The day’s session was due to start at 10am, but because of transport problems I had to go in at 8:30am and wait around! We were set up really quick, the guys helped me a lot – then we had an hour to kill till it all began. The plan was that I was to go into town again and get the generator and other bits that we needed (I had a look at the system when I got home and it had an Indian power plug… so I needed to change that to the Mozambican 2-pin plug!
I was surprised when the pastor actually came to start on the dot 10am! I had no idea what the program was, so I just winged it – turns out that the first hour was performances by each of the smaller churches in the province… some of it was good, some really really really bad – although the last act was fantastic, just guys singing a cappella –I think I prefer male Moçambican voices. The girls/women tend to be way off key and very shrill.
They were done at 11am and Heidi was just on her way in the door! Perfect timing! (and on time too!) They sang just one more song all together before the preaching started, Heidi came to the front and was holding a little baby boy, he was fast asleep! Suddenly she holds him out at arms length, but he had already peed all over the front of her top! A puddle was also forming on the floor, with 3 of my microphone cables running right thru it! Yuk! I have a little towel that used to be my favorite when I was little, that I use now to wrap the little sound desk in – I figured that in that way I can see it everyday! So when the baby peed on Heidi I passed her the towel to dry herself off. She is a remarkable woman, she kept her composure, wrapped the baby in the towel, covered the wet spot on her top and stayed at the front for at least another 20mins before carrying the baby to the back! She took my favorite towel with her and that’s the last I saw it. Very sad. But now someone else can enjoy it.
The session lasted till about 2pm, then home for a quick lunch (1 hour, service is shockingly slow), and then I was back to set up for the evening conference outside on the field. The people (us included) were getting very tired, its been long busy days and we wanted to be finished by 8pm. We had to setup the screen to show Christian Swahili music videos. As soon as the people saw the screen go up they all crowded round and sat down. Argh, it made life so difficult because I still had to run the cables to the projector and get the bench set up and they were so tightly packed and making such a noise that I had to really raise my voice to be heard! But I got it done eventually and the DVD started. There was one little girl, maybe about 2 or 3 years old, she was dancing to the music, adorable!
That night there were more miracles, it was great – but I was just so tired! We got packed up in record time and loaded the trucks, then back to the hotel where they had prepared a buffet meal for us: chicken, beef and salad! (I think there were fried potato chips too, but they were gone by the time I got to the food!) I just sat down, ate and went to bed!
Its 11:30pm and I had just fallen asleep when I have the most severe stomach cramps ever. Diarrhea! I was up most of the night – thankfully I didn’t have a roommate! In the morning I text messaged Will, the Iris co-ordinator for this conference. He came to my room looking really gruff and wanted to know what was up. I told him and his expression lightened a bit. “Oh Josham has it too” *sigh of relief* misery loves company! I stayed in bed the whole day, alternating between sleeping and visiting the loo. Turns out that about 10 people in our group got it. Couldn't quite decide if it was food poisoning or not, seeing that everyone had eaten the same food (after we got back to Pemba some of the other people also got it, so now I think it was a virus). Heidi came and prayed for me, and made me take my malaria medication because I had a fever. She also loaned me her iPod for the day so that I could listen to music!
The guys that had been helping me with sound were on their own for the last day of the conference – they came and got the equipment out my room (I didn’t even hear them come-in!)
The day passed by really quickly, the medication I’d been given stopped the diarrhea and when the guys came back with the sound stuff I was awake.
“One of the speakers doesn’t work that well anymore, and one of the cables broke” *sigh* turns out that one of the cables broke, and to compensate for the decrease in volume they turned the remaining speaker up till it went ‘pop’. And these speakers are only 2 weeks old. They are BRAND new. So that’s another sound system gone, and JBL just aren't getting us the replacement parts – I have been waiting for over a month now!!!
Originally I was meant to stay in Nampula for another 3 days to drive back the car that Heidi had bought (she had bought it on Thursday, sent her daughter’s boyfriend to drive it back to the hotel and he had crashed it into a stationary vehicle before he even left the vendor’s yard… oops! So it had to be repaired, panel beaten and would be ready on Tuesday). So now that I was ill (and so many others) another plan was made. Shara (Heidi’s assistant) popped into my room on Saturday night and handed me her plane ticket – “You fly and I’ll drive the Landrover back, be ready at 8am tomorrow” WOW!
I had to finish up the last few cables for the Nampula sound system, so I set my alarm for 6am and fell asleep, I was wide awake at 1am – probably since I had been sleeping nearly non-stop for the past 15 hours! The cables got done and I packed. Was still a bit woozy when I walked around, and I was getting a chest cold!
