Mozambique: bush outreach day 2

Morning dawns, and it's time to get up. I feel like a contortionist trying to get dressed inside the tent, and realize there is no way I'm going to be able to put on a wrap-around skirt until I stand-up outside. Let's hope I don't scandalize any of the villagers by appearing briefly in pants.

We joke that our cooks will try another American meal today, maybe bacon and eggs, but it is not really a surprise when we get rolls again. As a special treat, however, there is also margarine and some kind of jelly. I have my doubts about the un-refrigerated margarine, so I skip it.

After breakfast, it is time for church. They load 6 wicker chairs into the truck and we all pile on for a short drive. The church is a hut built with a bamboo skeleton, filled with stones and then covered with mud. When they want a window they simply omit the stone and mud, but leave the horizontal bamboos, so the effect is as if the window has bars on it. We enter the church and are a bit embarrassed to find out that the wicker chairs are for us. It doesn't feel right to set ourselves apart from the people, but then I realize that they are trying to honor our visit, and trying to give us a gift. So I sit.

The service goes on and on, in Makua and Portuguese. First there is singing, then testimonies, then preaching and reading the word, then more singing and more testimonies. As usual when visiting a strange church, we don't know when to stand or sit. It seems that you stand during the singing and sit during the preaching. I think. Video of church service.

Amy and I are disconcerted to find out that we will be moving to another village today. We had thought we would be here until tomorrow, and brought a box of water with that in mind, discarding the box last night as we tucked the bottles into the tent. Now we have no way to carry them. I fit a few into my knapsack, which now weighs a ton, and we prevail on one of the guys to take a few for us.

The kids in this village are so friendly and eager. They rush up to the truck as we are leaving and try to grab our hands. I reach over the side and have multitudes of children all trying to touch me. There is such a friendly innocence to it, although I have to admit that as soon as the truck starts up I pull out my bottle of hand sanitizer.

The next village has a different tone. It's harder to get the kids to engage in play, or even to hold hands, and the adults stand farther off, not unfriendly but definitely reserved. I inadvertently find one thing that absolutely entrances the kids -- taking photos. In fact, they are so eager to get into the picture that it makes it almost impossible to take any decent pictures at all, since as soon as they see a camera they come running and crowd around, blocking your view of whatever you were looking at in the first place. I thought that I could take discreet zoomed pictures of individual faces, but it is impossible.

The real appeal of the cameras is the display screen. The kids are desperate to see themselves. One of our group has a film camera, and the kids simply cant figure it out at all. What is the point of this useless gadget? I'm not sure they even realize that a camera takes pictures, they simply want to view the screen. I soon realize that it is hopeless to try to keep the dirty fingers off. They are getting too much pleasure out of this to worry about the dust on the camera. But eventually their interest gets out of control, and they get rough with the little ones, shoving them out of the way, so I put the camera away before anyone gets hurt.

Occasionally I try to wander off and discreetly take a zoom picture of one person a distance away, but I need about 40 seconds to take the camera out of the case, turn it on, compose my scene, zome and shoot, and that is about 25 seconds too long.

Fred has brought bubbles, which are a huge hit, the kids go wild to try to catch them (see the video here).

We are a little disconcerted to find out that the bathroom facilities in this village don't have a wall around them. The guys tell us that it's no problem, just hold up a kapulana. It's not a bad suggestion, but I don't notice any of them using it!

Dinner tonight was a fish stew, with skinny whole fish in it. I'm not a big fan of fish guts (or heads or bones, for that matter), so I tried my best to nibble something edible. The broth was actually delicious, but had a lot of grit. It seems a little funny to worry about washing the dishes when the food itself has dirt in it.

Tonight the movie is at a local schoolyard. It is incredibly dark. The women on the team are told to not even go to the bathroom alone (about 20 yards away). We need to go with a group that includes men. The guys are gracious when we ask them to escort us. After all, we don't want to miss the opportunity because the bathroom facilities are outhouses, which seem thrillingly sophisticated after the hole-in-the ground without walls.

The movie is 2 hours long, but seems endless. I'm grateful to find a ledge to sit on. I'm less grateful after I realize that something is crawling on me and biting me.

Finally it is ministry time, but the chaos is overwhelming. We didn't even know what phase of the service it was. Is it salvation? Is it healing? We didn't know why people were coming forward. I tried asking people in Portuguese but they are unresponsive. I started just going ahead and laying hands on people, and they physically recoil and try to escape. I'm feeling ineffective and frustrated. It takes a few days before I realize what was going on. A teammate explained to me that this was actually a power encounter -- the people were probably under the influence of a witch doctor, and were afraid of the power of God. That makes total sense now, but at the time was frustrating and confusing. I was looking for signs and wonders, and people wouldn't even let me pray!

I had better luck with the kids. Between the ones that apparently had malaria and the ones that looked like they had parasites, and the ones that were coughing, you could have filled a hospital. I held them and prayed for them and felt a desperate need for God's power to move. But I felt his compassion flowing and I know that they got touched in some way.