Mozambique Africa.
I’ve grown up with images of Africa in my head. The land, the animals, and the people. It hits hard when it’s exactly what you imagined and so much more. It’s not a movie when you see groups of kids playing together in dirty clothes, unfinished concrete brick homes, scrap metal roofs, scrap metal for anything like fences, doors or pot hole covers. The heat that causes you to sweat uncomfortably and no one has air conditioners. Bumpy dirt roads with huge dirty water puddles. Large amounts of people walking everywhere, women walking with buckets on their heads and babies tied to their backs. The local market swarming with kids to help you carry your food and vendors insisting you buy their food. Loud and busy.
It’s a beautiful and broken place.
Christianity is crossed with many other religions and confused with witch craft. The churches teach what they’ve heard instead of what they read in the Bible.
I could go on and on about the culture but I want to share how important this ministry, Beacon of Hope, is to the community and the boys themselves. It all started 17 years ago when Angie Wheeler left her home in Texas to start a boys home in Mozambique, Africa because of a vision God gave her. “Beacon of Hope – Africa (BOHA) is a home for teenage boys located in Mozambique, Africa. It exists to empower young men to break free from the bondage of poverty through education, life skills training, and the love of Christ. As these boys transform, they become men of integrity, honor, grace, and courage. They leave with not only an education to make a way for a promising career but also the knowledge of who they are in Christ.” That’s what the website describes to you and I would too if I had to summarize. If you sat down with Angie and heard about the men in this culture you would know why God placed her here to make a difference for these boys. The boys have no examples of good men of character in their culture and community. What Angie and her staff are really teaching these boys is Truth. One of the things Miss Angie wants them to learn is right and wrong, lies vs truth and being able to stand up and make the right and best decisions. Because of the stigma of men who steal and lie to get ahead, Miss Angie’s stories break my heart. Her prayer for her boys is to one day be men of character and faith in the midst of their surroundings. Why these 11 boys have the opportunity to live here at Beacon of Hope shows Gods love for them.
They are hard working little men who work hard and play hard. They wake up at 5am to start chores, cleaning, taking care of the grounds, they help cook, play with the dogs, have classes here in the afternoon and are now staring school at nights as well. But most importantly they LOVE soccer or ‘football’ as I am always corrected. They have so much fun together, it’s a small brotherhood. One of their favorite activities is dancing, we’ve had a few African dance parties where they sing, play drums on gasoline buckets, and make the funniest faces! They’ve got moves. I can’t help but laugh and smile and join in. They love being silly and really just being themselves.
What our WorldRace teams have been doing is teaching the afternoon classes this month! Bible class, art class, English class, God’s world class, sport class, and more. I’ve had the opportunity to help teach English (who would have thought that!) with two of my teammates Amy and Ari. It’s surprising how much they want to learn English. It’s cool that this class doesn’t end, we are with them all day and learn from each other how to communicate, just without a translator this time. I’ve messed up saying goodnight by saying good morning in Portuguese enthusiastically at 9pm at night. More laughs. We also have had the opportunity to bless our hosts with a women’s night where we washed their feet, painted their nails, gave them food, and read proverbs 31, we thanked them for everything they have done and for the examples they have shown us, and we shared a few testimonies. It was an amazing night for the girls:) We have helped with chores and cleaning. Doing the dishes in the kitchen on a hot day feels like a furnace. Lots of extra helping hands.
Fernando is the oldest boy and is the leader of the pack, he loves Jesus and asked if he could share a message for our church service. He wants everyone to know what Miss Angie has taught him here. He read Matthew 12:28-34 in Portuguese which describes Jesus answering how we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind, and with all our strength and to love our neighbors as ourself. He thanked us for doing that and asked us all to tell others too. He said he didn’t know how to love his neighbors but now that he knows how much Jesus loves him, he can love. It was simple and I could feel the tears coming. These boys have had it hard growing up but here at Beacon of Hope they have just that. Hope. They have food, education, provision, and skills to one day use them for good. I will be continually praying for these boys to experience Christ’s Love and to be difference makers, in their future families, future jobs and future life.
It’s hard thinking of leaving in a week but while we are here our world race teams are going to be doing what God has called us to do here at Beacon of Hope no matter how big or small.
Side note! Community living! At training camp and launch we had so many classes about being the church and what that looked liked in the early church, passages like Ephesians 4 and Acts 2. Now, we have gotten to experience it in raw community. 9 girls, one bathroom and toilet that may or may not work depending on the day. Thank the lord the boys have their own bathroom. One room to put our tents up and share because there is not enough space. We share with open hands. We eat together, clean together, Laugh a lot together, get sunburns together, minister together, pray together, cry together. Not going to lie it’s hard, I’m quite the independent person and so are my teammates and it’s been challenging for us all to not just work together but to walk out this journey together and call each other out of the life we were living to the one God has in store. Are we going to like each other all the time? Probably not, but when a challenge arises we have faced it together with truth and love. God has placed our team specifically together, I’m learning so much from everyone. I can only thank the lord because I’m not the person I was when I left 3 weeks ago.
I’m learning listening prayer, how to walk in the Spirit, what my gifts are and how to use them, how not being in control is a good thing, humility, how to love and communicate with people who don’t speak the same language, how to share my testimony, learning to be disciplined, how to be who Christ has made me to be no matter who I’m with or where I am.
Thank you all for praying for this ministry and the boys. Thank you for supporting me and Thank you for praying for my team! We can feel it!:)
Love you all!:)
??Gabriella
p.s. pictures to come!