I ate for the first time since I had got sick, just a small bread roll, and got on the truck to the airport. Our flight was at 10 and we got there at 9:30! But all was good and it was amazing to be back in Pemba only 30mins later!!!! Sure beats a 7 hour bumpy truck ride!
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Nampula Conference (Day 1 & 2)
Wednesday morning dawned and I was awake to see the sunrise, so something HAD to be wrong! Nope, just the usual: On my way to Nampula, the 3rd largest city in Moçambique for a week long conference!
There are about 40 Americans from the ‘Global Awakening’ Team with us and it took 2 camiões and a Landrover to get everything we needed there! We set off fairly on time and 7 very bumpy, very uncomfortable hours later we arrive. I was fortunate enough to sit in the back of the Landy, so my ride wasn’t as crowded as the people in the trucks!
The Global team had basically asked to hold this conference, so they are sponsoring the Iris staff that will make it happen – we got checked into a fairly nice hotel, the ‘Bamboo’ and all my meals were paid! Yay!! That’s pretty cool – there are advantages to being the sound person… Also I was meant to share a room, but the girl hadn’t seen her 2 friends for a long time so we moved her matteress into their room and I got to have the luxurious hot shower flushing toilet sattelite TV room all to myself! It was great!
The conference kicked off that night, held on a large open field, about the size of 2 soccer fields (actually I think they were soccer fields!) and the sound went smooth. They had quickly hammered together a wooden platform for Heidi and the other speakers to stand on – I think it could safely hold about 10 people, as long as they didn’t dance, or make any jumpy movements! I would guess that there were over 2000 people there – kinda hard to count cos the light was mainly focused on the stage!
Randy Clarke was the guest speaker for this conference and he opened the whole thing. While he was talking Heidi suddenly turned to me and said, ‘I want you to go buy a sound system for this church. How much do you think it will cost? Something simple. I will give you a cheque tomorrow then you go buy it. OK?’
So I thought to myself. “Okie dokie… No problem. I speak Portuguese fluently and I know EXACTLY where to go to find a sound system in this strange city I have never before in my entire life been in, bring it on!” OK, so maybe my thoughts were more like, “How on earth am I going to do that?”
What can I say, life here is NEVER dull!
Thursday came and I had pondered for part of the night what a simple, yet powerful and preferably indestructible sound system would cost here in Mozambique… Heidi grabbed me at the breakfast buffet table and asked me the cost: I guesstimated that it wouldn’t be more than US$2000. “No problem”, she said, “I will give you a cheque for US$3000, I need $1000 to buy a car”. So I was going to cash a cheque for $3000 and walk around with over 75 million meticais for the whole day. In Moçambique. Fun.
First problem though: Who will do sound while I was gallivanting around town? Fortunately there were 2 younger guys on the Global team and they were roped in to help me out – We set off for the church at about 8:30am, and drove across the soccer field. The church is just next to the field, down a steep little incline. Josham drove under the goalpost and down the hill. Suddenly we hear a loud grinding noise! OH NO, we had hit the top of the posts and had dented the roof-rack... but we wer also stuck. Couldnt move forward or backwards. FInally we unloaded all the sound stuff and go tsome of the guys standing around to pile into the back of the Landrover. Everyone in, and we cleared the top of the posts by at least 20cm. At the bottom of the hill we opened the door and the guys started getting out. 1..2..3...4...5..6......10...13....15....18...19! I think we set a new record! We had gotten 19 men in the back, plus 2 on top and 2 hanging on the back door... no wonder we cleared the post so easily! After that little aside the set up went fine, and they guys were pretty confident they could handle it.
So off we went, Josham and I, with a rough idea of where to find the local sound store and the bank. First stop was the bank to cash the cheque (75 000 000 meticais isn’t that much, I was expecting a mountain of money!), then to find the ‘big 3 story shop on the right hand side of the road just before the funny cross road’ Well we found, but its not really 3 stories high and the cross road, well I wouldn’t call it a cross road. But we found it and hey, it looked half decent. It took us about 2 hours to get the 2 mics, a pair of speakers and a decent/simple mixer amp. And my Portuguese stood the test – although the pictures I drew helped loads! The only name brand in the store I recognized was ‘wharfdale’ so I was going to get a set of them, but they only had 1 speaker of each instock! Who on earth will ever only buy 1 speaker??? So the system I got was made in India: Ahuja amp and mics and Tovaste speakers… They plugged it all in and tested it, didn’t sound too bad! Now we had to find a shop that sold speaker cable.
