the house was built from the dirt and mud on the plot of land the church had purchase. We leveled the ground, pulled weeds, made the bricks from mud ourselves, spread mortar (which was also mud) with a machete, and worked out in the hot sun for a few hours each day even though the men from church would accomplish twice as much as we did.
We visited a hospital twice and made a handful of home visits to pray with people. This is where my resilience began to break down and the harsh realities of life here hit me smack in the face. Here I was, taking a pill once a day to keep myself from getting malaria, standing in a room with five people lying on metal hospital beds and suffering greatly. Some will die here. Our translation was minimal there so we hardly knew what was wrong with them even when they told us. But we prayed anyway, and at the end of each stint at the hospital, I was drained. I had so badly wanted a Book of Acts moment where one of these people would get up and walk, healed, but that never happened. What most definitely didn’t help were the loud voices of some of the church members, who declared that these people would be healed in the name of Jesus. It made me sick – I hated that these vulnerable people were being promised something that wasn’t a guarantee. I internally (and externally, just ask my teammates) struggled with the whole idea of physical healing and praying for healing for the remainder of our time in Mozambique and beyond. It became a recurring theme of my Race.
Other facets of our ministry revolved around Peter’s church, which was really just a canopy in someone’s front lawn. One of us would preach each Sunday (which we were not told about in advance on the first Sunday, giving Kyle maybe five minutes notice before giving an entire sermon) and there were a few other events here and there. Gretchen and I prepared teaching for a women’s meeting, only to arrive at the site, find out the event was cancelled, and walk two miles back home.
On another occasion we were supposed to speak at a leadership seminar, and the night before we were given our topics, never mind that we had nothing but our brains, our bibles, and a few hours to prepare. I ended up as the opening speaker with the subject of “Your kingdom come” and had no idea where to go with it. I still had no idea where I was going the day of, and gave a simple, poorly executed message peppered with robotic phrases including “The Kingdom of God is not literally a mustard seed. It is not literally a treasure hidden in a field.” Of all of my many speaking engagements on the Race, this was by far my worst, but the congregation didn’t think so – at least three times that weekend someone commented on “Sister Sarah’s word,” and from then on I was the designated prayer lady at every church event.
Danny and his well-prepared, excellent message on Saul and David, received no such acclaim. I felt bad for the guy, but hey, they told us the Race was unpredictable.
Our month ended on an interesting note. Since maybe the end of the first week we had been hearing about this thing called a “crusade,” and all we knew about it was that we would be participating in it. None of us had any idea what to expect, and I fully anticipated having to march through the streets holding up a sign while someone loudly preached in a language I couldn’t understand a word of, save for “Señor Jesus.” Needless to say, I was relieved to find out that this was more of an outdoor church service/evangelism event, but it was far from anything I’d ever been part of.
On the first day, even though everything was translated for us, I was utterly confused. Speaker after speaker, a whole lot of screaming in tongues, and some choreographed dance numbers that we somehow got pulled into… I was quite relieved when Gretchen took the stage. She and I had both volunteered to speak on healing during this crusade, and this seemed to be a central theme of the event, because at the end of the night the attendees were instructed to come onstage if they wanted healing. My teammates and I – the resident white missionaries – were to pray for anyone who wanted it, and never mind that they had all been told that Jesus would heal them. No pressure, right?
It never seemed to end – the second I finished praying for someone, knowing absolutely nothing about them, two more would kneel in front of me. I felt like I was offering false hope, albeit unwillingly, and I didn’t like that it was only the seven Americans who did the praying, as if our prayers held more weight. At one point we were told to “ask our president to send more bible study groups to Mozambique” and were also given a speech about how once we were done with Mozambique, we needed to go to Zambia, and Malawi, and Zimbabwe, and the rest of Africa. I am no one’s savior, but sometimes it seemed like people looked at us that way.
Good old Mozambique… while it was one of my most difficult months on the Race, it also proved to be an important one. It was a month where God revealed some ugly pieces of my heart that needed to be dealt with, where I grappled with questions that I otherwise might not have asked, and where I got an authentic, unfiltered look at how people live their lives in a part of the world many will never see.
In other news… this series will be the last set of posts on this blog. Once all eleven are posted, I will move over to a new website. Stay tuned!
