Mozambique Mission (6th
to 30th March 2012)
REPORT
Missioners
Samuel Mwiti
Edwin Kirimi
Gituma M’Ikiara
1. Background
We believe it was the clear
hand and guidance of God that led us to this mission. A friend (David Sumba)
was invited to minister in Mozambique. As we talked he shared the vision of
what he felt God wanted him to accomplish in the mission. I gave him a few
other ideas on things I felt were necessary for him to accomplish what was in
his heart.
As we were setting things up I
linked him to Mwiti and Kirimi who have been involved in more missions out of
the country for some more input. One thing led to another and the mission took
shape. Incidentally David was not able to go for the mission and we went.
There was the challenge of
raising support for transport and other logistics but God provided. We debated
on going either by road or air but decided to fly after examining both options
and consulting.
We reserved airline seats but
since the funds came very close to the dates the seats were taken. The fare
also went up considerably as we approached the day to fly. At the end we were
unable to even get seats with the airline that was cheaper as it was filled.
But it helped two of us to get flights to a city (they don’t have towns, only
cities and villages with nothing in between) only 200 km from the town we were
based. This saved us not only money but also many hours on the road as the
distance between Maputo and Chimoio is about 1200 km. Edwin had to use another
airline as he had to stop over in Ethiopia for some ministry engagements. He
also came back later because the airlines travelled different days.
The visa was a great challenge
and we had to pay double due to some misinformation as the documents we were
sent were written in Portuguese, a language none of us knows. We realized much
later that it was addressed to their embassy in Nairobi but we had been told we
could get into the country with it.
22. The Journey
The flight was fine. The flight
to Maputo first stopped at Pemba, the northernmost province of Mozambique. That
was where our passports were stamped. We then alighted at Maputo where we were
accommodated by a missionary from Malawi before taking the morning flight to
Beira.
That was also very interesting as
it first flew to the far North on the Western side (Tete) then came back to
Beira which is about the middle of the country. We then took public transport
to Chemoio (200 km).
It is interesting that we were
able to step on five of the ten provinces of Mozambique within 24 hours of
entering the country. We were also able to encompass all the corners of the
country as we stepped on the extremities. Incidentally Chemoio means little
heart and is thought as the heart of Mozambique, being at the centre of the
country. This reminded us of God’s promise to Joshua about the places his sole
stepped on in Joshua 1: 3. All in all we were able to step on seven of the ten
provinces of Mozambique during the mission and directly minister in five.
33. The Reception
We were received very well by our
hosts. There was good reception everywhere we went. We were able to enjoy the
hospitality of nine nationalities from two continents during our stay, and
these are the ones we can easily point to.
44. The Meetings
We had a meeting with the
missionary who had hosted us in Maputo and he was very receptive of what we had
come to do. We left him some materials and though we were not able to see him
as we were returning he called us and told us he had already started to use
some materials we had given him in the church he ministers.
We were able to have several
meetings with pastors and ministry leaders. These included the Calvary Ministry
(CAPRO) who were our hosts. We had several planning and prayer sessions as we
were ministering hand in hand with them all the time. In the trip north we were
using the meetings they had planned to minister. They also offered us
opportunities in their meetings.
There was the Assemblies of God
International Church, the church that made the formal invitation since only a
local church could invite foreigners. We were able to have several meetings
with the Vice President of the denomination and were able to minister with him
a few times in the house groups of the church he is pastor.
The pastors’ fellowship of Manica
province - We were able to have a meeting with the President and the General
Secretary. We were able to later meet the whole executive with a few pastors
not in the executive.
We visited the First Baptist
Church Chimoio and had a meeting with the pastor.
We had meetings with all the
people who gave us an opportunity to minister in their churches as well as our
hosts. We also had meetings with the missionaries we had visited on our trip
north.
55. The Ministry
The first meeting we ministered together
was the discipleship seminar. This was after preaching in two different
churches. In the seminar we explained discipleship and the discipleship process.
We were to have a youth
leadership seminar but the hosting church cancelled too late for other
arrangements to be made.
We had a 3 day marriage seminar
which was attended by members of several denominations. We were able to run a
True love Waits seminar for young people as the seminar progressed. This was
the one meeting we had been expected to minister in as they even had posters
and fliers advertising it with Kenyan ministers as facilitators.
We were also able to share in two
house groups of the Assemblies of God International Church.
We had an opportunity to minister
to some young men who stay with our missionary host.
We were unable to visit the bush
churches as earlier arranged due to logistical problems.
In the last two days we were
invited to speak to the national leaders of the Assemblies of God International
Church. We drove to Beira and passed the flood plain where in 2000 a mother
gave birth on a tree due to flooding. We spoke about discipleship and the need
to hear God’s call about the harvest field.