Josham and I drove Nampula flat, I think I can find my way around it easily now! There is only one set of traffic lights, and we kinda didn’t see them, so we treated it like a traffic circle – we were halfway around the circle when we saw that we had gone over the red light… haha, oops!
We found everything we were looking for, bar the halogen spotlight with legs (they only had the spotlight part) and a generator. Time to head back to the field to set up for the film.
The screen is in its final stages of death. We had patched it with bamboo splints and electrical tape on the last weekend outreach, but we needed another splint now on top!
While we were working the kids were being entertained by the Global team. They had split the kids into 5 groups and I was amazed to see them sitting quietly – in their groups! One group was playing ‘duck duck goose’ or since Erik didn’t know the Portuguese for goose, it became ‘duck duck chicken’! It is a game where the kids sit in a circle and hold hands, then one person walks around the outside of the circle saying ‘duck’ as he pats each head. Then he picks someone by patting their head and saying ‘chicken’ – then it is chase time. The aim is to run around the circle of children and sit down in the ‘chicken’s’ place before the ‘chicken’ catches you. The kids loved it!
The movie started about 15mins late because we were struggling with the screen, but that was OK. I lay down to nap on the stage while the movie played – its nearly 2hours long, and I’d seen it plenty of times now! The crowd was enthralled (as usual), and before I knew it the movie was over and Heidi and Randy got up to preach!
There were some amazing miracles that happened, many many people got healed, but the special miracle for me was a little 6 year old boy, Edvaldo, who had never before made a sound. Not laughed, not cried, nothing. His mother brought him forward and Heidi prayed for him. ‘ba ba’ his first sounds and then he laughed. Such a sweet sweet sound. I just was awestruck, how amazing is that??? For 6 years, and now he can express himself verbally! His mother was all smiles – it was awesome, just wonderful!
There are about 40 Americans from the ‘Global Awakening’ Team with us and it took 2 camiões and a Landrover to get everything we needed there! We set off fairly on time and 7 very bumpy, very uncomfortable hours later we arrive. I was fortunate enough to sit in the back of the Landy, so my ride wasn’t as crowded as the people in the trucks!
The Global team had basically asked to hold this conference, so they are sponsoring the Iris staff that will make it happen – we got checked into a fairly nice hotel, the ‘Bamboo’ and all my meals were paid! Yay!! That’s pretty cool – there are advantages to being the sound person… Also I was meant to share a room, but the girl hadn’t seen her 2 friends for a long time so we moved her matteress into their room and I got to have the luxurious hot shower flushing toilet sattelite TV room all to myself! It was great!
The conference kicked off that night, held on a large open field, about the size of 2 soccer fields (actually I think they were soccer fields!) and the sound went smooth. They had quickly hammered together a wooden platform for Heidi and the other speakers to stand on – I think it could safely hold about 10 people, as long as they didn’t dance, or make any jumpy movements! I would guess that there were over 2000 people there – kinda hard to count cos the light was mainly focused on the stage!
Randy Clarke was the guest speaker for this conference and he opened the whole thing. While he was talking Heidi suddenly turned to me and said, ‘I want you to go buy a sound system for this church. How much do you think it will cost? Something simple. I will give you a cheque tomorrow then you go buy it. OK?’
So I thought to myself. “Okie dokie… No problem. I speak Portuguese fluently and I know EXACTLY where to go to find a sound system in this strange city I have never before in my entire life been in, bring it on!” OK, so maybe my thoughts were more like, “How on earth am I going to do that?”
What can I say, life here is NEVER dull!
Thursday came and I had pondered for part of the night what a simple, yet powerful and preferably indestructible sound system would cost here in Mozambique… Heidi grabbed me at the breakfast buffet table and asked me the cost: I guesstimated that it wouldn’t be more than US$2000. “No problem”, she said, “I will give you a cheque for US$3000, I need $1000 to buy a car”. So I was going to cash a cheque for $3000 and walk around with over 75 million meticais for the whole day. In Moçambique. Fun.
First problem though: Who will do sound while I was gallivanting around town? Fortunately there were 2 younger guys on the Global team and they were roped in to help me out – We set off for the church at about 8:30am, and drove across the soccer field. The church is just next to the field, down a steep little incline. Josham drove under the goalpost and down the hill. Suddenly we hear a loud grinding noise! OH NO, we had hit the top of the posts and had dented the roof-rack... but we wer also stuck. Couldnt move forward or backwards. FInally we unloaded all the sound stuff and go tsome of the guys standing around to pile into the back of the Landrover. Everyone in, and we cleared the top of the posts by at least 20cm. At the bottom of the hill we opened the door and the guys started getting out. 1..2..3...4...5..6......10...13....15....18...19! I think we set a new record! We had gotten 19 men in the back, plus 2 on top and 2 hanging on the back door... no wonder we cleared the post so easily! After that little aside the set up went fine, and they guys were pretty confident they could handle it.
