This month, my team and three other teams spent our month in the “BUSH” of Mozambique. This month is the most primative and basic living conditions we have experienced yet on the race. While we have tented in previous months and even had bucket showers, this was team Manna’s first month killing our dinner, bathing in the river, and squatting outside. I’ve attached some photos of our month. Enjoy!
For meals, we pretty much brought all of our food for the month from South Africa. Meals were a rotation of rice, potatoes, and pasta. We also had a rotation of beans and canned vegetables once a day for variety. If we wanted meat, we had to kill it ourselves. We put Jaco (our contact) and Tim and Zach in charge of that. We can say that they officially killed and prepared goat, chicken, and rabbit (although the rabbit somehow was left in the church and didn’t make it into the pasta after all that work) and one night fish was brought home and prepared. Below you will see the guys bringing home the meat: Pilgore the dinner goat, two baracuta, and two chickens. Umm… delilcious!
Here you can see our cooking conditions. Of course, there are no kitchens in the Bush. All food was prepared outside over an open fire, even the four ‘loaves’ of bread that were made daily (one for each team).
As all water came from the river, most of us bathed in the river rather than bringing water to our tent area and bucket showering. While bathing in the river is not something I would want to do as a lifestyle, I enjoyed the experience. The key is to walk the 1km to 1mile to the river while it’s warm outside so that the river water is not overwhelmingly chilly. Then, make sure you have a friend there to hold your soap, shampoo, and razor so that they don’t float off with the current while bathing. Other than that, just sit down and enjoy. Here you will see a picture of the river we bathed in and the riverbank area where people tend to relax before and/or after bathing and can also be used as a changing area for those not concerned with privacy.
Here are a couple shots of the church service which we hosted non-stop with the locals while we were there (several hours a day, everyday) and some of the kids in the area.
It was an amazing month of ministry as God really brought us to a place where it was all about the basics. Not simply the basic primative living although that was definitely part of the experience, but also the basics of the Bible. We were in a place where the people simply did not know the gospel. They did not know who Jesus is, what He has done for them, or what it means to be a Christian. Sometimes as people who have been following God for a while, it is challenging to get back to a place where we keep it simple. It was an incredible month of simplicity: sleeping on the ground, cooking over a fire, bathing in the river, squatting over a hole in the dirt (not pictured), preaching the message of salvation, and laying on hands and praying for the people here in Mozambique. Sometimes we just need to get back to the basics of coming to the cross and enjoying relationship with Him.
