So I’m here.
In the dark.
In Mozambique, Africa.
Quelimane specifically. A poor, little, beautiful town near the Indian Ocean.
I just got done taking a cold shower after a long day of painting and working outside at a local school. The church we work for believes in creating community and making disciples from the very beginning of life and thus has developed two schools.
Wow, I’m amazed by this ministry.
Today at the school, I watched the Aunties cook lunch outside. In the hot, on the coals. Then we served the kids.
The only bathroom that exists is a hut. It had poop on the ground when I walked in and when I walked out I questioned if the smell had rubbed off on me. The stench was thick.
In the morning we ate a snack of a whole sweet potato. Like an apple. Chomping away.
What a life.
Amidst the snack break, Lucia, our companion of sorts, talked about wanting to be married and it being hard at 27 in Mozambique. One of the guys told me, “before women are 25 the guys are running after them and after 25 the guys are running away from them.”
Oh my heart hurts for Lucia.
She said her pastor screens the men for her. They come to him and if he deems them fit, loving Jesus enough, he sets up a meeting with Lucia. She says or nays them.
Only nays so far.
She says as she laughs.
In the afternoon, one of the men doing construction at the school climbed the palm tree and hacked down some fresh coconuts for us. Just threw them down.
He literally hacked them open with a machete. The juice was cold. How on earth? In this Mozambiquan sun? Yum.
Later I got to sit in on one of the church guys’ classes. Carlos taught these 8 year olds with zeal while they laughed and laughed at him. You can tell this isn’t his calling but man is Carlos fantastic at living fully in his present, teaching with his whole heart.
While the 8 year olds learned Portuguese grammar, the mischievous one pinched my butt.
In class.
In lesson!
She’s got this spectacular glint to her eye. When they read aloud, she read louder than the rest.
I love her boldness.
We rode back from school in the truck again.
I truck bed surfed in the warm ocean breeze like the Queen of Quelimane. All the villagers were waving at me because I’m a weird white woman standing in the back of a truck going 40 miles per hour on a dirt road.
Sometimes its fun to be the different one.
We got back to our little tent city on the playground with all the local kids waiting for us. “Holas” were screamed out, chores and laundry in the sink started. Laundry then stolen, ran around in kids hands, laughing.
Although we just showered the day before (a luxury on the World Race), the hot sun has us jumping for joy for cold showers in the dark.
Maybe we’re even accompanied by a lizard or a frog.
For the most part, you don’t care. You don’t even think to think about it, remembering the locals homes you visited yesterday with no water.
No bathroom.
No beds.
Just a 10 x 10 room lacking food but filled with bugs.
Kids bellies protruding out. So impossibly empty you can’t not notice.
These images define your prayers in the cold shower.
We’re all clean now and ready for peace and rest but the local kids only know laughter and loud.
Mozambique mile wide smiles.
It’s a hard balance here between finding rest and celebrating their joy with them.
Finally, they leave to be with their families, you hope, and our teams sit down to talk.
Our own little families.
Right then, the power goes out.
It’s dark now. Everywhere.
Our empty bellies wait for dinner and light that both may or may not arrive.
The dark is so unfamiliar that we amble around a bit, unsure of ourselves and how to find each other.
How to find the moment and our minds here.
Without.
Like them.
But just for a moment.
It’s funny, really, how quickly we look for Him in the “without.”
Maybe a blessing is a better word to explain it.
For a couple of minutes we look for other things to do, people to talk to, something to snack on, but then all of that is taken away.
Him.
He’s the only thing left.
So within minutes we settle into worship and prayer.
We stare at the stars and we sing.
Because when there’s nothing else.
There’s Him.