So off we went, Josham and I, with a rough idea of where to find the local sound store and the bank. First stop was the bank to cash the cheque (75 000 000 meticais isn’t that much, I was expecting a mountain of money!), then to find the ‘big 3 story shop on the right hand side of the road just before the funny cross road’ Well we found, but its not really 3 stories high and the cross road, well I wouldn’t call it a cross road. But we found it and hey, it looked half decent. It took us about 2 hours to get the 2 mics, a pair of speakers and a decent/simple mixer amp. And my Portuguese stood the test – although the pictures I drew helped loads! The only name brand in the store I recognized was ‘wharfdale’ so I was going to get a set of them, but they only had 1 speaker of each instock! Who on earth will ever only buy 1 speaker??? So the system I got was made in India: Ahuja amp and mics and Tovaste speakers… They plugged it all in and tested it, didn’t sound too bad! Now we had to find a shop that sold speaker cable.
Josham and I drove Nampula flat, I think I can find my way around it easily now! There is only one set of traffic lights, and we kinda didn’t see them, so we treated it like a traffic circle – we were halfway around the circle when we saw that we had gone over the red light… haha, oops!
We found everything we were looking for, bar the halogen spotlight with legs (they only had the spotlight part) and a generator. Time to head back to the field to set up for the film.
The screen is in its final stages of death. We had patched it with bamboo splints and electrical tape on the last weekend outreach, but we needed another splint now on top!
While we were working the kids were being entertained by the Global team. They had split the kids into 5 groups and I was amazed to see them sitting quietly – in their groups! One group was playing ‘duck duck goose’ or since Erik didn’t know the Portuguese for goose, it became ‘duck duck chicken’! It is a game where the kids sit in a circle and hold hands, then one person walks around the outside of the circle saying ‘duck’ as he pats each head. Then he picks someone by patting their head and saying ‘chicken’ – then it is chase time. The aim is to run around the circle of children and sit down in the ‘chicken’s’ place before the ‘chicken’ catches you. The kids loved it!
The movie started about 15mins late because we were struggling with the screen, but that was OK. I lay down to nap on the stage while the movie played – its nearly 2hours long, and I’d seen it plenty of times now! The crowd was enthralled (as usual), and before I knew it the movie was over and Heidi and Randy got up to preach!
There were some amazing miracles that happened, many many people got healed, but the special miracle for me was a little 6 year old boy, Edvaldo, who had never before made a sound. Not laughed, not cried, nothing. His mother brought him forward and Heidi prayed for him. ‘ba ba’ his first sounds and then he laughed. Such a sweet sweet sound. I just was awestruck, how amazing is that??? For 6 years, and now he can express himself verbally! His mother was all smiles – it was awesome, just wonderful!
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
A Truck, a Footpath & Fire Ants!
Such is the communication here that I was told on Thursday that I was going on a weekend outreach, leaving at 11am on Saturday, my only day off per week! I did try and get out of it, but in the end I guess I realized that it is my job as the sound person to do sound…
I got all the sound stuff ready, I was packed, I borrowed a tent, a sleeping bag and even got a fancy little blow up mat to sleep on! I tested the sound system and made the cables to go with it. All ready.
On Saturday morning at about 10:30am (we are meant to leave at 11) I run into Pastor José, the man in change of this outreach. I had suddenly realized that I didn’t know who else was going on this outreach and if I am the only girl then I cannot go – He speaks absolutely no English. This is going to test my Portuguese to its full extent!
No worries, he would like 8 of our visitors to go along – problem is we have no visitors at the moment…
I saw Susi, our ‘International Cross Cultural Training Program’ (a.k.a. Mission School) co-ordinator and begged her to find me 7 people (at least one being a girl) to go on the outreach, now scheduled to leave at 1pm. No problem, as long as they are back in time for class at 8:30 Monday morning.
She calls me later and says there are 4 guys and 2 girls, bravely volunteering to go on this impromptu outreach, they are all packing and will be ready to leave at 1.
By 2:30 we are all loaded in the camião, waiting in the scorching sun.
3:30…
4:30…
5pm… Off we go, only 6 hours late! (I could have spent the day on the beach!)
We are going to Chiure, about 2 hours from Pemba. We arrive in the dark and start with the sound system, the camião leaves to fetch some people.