We flew to Maputo where we had
very good fellowship with two ladies who run a Guest House for Missionaries.
They are two English sisters who came to Mozambique since the 1960s. Incidentally
they were able to give us the Portuguese version of the True Love Waits manual
and we had even had someone start translating the English one since we didn’t
know whether there was any in Portuguese.
66. The Trip North
We made the trip north to visit
several mission points as well as interact with missionaries. We covered close
to 4000 km in the round trip.
We took public transport to Quelimane (pronounced Kilimani). The
vehicle was in very bad shape mechanically and had poor suspension. We had to
squeeze with our bags because it was not big enough yet it went on carrying
excess passengers. It really wore us out, especially because it arrived almost
five hours later than the normal. It also had no space for our legs to move
even a little. We then got into a guest house which was pitiful. That was our
first 600 km.
We then took a bus which was in a
better shape to Nampula where we
were harassed by the police for not having ‘paper from Kenya’ for a lap top
computer one of us had. Before that they literally went through our entire
luggage, putting piece by piece down. We didn’t know what they were looking
for. They also did not pick on anyone else getting out of the whole bus. Probably
we looked like foreigners.
The first major stop we did was Nacala, a port city like most of their
cities. We met the Smits, a missionary couple from South Africa who are reaching
a Muslim tribe Macua, to the lowest and most despised clan in it called Macua
Nahara. They hosted us for two nights and even donated the vehicle that
we used for the rest of the journey as we had been using public transport
before then which was very time consuming and tiresome due to the long distances
and serviceability of the vehicles leave alone the congestion of passengers. We
had very good fellowship. We had a True Love Waits seminar in a church in town.
We took the vehicle to a garage
in town since it required some wiring. We had to wait for over two hours before
the mechanic came. We suggested that the missionary asks for the cost of the
wiring from our experience with Kenyan mechanics but he thought it unnecessary.
After the wiring he was given an astronomical figure for that small job, a
figure they were not willing to bring down. It also seemed as if he tampered
with something else since the vehicle refused to start but we thought it was
the fuel.
We then stopped over at Maziotela, a mission station that
promotes agriculture and even has a cashew nut factory to empower the locals.
They also train pastors who would otherwise remain untrained, some who are
illiterate. It is run by a New Zealand couple serving with World Outreach.
As evening approached, the
vehicle stopped in the middle of nowhere and nothing we tried had any effect. A
young man passed by who told us that there was a mechanic twenty Meticais from the place we were stuck.
That is their currency and we had no way of ascertaining the distance. Night
arrived and there was still no vehicle to take someone to the mechanic. Later a
matatu (called shapa) arrived and
agreed to ferry two of us to the village with the mechanic. But as he started
he thought he would make more money towing our vehicle. And that is what he
did. It was God’s providence because the village was so far and there was no
transport on that road even during the day. The mechanic didn’t take long on
the vehicle and was able to diagnose the problem as injector wiring. As in most
other villages youngsters were waiting with bated breath as their hero worked
on the vehicle. They shouted with pleasure when the vehicle started. We were
later to learn that he his not always at home as he is in great demand even
towns far away. We thanked God for that.
We then went to Pemba where we met a Congolese pastor
God called to minister in the slums. We visited his small church in the slums
and saw no other indication of any other church or outreach of any kind as we
walked the slums where decadence was visible.
We were able to have a True Love
waits seminar with a few young people as our missionary host had a meeting with
some pastors with one of us being involved in it.
We later lodged with a British
couple who reach out to another Muslim tribe.
After that we went to Mocimboa where we had the largest
groups. Incidentally in that city Swahili is widely spoken that when we started
the True Love Waits seminar we did it in Swahili until a few people came who
did not understand it. It is only about 200km from Tanzania. We were nearer
home than where we had come from.
We were hosted by a Kenyan
missionary couple serving with the Sheepfold Ministry. Apart from True Love
Waits which was attended by about 50 young people, there was a pastors’ meeting
where there was an opportunity to teach evangelism using Evangecube as we had
carried some.
We then started back through Nampula where we got a host at the last
hour, two Nigerian brothers. The owner of the house was bedridden from illness.
We prayed and he was well in the morning as we left.
We then left for the single
longest journey, close to 1100km of straight driving back to Chemoio.
77. The Challenges/ Observations
The greatest challenge in the
churches we saw as we had meetings with Christian leaders and pastors is
discipleship and training. The pastors especially pleaded with us again and
again to plan a long term program of discipleship in their churches. Basic
discipleship as we know it is quite deep when we shared it. We are looking for
relevant materials especially in Portuguese. We gave them copies of Growing in
Christ to translate and hope Baptist Media will give us permission to print the
Portuguese version.
