A blog that was never posted in Mozambique. Written early December 2011
Behold the Gospel…
So after a 30ish hour bus ride from Cape town to Maputo, we jumped onto a “real” African bus for another 24 hours. These are to be avoided at all costs. Brutal roads, willing to pick ANYBODY up, and will listen to driver’s favorite mix the whole way. They are rough. Our bus driver stopped outside his favorite bar somewhere around 10ish, and said, “okay we sleep here.” Then he went inside and drank until he went up to his rented room for the night. The three teams on the bus began to figure out how to sleep. 5 on top of the bus, and the rest in the bus is how it ended up. I am sitting in my seat just thinking, man this is miserable. Then this kid comes up and begins saying something in Portuguese. It is not hard to spot a kid wishing for money from “manzumo” or the white man. Kid if you only knew how poor world racers were you would just save your breath. But he came to my bus window and kept trying to explain his predicament. I just listened then kept saying, “now fallow Portuguese” which means I don’t speak Portuguese. Spelling obviously not correct. He would not quit, so I began to tell him all about the people I missed back home, what my favorite restaurants are and in which order I would be visiting them upon my return in 8 long months. This was all in English. Then randomly I thought I should tell him about why I was in Mozambique. I heard Jesus say to my heart, tell him about me! To which I responded, I might need a Pentecost experience as this child clearly doesn’t speak English. Should be noted that as I was speaking English to this kid, he continued speaking Portuguese as I was talking. He was getting frustrated.
So I decide, okay lets talk about Jesus. I start talking about how he changed my life, and how I had seen miracles, and how I was certain that Jesus wanted to know this kid. BAM…I had an idea, there is a Portuguese Bible in this bus. I get it out. I knew if anything makes beggars run, it’s the reading of scripture. So I open the Bible to “Jean 3:16” and start reading. My Portuguese is TERRIBLE. Imagine French and Spanish had a baby, its Portuguese. Now imagine American and Spanglish, had an illegitimate union with Portuguese and birthed whatever language it was that I spoke that night. But I read on, I was somewhere around the “that he gave his only…” part when the kid just looked at me, and ran away. I thought, “yep, that’ll do it every time.” So I closed the Bible and proceeded to ponder my own existence.
Suddenly the child was running at my window on with a rock in his hand. He was smiling. I thought, Oh Dear God he is so mad at the white devil! He stopped put the large rock on the ground and ran away again. He returned with another rock and put it on top of the other, then he stood on those rocks to get a better view of the Bible. He pointed to the Bible and motioned for me to read on. I was stunned. I opened the Bible to “Jean 3:16” and rekindled my butchering of his national language. He stopped me. He shut the Bible and then opened it up to the beginning. He pointed to the Bible and motioned for me to read it. Stunned again. He was asking me to start from the beginning. I mean who reads stories starting halfway through. I laughed and told everybody on the bus, its going to be a long night, this kid wants me to read him the entire Bible tonight cover to cover. We were all stunned. So I picked some of the top verses and we read them together, him imitating every word I said. Behold…the gospel.