The very first obstacle we hit is the screen: usually on the outreaches all the visitors and the pastors set it up, so I have never really had to figure it out – but with this outreach there were only 3 pastors and 7 of us… and the frame is broken. We tried taping it, we tried tying it with rope, the locals laughed at us and said our rope was ‘new technology from America!’ Then they set to work with 2 pieces of bamboo and some dried palm fronds that they wet to make into rope – I laughed and said that it is the ‘new technology from Africa!’ and they laughed at my compliment, because of all the things we had tried this was the only one that worked!
Finally the screen was up (leaning a bit to far forward, but it would be fine). Then I switched on the system and played our up beat African music to get the crowds in. Only one problem – the speakers sounded terrible… then the next disaster struck, one of the power rolls (made for ‘office use’) decided to melt. OK. Not a problem, we can use only one speaker and we don’t need the lights while the movie is going so we are fine. Its OK.
The movie starts and the crowd settle down. Its 8:30pm already, so we are in for a late night. I had brought the better of our Makua Jesus DVDs, this one only has a little scratch on it and causes it to skip 4 mins of the film, but you have to sit and wait for it then press the ‘skip forward’ button to make it go on. Usually a very simple thing, this time however it just refused to move. We had to power down the DVD player and try again…
The movie went quickly after that – we pitched our tent in the yard while we waited.
Because the camião had left to pick up more people the screen was standing alone (usually we lean it against the truck). All through the film the kids would jump up, run under the screen and pee just behind it – and from where I was sitting I could see it all! It was funny! The culture is so different!!
As soon as the movie ended the people scattered, there were maybe 50 that stayed to listen to the preaching and for prayer. This is highly unusual – maybe it was because it was quite late, but still, they weren’t very interested. The students prayed with people and they saw some healings, which was totally awesome, and when we had a talk afterwards while we ate they all agreed that this was the best thing that they have ever done, they really enjoyed it – frustrations, delays and all!
We were all in bed by midnight and fell asleep quickly. Then at 3am there was a huge dog fight quite close to the tents, it sounded really bad, I didn’t want to look.
Then at 5:30am the camião returned packed full of singing pastors from the surrounding area. 5:30am. It was f-i-v-e t-h-i-r-t-y in the MORNING. Needless to say we didn’t fall asleep again.
Church was scheduled at 9 and we had a nice breakfast of grass tea and a bread roll. The tea is really made from grass. They pick a certain type of long grass in the field, break it into 3 or 4 pieces, tie many into a bundle together and boil it in a huge cauldron of water. It was really nice! While we were eating they were butchering the goat for lunch…
I wont go into the whole church story – if you read my ‘food distribution’ article then you will know my views on Sunday church – this wasn’t too bad. Just 4 hours.
After church we ate a lovely lunch, they had made rice and shima (the ground corn) and goat – I really like the shima!
We were not staying at this village for another night, we were going to a place ‘not far away’ to do an outreach there for the evening, and seeing that we had to get the students back intime for class the next morning we will leave to drive back to Pemba as soon as we are done. In the meantime 2 of our long termers from Pemba showed up – they were on their way to another village when they took a wrong turn and ended up at ours! This was actually a really good thing – we are having a conference in Nampula from Wednesday and they needed our camião, so it left. We were stranded – fortunealty another camião showed up and with the landrover of the long termers we were good for transport.
Heidi had been scheduled to come to this village to give a seminar to all the local area pastors – that was the group of people that showed up this morning at 5:30am – but now Heidi wasn’t coming anymore so we had to take them all back to where we picked them up from. It was all a huge complicated saga. I was never really sure what was going on cos things were changing so quickly, but that is the African way I guess.
We get loaded into the camião, and a whole bunch of people jam in with us. We set off, no one really knowing where we were going or how long it would be till we got there!
We are on the tar road, then we are on a wide dirt road, then we are forging our way thru a tall elephant grass as high as the canopy of the truck and we are driving down a footpath!
The Moçambicans started singing, they sang and sang and sang - We suddenly heard a gasp and I looked to see what had caused it. One of the younger girls had motion sickness and had been sick all over the little boy sitting in front of her. Bless him, he just sat there, didn’t make a scene or even say a word. He just waited patiently looking fairly bewildered until someone wiped him down with a capalana. The girl carried on being sick, but they held a capalana infront of her mouth, so it was all good.
And they never stopped singing.
Every once in a while we came across low hanging tree branches, the truck would just carry on at the same speed while all of us at the back ducked to avoid the leaves and twigs that burst into the back. We had gone thru about 5 of them when suddenly we hit the branches and instead of just twigs and leaves we were covered in huge red biting FIRE ANTS! They were everywhere, on our luggage, on us, in our clothes, biting biting biting. One girl was in tears. It hurt! We squashed and flicked and brushed away as many as we could and finally we only had the occational bit on the bum, but it was bearable.