The other challenge is training.
As we talked and visited many places and churches we came to realize from the
confessions of the pastors themselves that probably less than 5% of the pastors
have any pastoral training, theological or otherwise. It is therefore an open
call to respond to that need. Very few are full time pastors, having to keep a
job for their upkeep. The president of the pastors’ fellowship is himself a
magistrate. A big percentage is also illiterate.
The distances are very large.
Mozambique is very big with a very long coastline. It is also sparsely
populated. It is about twice the size of Kenya with about half its population. Transport
is not readily available, many times being available once in a day, sometimes
even less for those long distances. People will normally board them even at 3 am
for the vehicles to arrive on time. It will also pick passengers on the way
even if it left the stage full. Due to that the vehicles are cramped with
passengers.
Probably the greatest single
challenge for us’' was language though God always provided interpreters for us.
Some pastors have also realized that as the single greatest obstacle to the
availability of ministers, even materials. Twice we were told, ‘they fly over
to South Africa, then Zimbabwe, then Tanzania, leaving us in the middle because
we can’t speak English’. Yet the desire to learn English is very great.
Education is another major
challenge. The children learn in shifts, some going to school in the morning,
some in the afternoon and in places with electricity some will learn at night
from primary school to university. This of course will raise other challenges
since children will have so much idle time in their hands. We found children
dancing on the street at 11 in the night, and not in one location or in towns.
Missionaries with children have a great problem since their children must
necessarily learn in a system more or less international since they may be
there for a season. Even if they will be there for long their children may not
have to stay there as God may have a different assignment for them.
We did not see any international
school in all those places we visited except for a single one in Chimoio. Two
missionaries with school-going children educate them in Kenya, one as young as
seven years. The other option is home schooling, which takes most of the time
of one parent and even then until the child gets to class 5 since after that it
would be very difficult to get into a regular school.
Although we did not ask, we
noticed that missionaries are very lonely, especially those in the North
serving among the Muslim tribes. This because they are few and far apart but we
think they don’t have many visitors from other Christians. Reminds me of Elijah
crying ‘I alone am left…’ since most of their time is spent deep in their
warfare zone.
There is no censoring of their
programmes. We saw very shocking things on TV in the evening when the whole
family would be watching. We were told that the government left censoring to
the viewers themselves which is a very dangerous thing for any society
especially children who are in school for very few hours. They do not produce
any movies, sourcing most from Brazil, and we know what Brazil is famous for
apart from football. Brazil is the largest Portuguese speaking nation in the
world.
The rate of drunkenness is very
high all over the country. We found bars packed with young people any time of
the night, dancing away. This even between 3 and 5 a.m. Beer is sold everywhere,
even on the streets and markets.
The society is very permissive.
The level of immorality is quite high. We heard that it is not much different
even in the churches. One could notice great shock as we taught True Love
Waits. In fact almost half of the girls attending the seminars in places had
small children – and most of them were teenagers. They ran to sign the
commitment forms even before the explanation was over. We saw dressing that
shocked us, if some of it could be called such.
Divorce is not a great thing. It
appeared as if marriage is mainly treated as temporal as it did not seem to
raise any eyebrows.
The land is very fertile and most
of it is virgin. There are forests in most places we visited. We saw everything
in the market coming from the land. Yet only a fraction of the land is tilled.
In fact there were two provinces that we saw some good agricultural lands. We
are not sure but it was said that the two provide food for the whole nation.
Yet the farming is not extensive even there.
Yet with all that the level of
poverty is high. We saw children sitting on the floor in class. We saw children
in tatters and some without clothes even in towns.
The country produces so much
cashew nut, but all is exported to be processed abroad. Logs are being taken to
the ports in quantities that shocked us, yet we heard that it has been happening
for over twenty years. What was most annoying was the fact that a local would
be arrested if they even took firewood from the forest.
Bread is so popular yet the
country does not grow wheat. Yet the weather is very conducive for wheat
farming.
All
this reminded us of a land so rich yet the population being so poor. Proverbs
13: 23 sums this up. Even when the land of the poor produces
good crops, they get cheated out of what they grow (CEV)
88.
RECOMMENDATIONS
1. Discipleship – there is need for people who have been
adequately discipled to go help set up discipleship in the many churches that
have requested it. This is especially to model the one on one and small group aspect
of discipleship.
2. Training – there are many openings for the
training of pastors. We met the continental director of such a program that
trains pastors in a discipleship context. There are denominations that have
requested a person to do such training even if it is 2 to 3 months in a year.
