Here I am in Quelimane, Mozambique. It’s our day off and we came into town to explore and get our first hint of wifi for the month. We were all so excited for the chance to get online and talk to our families, check up on friends and for some of us, Sarah, check football scores! haha. We’ve been here for a little over a week and it took us 56 hours, 19 times being stopped by the police for one reason or another, 4 hours sleeping on the side of the road in the van, and a blown tire to drive here from Swaziland. We arrived in time to set up our tents on the playground/ field behind the primary school where we are staying before it got dark, then we ate some delicious soup, our first real food that wasn’t snack foods since leaving Swazi then we all passed out for the night. The next morning all but Laura, Hannah and I went into the city for church while we stayed behind for the local church service. That is where I learned that in the rural areas they speak their own separate language, Schwabo, which is a mixture of a little bit of Portuguese and African dialect. The pastor had a translator for us and there were times where he would speak in Schwabo, then have to translate into Portuguese for the translator to understand before he could then translate it into English. Talk about a new experience, I loved it! There were traditional drums, lots of clapping, dancing and loud singing to start and end the service. After the service our new friend Mangueli picked us up to take us into the city for lunch at the pastors house and night service. The rest of the day was filled with lots of laughter and new friends. I bounced between I don’t know how many conversations translating for people and getting to know bits and pieces about everyone. It felt like being back in Brazil again and that made me so happy I can’t even explain. Also, apparently Quelimane is known as Little Brazil which is just the cherry on top of the cake.
The next day we had our first day off which we spent sleeping in a little to recover from our long road trip here, doing laundry and having team time to talk about everything from last month so that we could move on and being completely focused on our ministry here. On Tuesday the pastors wife came and met with us to explain more of what we will be doing this month and assigning us to different projects for the week. The church runs a school in Namuinho which is about 20 minutes outside of the city and all of the teachers are church members who not only teach school but also have a weekly Bible study with their classes. We are partnering in the school and community doing different projects such as painting, mudding houses, working in the schools garden helping with their agriculture class or working in public health which is what I did.
I spent the week working with a woman named Stella who is in charge of the public health area for the church and community. We did house visits where we would check to see if the family had a bath house, mosquito nets, proper place to use the bathroom, a drying table for dishes, etc. If they didn’t then we would schedule a time to come and help build it for them. We also went to different classes at the school on Tuesday and Thursday to teach about hygiene and then check the overall health of the kids in the class, weight, height, BMI, then also check to see if they had any other problems such as discolored eyes, teeth, scabies, swollen lymph nodes, etc. During all of this I played the part of the translator for the others on my team who were helping out. It was a good experience for me, not only being able to go into the community to see it and work with the people living there but also to be a translator. It was also very hard for me, one because of all the medical phrases and words that I didn’t understand on both sides of the language so I had difficulty translating, and two because it was overwhelming at times to have so much going on and feeling so much responsibility in being the translator. That was something me and my team had to have a talk about, which was mostly them telling me that it isn’t my responsibility to worry about when things either don’t go right or even in general if I get overwhelmed I don’t have to be the translator it just happens to be a skill that I have and they don’t want me to be worn down by it. That’s something I’ve really had to work on, not taking responsibility for everything just because I speak the language. It has really weighed heavily on my shoulders and my heart especially when something doesn’t work out or isn’t understood and that has really been discouraging to me. So definitely something I’ve been having to work on and my team has to continuously remind me not to do. I’m so thankful for them because they recognize when I start to take things to heart or get discouraged and they speak truths into those moments and refuse to let me bring myself down.
Home visits have been both good and bad…
We worked with a single mom of 3. She has an 8 year old daughter and two twins that are a year and a half years old. We built them a drying table for their plates and cups to dry outside and taught the mom how to better make a typical, easy dish here to feed her kids. They’ve been without help for food for the past 2 months. While we were at her house there was a little 2 year old girl we saw who had a large burn on her arm. The wound had been treated with traditional methods…the wound had been packed with some sort of hair and had grown infected. Laura, who is a nurse at home wanted to get it treated and cleaned so we visited the girls home to ask her mom what happened and if we could clean it out. That was so hard for me to be there while it was happening. I couldn’t watch, I wanted to walk away, get as far away as possible so I couldn’t see it and I couldn’t hear the little girls cries but I wasn’t able to do that. My heart is so heavy for that girl, for her family and for so many others in this community who can’t or don’t want to see the need for hospitals and more modern medicine, who instead continue with the traditional methods. It showed me a small portion of what the people here live with, what the church is working against. The rest of the day and even now my heart still hurts for them. That night when my team got together for our daily team time we shared our highs and lows for the day, that was my low. We then had a time where we spent alone with God and processing what we’re grieving this month- ex. not having internet or whatever. One of mine was not being about to truly help the people here because we’re only here for such a short amount of time. I want to help more but I just can’t. Once I was finished I was waiting for everyone else to be done and figured I may as well read my Bible while waiting. I decided to open it up to a random page and read the first thing that I looked at. That verse happened to be Hosea 13:14 “I will deliver this people for the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. Where, O death, are your plagues? Where, O grave, is your destruction?” This is a promise from God, He is going to deliver the people in this community. I might not be here to see that change, that deliverance, but He is going to keep that promise! Wow! That verse was so perfect for this moment and a burden lifted off my shoulders and my heart in that moment. God is faithful.
We have one more week here, I’m not sure what they will have us do, but I’m ready to begin. After this we head back down through the country and to Johannesburg, SA so that we can head to our next country, India. Be praying for me and my team and my squad as a whole as we finish up our ministries here, that we would do everything wholeheartedly and stay in the moment rather than looking forward to whatever comes next. Pray for our relationships, for strength, for patience and for wisdom, and for health, I haven’t been feeling great the past few days. (And for quick and easy travel days!).
I’m not sure when I’ll have internet again, I’ve posted things whenever possible but as you can tell that hasn’t been much because we haven’t had any internet so be patient with me and my updates! Thanks! Love you!
