FRELIMO visit to our base

FRELIMO is the current ruling party and the governor sent some very important people to visit our centre and see what we are doing as a direct result of the recent accusations against Iris Ministries. This is an update to the earlier ‘front page news’ article I wrote about.

It has been revealed that there is a RENAMO (opposition party) supporting pastor in one of our districts that has been holding anti-government meetings in the name of Iris. He had been removed from the position of district leader some time ago but still had the official ‘Iris stamp’ that he used for his own purposes. The government feels quite threatened by our ministry here seeing that we have a network of more than 3000 churches across the country and could in effect topple the balance of power should we wish to mobilize all our churches.

The RENAMO / FRELIMO struggle is an ongoing story. The civil war that ravaged Mozambique for the best part of 17 years was a north/south, RENAMO / FRELIMO struggle. This war ended in the 1980’s, but there is still a delicate line. People have been murdered over it, and last week we were chased out of a village because the messenger we had sent to say there was going to be an outreach was a fervent RENAMO supporter and FRELIMO supporting villagers didn’t like that.

I had never realized that this was such an issue, but now that the government has taken an interest in the Pemba base it has become real to me.

Heidi has had some serious problems on her hands trying to convince the government that Iris is a non-political, un-biased organization. We love everyone. We welcome anyone. And a few of our higher-ranking pastors have found it hard to accept that they cannot preach politics from the pulpit.

The FRELIMO government published an apology to the article they had written, but it was not un-conditional, it still basically warned us that we are on perilous ground and have to keep a check on all aspects of the ministry.

Right now we would appreciate your prayers for the ongoing favour in the eyes of the government and that a good relationship can be built. They were very impressed with out Primary school (grades 1 -7) and they were also given a chance to speak at our ‘International Cross-Cultural Training School’ formally known as ‘Mission School’. So all in all the visit was a success and they have been welcomed to return anytime!