3. Education – avenues should be sought for the
establishment of Christian schools if not to impact the nation for Christ but
also to alleviate the shortage of schools. We believe that may be the single
greatest opening for the gospel in this formerly atheistic communist nation.
4. Evangelism – most people do not understand salvation
that when an altar call is made even the church leaders walk to the front. A
deliberate effort needs to be made to explain the gospel.
5. Trade – there is much corruption. We believe
that Christian business people should explore avenues of trade in the nation.
Agriculture is also an open door if God allows.
6. Prayer – this is the key to Mozambique. We need
to raise prayer cover over the nation so that an open door is available for
these and other opportunities.
7. Partnership – we are thinking of an exchange program
of sorts where some young people from Kenya go to Mozambique for ministry as
some Mozambicans also come to Kenya for exposure to what kind of ministry we
have been talking about. These will need hosts and support both ways. But there
is more to partnership than this. It also covers all the areas we have
addressed.
99.
Conclusion
Much of the moral corruption we saw had
its roots in the colonialists. We heard that they sought to purge the country
of the black colour by raping the girls so that they produce Portuguese. If the
child was light they took it but left if it was dark. That can be seen even
now. The war did the rest.
After independence the country leaned
east. The first president was openly and proudly anti God. He at one time is
said to have dared God to strike him if He existed. He died not long after.
That is a prevailing feeling even today. They have built his statue in every
major town.
Witchcraft is public. We were told that
when parliament was being opened no clergyman, Christian or Muslim was invited.
It was opened by a witchdoctor. The longest bridge over the Zambezi River (2.3
km) was also inaugurated by beheading of a chicken by a witchdoctor. Islam has
also really sought to reign with the most powerful person after the president
being a Muslim. They also fund much of the political machine. We heard that is
the reason most development is being focused on the north where they are a
majority.
There is this tribe whose initiation of
the girl child involves rape. In the same tribe a man can not have sex with his
pregnant wife until she weans the child. However he can sleep with (rape?) any
other woman. Widows and girls are in grave danger since they are the easiest
targets. Of course we know the danger that poses due to the exposure to STDs
and HIV.
The government is not very open to
foreigners. We noticed that from the embassy to times we met police. Yet the
east is pouring there. In the flight we took, less than 10% of the 109
passengers was an African. Most of the rest were Asians. Since they have no
scruples about corruption they are flooding the country every day. As I was
writing this I saw in a newspaper that they had arrested 150 Somalis in Tete for entering the country
illegally.
Mozambique is a very young nation, with
60% of the population being classified youth (15 – 35 years). The war had a
hand in this. It is very hard to see an old man anywhere. Of course this is a
great opportunity to influence the nation since as all of us know the young are
malleable and don’t have the solidity a long life sets. The church services
appear like youth services all over. Even when we were ministering to the
leaders of the AGI denomination the majority were young, only the very top were
old in normal terms.
I witnessed giving in the AGI church I
ministered in the first Sunday that reminded me of King David. There was so
much song and dance during the giving time that could be mistaken for a great
celebration. And it was as it were their tithe Sunday. I pray that that spirit
catches fire all over as I believe this is what worshipping the Lord with
gladness really means.
We believe it is time the church took its
stand for Mozambique. We don’t have the pleasure of time. We believe God has
given us Mozambique since He is the one who created each one of its inhabitants
and sent His Son to die for them.
I have been reading the books of Kings and
noticed one thing that puts all this in perspective. The first king of Israel
after the break up with Judah, Jeroboam sought to protect his kingdom by making
it self sustaining in terms of worship so that they don’t see the need to go to
Jerusalem to the Temple and be tempted to defect. None of the others was able
to break free from that sin, even Jehu who destroyed Baal worship. Foundations
are very important. I think this is the reason God had to do away with King
Saul the way He did.
God is offering us a chance to establish
discipleship as the foundation of the church in Mozambique. This from all the
invitations and pleas we received everywhere we went. Only the foundation of
Christ is strong enough to destroy the foundations of atheism, rebellion,
corruption, war and witchcraft that are in Mozambique. What we do with that
will determine what Mozambique will become as well us the reward or judgment we
will receive.
110.
Contacts
Samuel Mwiti
+254 722 458 513
Edwin Kirimi
+254 720 939314
Gituma M’Ikiara
+254 722 220 147
Ademola
Olatunji (CAPRO Mozambique)
+258
826 086 657
This
report gives the basics of the mission. More details can be obtained from the
missioners themselves as it is difficult to condense 25 days into a report. Be
blessed as you consider plugging in. We are grateful for all your prayers and
gifts that made this mission not only possible but a success.
Report compiled by Gituma
M’Ikiara
No comments:
Post a Comment