And they never stopped singing!
Finally after 1 ½ hours we were there. As people started getting out the truck I looked down and the floor was covered in vomit, dead ants and something that resembled diarrhea…
Setting up this time went quickly and we got the movie going at 5:55pm! 5 minutes earlier than I had planned! Yay!
The team spent the entire movie ontop of the landrover praying for the time after the movie, they are such a great bunch!
The movie ended and nearly everyone stayed to listen to the preaching, and there were many responses for salvation, even a man wearing a muslim cap raised his hand! The students prayed for loads of people for healing and the response was overwhelming!
The only real disappointment/shocking thing was at the end when we asked people to come forward to share what God had done for them, there were a few people that came forward and just mocked God! It really soured the whole evening, but I know that they are only a few, and that a large majority of the people really encountered Jesus.
We packed up and it was decided that since the camião wasn’t back yet we would leave the sound system there and go back in the landrover, just taking our luggage with us. The ride back was much quicker then the ride in, and the landrover is so much more comfortable than the truck!
We got home at midnight and totally exhausted I went to bed! But overall it was a really good outreach, I enjoyed it, and the students loved it! I am glad.
I got all the sound stuff ready, I was packed, I borrowed a tent, a sleeping bag and even got a fancy little blow up mat to sleep on! I tested the sound system and made the cables to go with it. All ready.
On Saturday morning at about 10:30am (we are meant to leave at 11) I run into Pastor José, the man in change of this outreach. I had suddenly realized that I didn’t know who else was going on this outreach and if I am the only girl then I cannot go – He speaks absolutely no English. This is going to test my Portuguese to its full extent!
No worries, he would like 8 of our visitors to go along – problem is we have no visitors at the moment…
I saw Susi, our ‘International Cross Cultural Training Program’ (a.k.a. Mission School) co-ordinator and begged her to find me 7 people (at least one being a girl) to go on the outreach, now scheduled to leave at 1pm. No problem, as long as they are back in time for class at 8:30 Monday morning.
She calls me later and says there are 4 guys and 2 girls, bravely volunteering to go on this impromptu outreach, they are all packing and will be ready to leave at 1.
By 2:30 we are all loaded in the camião, waiting in the scorching sun.
3:30…
4:30…
5pm… Off we go, only 6 hours late! (I could have spent the day on the beach!)
We are going to Chiure, about 2 hours from Pemba. We arrive in the dark and start with the sound system, the camião leaves to fetch some people.
The very first obstacle we hit is the screen: usually on the outreaches all the visitors and the pastors set it up, so I have never really had to figure it out – but with this outreach there were only 3 pastors and 7 of us… and the frame is broken. We tried taping it, we tried tying it with rope, the locals laughed at us and said our rope was ‘new technology from America!’ Then they set to work with 2 pieces of bamboo and some dried palm fronds that they wet to make into rope – I laughed and said that it is the ‘new technology from Africa!’ and they laughed at my compliment, because of all the things we had tried this was the only one that worked!
Finally the screen was up (leaning a bit to far forward, but it would be fine). Then I switched on the system and played our up beat African music to get the crowds in. Only one problem – the speakers sounded terrible… then the next disaster struck, one of the power rolls (made for ‘office use’) decided to melt. OK. Not a problem, we can use only one speaker and we don’t need the lights while the movie is going so we are fine. Its OK.
The movie starts and the crowd settle down. Its 8:30pm already, so we are in for a late night. I had brought the better of our Makua Jesus DVDs, this one only has a little scratch on it and causes it to skip 4 mins of the film, but you have to sit and wait for it then press the ‘skip forward’ button to make it go on. Usually a very simple thing, this time however it just refused to move. We had to power down the DVD player and try again…
The movie went quickly after that – we pitched our tent in the yard while we waited.
Because the camião had left to pick up more people the screen was standing alone (usually we lean it against the truck). All through the film the kids would jump up, run under the screen and pee just behind it – and from where I was sitting I could see it all! It was funny! The culture is so different!!
As soon as the movie ended the people scattered, there were maybe 50 that stayed to listen to the preaching and for prayer. This is highly unusual – maybe it was because it was quite late, but still, they weren’t very interested. The students prayed with people and they saw some healings, which was totally awesome, and when we had a talk afterwards while we ate they all agreed that this was the best thing that they have ever done, they really enjoyed it – frustrations, delays and all!
We were all in bed by midnight and fell asleep quickly. Then at 3am there was a huge dog fight quite close to the tents, it sounded really bad, I didn’t want to look.
