I am in Mozambique!!! I can't believe I am really saying that. It took us four days to get here. I can't even remember all of the hours of plane and bus rides, but somewhere along the lines of 18 hours in two planes and then thirty six hours on two different buses between two different days. Plus five hours at the border of South africa and Mozambique to get Visas. It was a long travel "day", but we got here! We were very happy to get here.
We are working with Iris ministries as I said before, but we all are doing very different things. My team this week actually has been here in our closed in base and doing kitchen duty, cleaning, raking falling mangos (pictures to come) and for me, doing some treasurer stuff.
We have had the opportunity to leave our base a few times which has been great. We have gone to a "hospital", pretty much just a building with some sick people and hardly any staff to actually care for them. We went there with a team of young adult mozambiquens and we just prayed healing over these people. We saw one man get healed of Malaria. God was working in that place.
As we were walking to this hospital, I thought I was in a movie. We were walking on dirt roads inbetween mud huts and children running around everyone, families sitting outisde their huts with blankets and women carrying baskets and water on their heads. All of the area does not have running water (including our base) and so everything runs off wells. We take bucket showers and flush the toilet with buckets of water. We don't have internet and we don't have much electricity a lot, but we don't go inside much.
It is hot here. I am not sure what the temperature is, but it is warm and very humid. Thanks to the Chicago summers, I have gotten used to it faster than others.
Random cultural stuff: The most scandalous part of the woman's body here is your knees and so we always have to have our knees covered with flowy skirts or pants. If you wear tight pants, then that is still considered inappropriate because it shows off the of the knee.
Offical language is portugese.
I want to share one more experience with you that happened yesterday.
I went with a few girls and another American missionary to minister to some widows in the villlage. This missionary is teaching these women how to pray, how to experience the holy spirit, how to pray for healing and learning memory verses (they don't know how to read and so they wouldn't understand the bible if they had one).
I wasn't having the best day emotionally before we went to this ministry, but God really helped me out by visiting these women. There were four women, three in their 50s and a woman who was 21. I looked into their beautiful eyes and they were so full of life and beauty. They glowed..especially the older women. They were so eager to learn about God and to share their prayers and healings during the week.
There was one woman who said that she was having pain in her throat and her jaw this past week. She had prayed about it and it went away, but now it was back. We did a prayer of healing over her and the other women and as we were praying I felt God speak to me. He said "This woman's pain is causing her not to speak". After we prayed, I asked the woman if it caused her not to speak and she said yes. Then I prayed over her and against the enemy who was trying to attack her speach. As we all came together united in prayer, this woman was free of pain.
That moment was so encouraging to me because it was the first time God really spoke directly to me about a person's pain and then used me as a tool to heal her. It wasn't me, it was God, but it gave me confidence to trust the Holy Spirit inside of me.
By the end of our time together, more healings had come and prayers were answered and these women were beaming more than they even were when we started. God was moving in that little prayer meeting outside of a church in front of mud huts. At the end of our time, God told me that these women were going to be the ones to change their community. We as Americans can not change local communities, but we can help educate a few people who can then minister the locals in the way that is best.
God is moving here BIG time. He is allowing our squad to come together and be honest and open and vulnerable with one another. He is uniting our teams together and He is simply building up His Kingdom iHis special way.
Cleaning up Mangos!
praying for the widows
