Bondia (Bone-dee-a) from Chimoio, Mozambique!
This month of ministry has been quite different from the others. Team LOL was paired with team RAJ this month and placed in Chimoio at Life Church. We stayed with a wonderful family who opened up their front yard for us to camp in front of. The wife was 9 months pregnant and the husband worked all day and then went to University at night. Jacques who was their house help was constantly doing things for us. Partnering with Life Church, we have also been visiting a local orphanage to paint the buildings and play with the children there. Life Churches have been planted all over Africa but this specific church was planted only 8 months ago. Being new to the city, we were placed here to get their church up and running by inviting people to church… the only problem is there is a huge language barrier. Most of the people in Mozambique only speak Portuguese so talking, inviting people, etc. has been really difficult. For me, this month has been discouraging in the fact that I feel like my efforts to help others are extremely lacking compared to my other months. I know that you can make ministry wherever you are at but it was my first time evangelizing. We spent a lot of this month making friends. We visited a hotel frequently for their chocolate mousse and wifi in addition to making friends with the waiters and bartenders there. We visited this little café named Café Chimoio where a man who happened to be Muslim owned it. I personally tried to make friends with this man that lived in heaps of trash bags. He wasn’t too interested and because I didn’t get him to go to church, I feel as I failed miserably. I felt like if I could just get him to go to church he would be taken care of after we left but each Sunday he couldn’t make it. This past month may have been difficult for me but I also got to experience some wonderful opportunities.
We got to uplift the brand new church in the area. We became spiritually uplifted from the congregation’s sincere faith. They would dedicate their Friday and Saturdays to walk the streets of their city and pray for it. I can’t say I have ever done that for my own hometown. The owner of Café Chimoio said that we brought this light into his shop and that it has been busy ever since he arrived. We later found out that he was the brother of the owner who came into the shop to help boost business for a couple of months. Little did he know that we would be there to buy water, coffee, and peri peri chicken pizza… almost daily. Some of the people that we invited to church showed up the last Sunday and gave their hearts to the Lord. None of them were people I invited but the excitement of my teammates was contagious. The pairing of the teams and the inviting people to church became very tiresome to me but I think that this month was more of a realization that I am not going back to America anytime soon.
This is the closest thing to the Africa I had always imagined. There were men riding around with goats laying across their handlebars of their bikes. There was no running water. We filled buckets outside the house to flush the toilets, wash our hands, and to shower in. We walked to town which was about a thirty minute walk when it wasn’t in our budget to take transportation which happened to be frequently. When blowing my nose, dirt would also accompany my boogers from the red dirt when walking in the streets. The permanent smell of fish in the market that has been sitting outside all day in the heat. The women walking with baskets of fruit to sell on the streets. The traditional clothing. The babies strapped to their backs. I got sick from drinking the water by accident. The babies in the streets that would have flies landing on them while their mother tried to make a living on the market. The absence of trash receptacles left trash to be discarded on the streets, anywhere you pleased. All hours of the night a rooster that sounded like a dying animal would crow. Dogs that looked like they could keel over at any moment were just walking the streets. Riding in the bus with chickens in the seat next to you. Men making kissing noises at you. Children showering outside their houses in broad view. Sitting on bamboo mats on the floor. Markets with people sitting on tarps with their belongings spread out willing to sell them. Fresh vegetables sold every day. The hand carved wooden pieces. I could list so many different things but all reigned to be true, I was not in America anymore. Nothing is wrong with this kind of living, it was beautiful in many ways. It was just so different from home.
The thought of home crept into my mind a lot while in Mozambique. The honeymoon stage of the race was starting to wear off. I definitely wouldn’t say that I wanted to quit the race by any means but for the first time while being gone, I would have rather been at home than where I was at. Looking back on it, I am sure that it was because it wasn’t my favorite month. It stretched my patience in many areas. As I started to think about home, the more ambiguous it sounded. What did home look like to me? Was in Illinois in my childhood home, the rental I lived in for six months, the college I just graduated from, or the home in Wyoming I lived in for a week and a half? You start to think of the things you left behind and you realize that everything that you abandoned was familiar. Nothing was out of the ordinary. Weighing more on this, I left things that were easier for me. Things that I understood. Things that were routine. I by no means was feeling sorry for myself but I was starting to think why I traded a closet full of clothes, family, work, holiday celebrations, weddings, and freedom of my time for something so irregular. I even started to feel guilty for thinking why I did this as I was sitting in an area of Africa that doesn’t even have mailing addresses and running water. Ashamed that I longed for material items, hugs from my dearest ones, to drive a car, washing machine/dryer, my mother’s cooking as I stood in the streets of Mozambique with children leading their blind mothers through the square. WHY ON EARTH am I not more grateful!?! I needed to get over myself and fast. I kept reminding myself that I was so lucky to be on this trip, for people who financially made it possible for me to be here, and that people don’t normally get to leave the US in their lifetime but still I ached for something normal to show itself.
I was quickly reminded of the story of fishers of men. You know the one when Jesus asked Andrew and Simon-Peter to follow him. “They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will make you fishers of men.’ At once they left their nets and followed him.”
Then Jesus went to James and John, another set of brothers. They were also fishing. “They were in a boat with their father, Zebedee preparing their nets. Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him. (Matthew 4:18-22)
It dawned on me that not one of them questioned where they were going, how they were getting there, how they were going to make a living, what they were going to be doing, what they were going to eat, where they were going to sleep, etc. All the what ifs of the world didn’t even phase them because they just choose immediately to follow Jesus. Not one of the four of them asked Jesus, “Okay sure but why?”
I can’t say that this tale in the bible instantly fixed my problem but it definitely put it into perspective. Sometimes the whys, what ifs, and wheres of the world get in the way of what God’s plan is. There is no moral of the story here but just meditate more on that story. They left with Jesus without any questions. What are you questioning that is better left unquestioned?