Then at 5:30am the camião returned packed full of singing pastors from the surrounding area. 5:30am. It was f-i-v-e t-h-i-r-t-y in the MORNING. Needless to say we didn’t fall asleep again.
Church was scheduled at 9 and we had a nice breakfast of grass tea and a bread roll. The tea is really made from grass. They pick a certain type of long grass in the field, break it into 3 or 4 pieces, tie many into a bundle together and boil it in a huge cauldron of water. It was really nice! While we were eating they were butchering the goat for lunch…
I wont go into the whole church story – if you read my ‘food distribution’ article then you will know my views on Sunday church – this wasn’t too bad. Just 4 hours.
After church we ate a lovely lunch, they had made rice and shima (the ground corn) and goat – I really like the shima!
We were not staying at this village for another night, we were going to a place ‘not far away’ to do an outreach there for the evening, and seeing that we had to get the students back intime for class the next morning we will leave to drive back to Pemba as soon as we are done. In the meantime 2 of our long termers from Pemba showed up – they were on their way to another village when they took a wrong turn and ended up at ours! This was actually a really good thing – we are having a conference in Nampula from Wednesday and they needed our camião, so it left. We were stranded – fortunealty another camião showed up and with the landrover of the long termers we were good for transport.
Heidi had been scheduled to come to this village to give a seminar to all the local area pastors – that was the group of people that showed up this morning at 5:30am – but now Heidi wasn’t coming anymore so we had to take them all back to where we picked them up from. It was all a huge complicated saga. I was never really sure what was going on cos things were changing so quickly, but that is the African way I guess.
We get loaded into the camião, and a whole bunch of people jam in with us. We set off, no one really knowing where we were going or how long it would be till we got there!
We are on the tar road, then we are on a wide dirt road, then we are forging our way thru a tall elephant grass as high as the canopy of the truck and we are driving down a footpath!
The Moçambicans started singing, they sang and sang and sang - We suddenly heard a gasp and I looked to see what had caused it. One of the younger girls had motion sickness and had been sick all over the little boy sitting in front of her. Bless him, he just sat there, didn’t make a scene or even say a word. He just waited patiently looking fairly bewildered until someone wiped him down with a capalana. The girl carried on being sick, but they held a capalana infront of her mouth, so it was all good.
And they never stopped singing.
Every once in a while we came across low hanging tree branches, the truck would just carry on at the same speed while all of us at the back ducked to avoid the leaves and twigs that burst into the back. We had gone thru about 5 of them when suddenly we hit the branches and instead of just twigs and leaves we were covered in huge red biting FIRE ANTS! They were everywhere, on our luggage, on us, in our clothes, biting biting biting. One girl was in tears. It hurt! We squashed and flicked and brushed away as many as we could and finally we only had the occational bit on the bum, but it was bearable.
And they never stopped singing!
Finally after 1 ½ hours we were there. As people started getting out the truck I looked down and the floor was covered in vomit, dead ants and something that resembled diarrhea…
Setting up this time went quickly and we got the movie going at 5:55pm! 5 minutes earlier than I had planned! Yay!
The team spent the entire movie ontop of the landrover praying for the time after the movie, they are such a great bunch!
The movie ended and nearly everyone stayed to listen to the preaching, and there were many responses for salvation, even a man wearing a muslim cap raised his hand! The students prayed for loads of people for healing and the response was overwhelming!
The only real disappointment/shocking thing was at the end when we asked people to come forward to share what God had done for them, there were a few people that came forward and just mocked God! It really soured the whole evening, but I know that they are only a few, and that a large majority of the people really encountered Jesus.
We packed up and it was decided that since the camião wasn’t back yet we would leave the sound system there and go back in the landrover, just taking our luggage with us. The ride back was much quicker then the ride in, and the landrover is so much more comfortable than the truck!
We got home at midnight and totally exhausted I went to bed! But overall it was a really good outreach, I enjoyed it, and the students loved it! I am glad.
Friday, June 09, 2006
Iris Ministries is Front page news
A front page newspaper article was published a few days ago that reported that Iris was against the current government (FRELIMO) and that we were using our influence to subvert their authority and we were telling people to vote for the opposition party… All lies, but the governor and government officials are talking of closing the church, the childrens’s centre, our primary school, the bible school and basically kick us out of Pemba.
PLEASE PRAY FOR US!
Heidi went to meet with the editor of the paper today to ask him to retract the article, but he claimed that government sources called him – then Heidi spoke to people from the ruling party and they denied ever doing that – and Heidi tried to meet with the governor 3 times but he refused to see her each time.
Heidi also has malaria at the moment, she is not well at all, but she does not want to stay in bed and rest! So please pray for her too!
