Today is my last full day here in Pemba.  Tomorrow I leave for Jo’burg, South Africa.  My camera is broken again and I’m leaving this MacBook here in Africa as they are hard to come by, so I probably won’t write again before I get to the States.

I’ll be in South Africa for a few days resting and seeking God.  See you soon- California on September 1st.

In the City of Pemba, my town where I live, there is a big church called Iris. At Iris there is a Bible School and a Missions School where people come from different countries and provinces from all over the world. Iris Church is located by the third largest natural bay in the world. This bay is the most beautiful in all of Mozambique and there are big beaches where people can visit. On Sunday, the beaches are full of many many people but on other days it is almost silent because people just take books or the bible and read and have time with God. The water on these beaches is very clear. There is different restaurants and hotels. The best hotel in Pemba is the Pemba Beach Hotel, the second one is Nautilus.

When you walk on the beach you find people from different countries speaking many different languages. Sometimes when missionaries are here they go to the beach to pray, especially early in the morning like five o’clock. And so Pemba has different places to pray; Outreaches, in the villages and more. Many times when people return from outreach they tell good stories about many miracles. The miracles come from the love of God that is good. It makes me happy with my time. The Iris church is between town and the countryside. God answers prayers, when people pray inside of the church, missionaries, people, pastors, the prayers spread all over Pemba because Iris is in the center.

Everyone here in Pemba knows the name Mama Aida, even if they’ve never met her they know her name because the Holy Spirit takes the name and puts it in all the towns. So many people want to know her so they come and find Jesus in the church. Jesus answers prayers.

There used to be many people who were always begging for everything all the time but now it is changing. Instead of begging many people are praying because they know that God answers prayers. God can even change people. I know someone, his name is Carimo, and he used to always cause trouble. One missionary came here to show him the love of Jesus and in one month he began to change. Now if he is having problems he will listen to you instead of picking up rocks. Everything works good when you show the love of Jesus.

Remember last year when I asked you to pray for Mozambique and Africa? God is answering your prayers! Me to, I pray for you all and God answers my prayers- even if someone doesn’t love Jesus. Some people don’t love Jesus but Jesus loves them. Sometimes it is difficult for people to know him. If Jesus is your Father, it is good if you are helping Him with your prayers. When someone gives you something and you don’t say “thank you,” what will he think? It’s something like that, if Jesus gives us love and we don’t give others love it’s like we aren’t saying thank you. If we want to say thank you we need to share his love with another person. Now is your time to share love with people in the whole world because this is the only time you have. When your body dies it is final.

A special thanks to the Woods’ for letting me use their house while they’re gone.  I’ve been keeping the house ready for guests all the time and they seem to show up pretty often.  I’ve been baking, and hosting friends.  I keep the tea box loaded, the water ready and I try to keep bon bons (like a big reeses with a crispy chocolate dipped shell) although certain someones make that challenging.

We’ve cooked together, prayed, written emails & poems, watched movies, read the bible, had worship times, recorded, just chilled or done work.  The house has been a place of peace, stability, art and blessing.  My last few days have been full of love and friends.  I’ve been eating dinner at the toddler house every night and at least every other day I get to visit with my Mozambican family, Rosa, Nasimo and Chantal.  Zelinha, Mark, Antoinette and I had a meeting this morning about possibilities for discipleship, what is happening, what works here and what doesn’t work.

I fly out of Pemba on Friday after a few days in Johannesburg and some time in Washington DC I’ll arrive in California on September 1st.  Leaving will be difficult as I’ve made the grand mistake of loving many people here.  Please pray for discernment as I seek God for my next steps.

For starters you should know that everyone left town, including the pastor.  They’re out doing evangelism for 10 days in another province 13 hours away.

No Dustpans.

I took my sweet time this morning and strolled in at 7:20am instead of 7 like normal.  No worries- I was still the first one.  The only time I’m not is when Zelinha’s girls sweep the ENTIRE church and hard wooden benches which are covered in a blanket of dust after just a few days.  This is not a time oriented culture, they like events but schedules don’t mean much.  Rosa called looking for the keys to our equipment room.  No one knows who has them.  I found them on on the drummer as I walked up to help search.  Not that it mattered, the lock was broken.  After removing screws and prying I kicked the door down (!).  everyone seemed to think it was a good idea.  We split the team, one group working on repairing the door, with the same broken parts and the other group started to set the stage.

After the door was fixed we skipped our morning practice and just soaked and ministered to each other in the equipment room.  Village kids started whaling on our drum kit.  A dog snuck into the church- most Mozambicans are terrified of dogs so I escorted him our before he got kicked.

Most Sundays there are dance performances

We build our setup from scratch every service.  That means we bring our speakers, amps, cords, mics, drums etc, assemble everything every service and disassemble it after.  Everything was working last night (Saturday) but this morning we didn’t have a working extension cord so I ran up to my house grabbed tools and made one.   Only one of the four wall jacks works.  The drummer shoved the bare copper of one cord into the power strip in order to power our sub.  The drums set goes on a grass mat and they fill the floor tom with rocks to keep it from sliding around.  String hold the cymbals up because the screws are missing.

The church guitar had a broken string, no one here has extras but I brought some over from the states, yay! (And thanks Terry).  Everything is out of tune- there is no tuner so they pass the guitar and bass to be tuned by ear to a casio keyboard that in the states we would call a toy.  I had played bass at practice but Mindo wanted to play so I did sound instead since there was no one running it anyhow.  Other people will come “help” run sound too.  My primary responsibilities are to not blow speakers and to protect the system from village kids.  Mozambicans are better at the latter than the former.  We don’t have monitors for the vocalists.  Actually we don’t have monitors period.

