Less than three weeks ago, after what was easily our longest and most challenging travel from one country to the other, we made it to Mozambique. Our journey ended at a small little village in the city of Beira. Tents and sleeping bags in hand, we started to get settled. We walked around the area and got familiar with what would be our home for the next month.
Mozambique is exactly what I believe the Word Race Training Camp attempts to prepare you for. From bucket showers, squatty potties, ZERO personal space to limited food and challenging cooking conditions.
But it didn't take long for it to become home. Our day to day agenda will vary, but overall let me paint you a picture of our life in Mozambique.
We wake up every day around 6:30am to the sound and faces of little children peering into our tents.
We have cereal with boxed milk and oranges for breakfast, followed by prayer and devotion lead by one of my squad mates.
We usually head out around 8:30am and walk about 2 miles to another village where our contact Elijah is in the process of building a Children’s Home for local orphans. We spend a few hours there preparing the ground, playing with children, walking through the community and sharing/praying with families.
At around noon we begin our walk back home and stop by the local market on the way to pick up produce and bread for our lunch. (Usually egg or veggie sandwiches)
After lunch we will make some home visits to the widows in the village. Some of these widows are members of the church and some are not. Our purpose mainly is to bring encouragement to them and pray over any needs they may have. We did have the opportunity this past week to bless 3 of the widows with groceries for their week.
We head back for a few hours to clean up, start preparing dinner or take a nap. Some nights we have 3-hour church services, other nights we just hang out and avoid getting eating alive by mosquitos.
We usually head to bed around 10/11 and without fail we will fall asleep to the sound of the local witch doctor banging on his drums.
So that’s the play by play for the average day of ministry, usually Monday through Friday.
Weekends consist of various church services where we get the opportunity to share the stories of God’s work in our lives. We have led worship and prayed over the sick and discouraged.
Spiritual warfare is very common and active in this village. Last Sunday the pastor simply stated that if there was any demonic power hindering anyone that it leave at that moment in the name of Jesus. At that second people all throughout the service began to manifest.
Now deliverance is something I was somewhat familiar with and had grown up hearing about, but seeing it 10 feet from where I was standing was a whole other ballgame.
Women not even 90 pounds were being held down by 3 to 4 very large men. They were jerking and contorting trying to break free. People were praying and proclaiming over them the name of Jesus. It was in Portuguese so I couldn’t make out every word but I would repeatedly hear “Be free, be free, be free, in the name of Jesus. Come out, come out in the name of Jesus!”
Some deliverance took only a minute and some continued to fight for so long that the pastor asked them to be taken into the prayer room for continued deliverance.
What was so crazy was that after someone was delivered they would lie still for a moment but then afterwards they would stand, dust themselves off and walk back to their seat. I don’t know what I thought would happen, like there was some demonized holding place that they would have to sit in for 24 hours or something. But delivering people from demons is such a normal day-to-day occurrence.
Witchcraft is rampant here and people who don’t know Jesus will turn to it for any reason. True story… I saw a sign on the front of a witch doctors door that read “Penis enlargements and abortions”. People have needs, big and small, and turn to the local witch doctor. This in turn opens the door to demonic activity in their lives whether they know it or not. Then someone invites them to a church service on Sunday night and when the pastor demands demonic power to leave andthey begin manifesting.
It really breaks my heart. People just need the truth and the truth will set them free.
I am learning more and more every day about the power and love of God. As crazy as it was to witness a mass deliverance service like last Sunday I couldn’t help but walk away in awe of the extravagant love God has for us and the war that occurs in attempt to keep us from it.
I'm sad to see our time here coming to an end but I know God has only just begun to reveal his power to us here in Africa. Swaziland, here we come!
Armored up,
Jolene