Never know you shoes will be after church

Kids and others run around on stage from time to time- todays a trio pranced around the drum kit almost the whole time.  During worship we overloaded the amps twice which meant only the sub was running for a while.  Another time someone bumped an adapter and we lost power altogether.  It sure doesn’t stop anyone from worshiping.  The team never blinked.  At times various people will come up to speak and they just grab the nearest mic and people just give it up gracefully and continue worshipping.

There is no projector.  We taught a Shangaan song today which the Makua people learned in a minute and sang joyfully which was a surprise to me because aside from not speaking Shangaan there is normally some ethnic tension.  One speaker started failing- something is wrong on the inside because when we set is on its side on the ground it works.

Ready to do it again!

I think that worship teams in the states would benefit from starting in these conditions before moving on to monitored, studio environments.  It’s important to keep worship as the priority above production value.   That’s all- the power’s out so I’ll have to send this later…

After eating and eating and eating I got a haircut- I look good, I’ll have to get you some pictures. Pray for wisdom and grace as leaving is hard on everyone- some kids are already disconnecting a little and I get asked “are you leaving today” every morning. I’ve been working on some ideas for discipleship here but other than that I’ve just been enjoying pouring into the lives around me and letting them pour into me too. There’s no mistaking love.

Yesterday was Pam’s and my birthday! The short story is that it was a great Birthday, and thank you!!! Let me just tell you about what it was like here. The night before I spent with Pastor Supresa and lots of the kids from Maputo. We sang Shangaan praise, told stories in Portuguese and prayed in many tongues. Friends texted and mCel actually sent the messages (sometimes texts arrive hours or days later. Ha!).
In the morning I grabbed a lump of bread and walked up to school hut for dance practice where more than twenty of my favorite girls greeted me, tackled me and the sang a rousing rendition of happy birthday in Portuguese.  After dance Rosa and a few of the girls stayed around to pray for me while the others went to clean up for church.

In the mean time Suzete planned a breakfast out at Russels so I grabbed a car and drove Nasimo, Suzete, Juma, Promise and two of my room mates out to breakfast.  Nathanael made cake with coffee chocolate frosting.   Mmmmmhhhhhh.

We got home just in time to catch the last few moments of church.  I got to pray for a child with a cleft-palette and bless a widow who had twins of perhaps 2 months.  I don’t have pictures but you can take my word that they are beautiful children, all of them. Onesia gave me a tiny hard wood toy guitar with dental floss strings wrapped in magenta tissue paper.

It just so happens that we are celebrating Mama Aida’s birthday today as well so we packed up LOADS of barbecued chicken and filled the camions with our kids, the village kids, the base staff, the students (about half of them have gone home) and drove to Marangania where we had a beach party all afternoon:

After swimming, sandcastles and sandy Africa acrobatics we left the whales (!) on the horizon and fired up the generator, got our the sound system and drums and had more dancing and worship.  They roasted and presented a pig.   The kids all had dance presentations for Mama Aida that went until the sun was gone and the brilliant Southern sky was filled with stars.  We had a prayer and worship time for Heidi and then for me which ended supine gazing at the stars through lazy eyes and plenty of laughter.

I rode home in a the back of a truck where some of my favorite people (besides you, my beloved reader) sang happy birthday in Portuguese, English, Cantonese, Russian, Spanish and quite possibly other languages.  Before heading off to rest Zelinia walked me to the girls dorms at the top of the hill where they had prepared a HUGE chocolate cake.  We sat and ate, hading out cake to the boys who had tagged along suspecting that the journey might end in sweet treats.  Finally, as if the day could hold nothing more, one of my friends performed a song she had written for me.

Of course I miss you all, I love you and I wish you could be here.  To be honest I could have done without all the food, fanatics and even the beach because the best part of yesterday was just to be with people who love me and to be with people I love.

]]> http://trekscratch.com/2009/08/oh-happy-day/feed/ 7 http://trekscratch.com/2009/08/happy-birthday-pam/ http://trekscratch.com/2009/08/happy-birthday-pam/#comments Sat, 08 Aug 2009 22:13:42 +0000 Ed http://trekscratch.com/?p=455

I hope you birthday is more fun than a wheelbarrow full of kids racing down dirt hillsides on the African coast. Really, I do!

I love you and miss you

Please pray for the safety of our kids here at the children’s center.  Three weeks ago we had to let all of our “professional” guards go in order to conserve funds.  Currently some of Iris’ other Mozambican staff is filling in- people that were cut from their previous jobs.  There’s only 3 or 4 night guards for the whole center and three of the last 5 days there’s been banditos around the girl’s dorms.  They haven’t been successful yet as each of their attempts yields screams from the lighter sleepers.  Please pray for supernatural protection!

I’m have an appointment for a run tomorrow at 4:30am so I’ll share more later.  Sorry for the lack of pictures- really, my camera is fixed now…

Bia from the hospital died last week at age seven.  We came to visit that afternoon but her family had already left.  Please pray as you are lead for the family as well as those of us invested in her brief and sweet life.

Helder hasn’t been able to get a Visa yet- at his interview the US embassy said everything is great except that he doesn’t make enough money at his job.  He has enough money, he just doesn’t make enough.  Our contact at Metro Ministries is currently working with the embassy to try to get him a Visa anyway.  Please pray.  Helder is also looking at training with Metro in the Philippines.   Please appreciate the international freedoms that we have just by being Americans- even travel is not so simple for the people here.

Tomorrow is graduation day, Saturday I have some work to do up in the recording room, Sunday is a birthday party for Mama Aida.  I hope I find time to write you all again soon!  Blessings,