PLEASE PRAY FOR US!
Heidi went to meet with the editor of the paper today to ask him to retract the article, but he claimed that government sources called him – then Heidi spoke to people from the ruling party and they denied ever doing that – and Heidi tried to meet with the governor 3 times but he refused to see her each time.
Heidi also has malaria at the moment, she is not well at all, but she does not want to stay in bed and rest! So please pray for her too!
South Africa Break
I had 2 exams to write in South Africa, about 2 weeks apart so I took the opportunity to do some shopping for my house, and stock up on
goodies that were not available in Pemba. I nearly cried the first time I went into a supermarket – everything was so cheap! Prices in Pemba are easily double if not more for the same items!!! I had come prepared – only 6kg of luggage, leaving a good 30kg open for things to take back! (OK so I was over weight when I went back, and that is even after I had sent 8kgs with a friend…
To add to my excitement I went to theatre to have had all my wisdom teeth out, and I also had a little car accident on the day of my Portuguese exam – which left our family one car short, which was frustrating because it meant I didn’t have transport, not to mention the excess I have to pay on the insurance!!!!
But it was a nice break – hot showers & good food (when I was finally able to chew again)!
goodies that were not available in Pemba. I nearly cried the first time I went into a supermarket – everything was so cheap! Prices in Pemba are easily double if not more for the same items!!! I had come prepared – only 6kg of luggage, leaving a good 30kg open for things to take back! (OK so I was over weight when I went back, and that is even after I had sent 8kgs with a friend…
To add to my excitement I went to theatre to have had all my wisdom teeth out, and I also had a little car accident on the day of my Portuguese exam – which left our family one car short, which was frustrating because it meant I didn’t have transport, not to mention the excess I have to pay on the insurance!!!!
But it was a nice break – hot showers & good food (when I was finally able to chew again)!
Sound Training Tour (Part 4) – Zimpeto, Maputo
Arriving in Maputo was like a shock to the system, it was FREEZING cold, only 20C!!! I needed 3 blankets at night… something told me that I must have acclimatized to Pemba’s tropical heat! Iris’ largest centre is in Zimpeto, a suburb of Maputo, looking after more than 500 kids, ranging from newborn to 17 years. It had been established for more than 10 years now (which accounts for the fact that they have HOT running water!!!)
The sound training there went well. Valdimar had malaria, so I trained Pasqual instead. He was quite a quick learner and when we went out for the first night of the 3-night outreach he did really well!
The sound training there went well. Valdimar had malaria, so I trained Pasqual instead. He was quite a quick learner and when we went out for the first night of the 3-night outreach he did really well!
Here in Maputo the children’s centre has become very ‘westernized’ seeing that there are so many international visitors and many of the kids have been sponsored by visitors to attend youth conferences in the States, and visited people in the UK, or been on trips to South Africa, not to mention the fact that Maputo is now to some extent a thriving metropolitan city! The atmosphere and style of worship is very different to the other centers. They have an amazing, talented band, and they even sing some Hillsongs’ songs in Portuguese! Also church is nearly like any other western church, I say nearly because in some aspects it is still African!
I think I will go back there and present a ‘real’ sound course, covering things like decibel, EQ, frequencies, sound waves and other such things. At the moment the extent of the EQ training is ‘don’t touch those buttons’! I am also on a mission now to find sponsors to get them some decent equipment – they desperately need monitors, a bass amp, guitar amp, some perspex screens for the drums would be great! And also a proper mixing desk at the back of the hall with a snake running through the roof would be amazing! (at the moment the sound person sits on the stage behind the band, behind the speakers…
Outreach was to an open piece of land only 20 minutes from Zimpeto, and we were going to go there for 3 nights in a row. The first night we sang some up beat African praise songs, and I tried my hand at dancing! I don’t know how they do it…
seems like their legs are made from rubber! Pasqual was fantastic, he was a ‘proper’ sound guy, walking around in front of the speakers to see what the levels were like, giving me hand signals so that I could adjust the levels accordingly – at one
point he even told me to turn the volume down! They are so careful with the equipment – the little mixing desk even
gets wrapped in a towel! Pastor José preached that night and there wasn’t that much of a response – the people were all standing in the darkness, just on the perimeter of the floodlights we had set up, hopefully they will move closer next time!
Pastor José, before he became a pastor, or even a Christian for that matter, was one of the most feared gang leaders in the area. Whenever it was known his gang would be coming even the police used to flee! Now he is one of the gentlest people I know! Isn't that just incredible?
The second night we showed the Jesus film in Tsonga/Shangaan and the crowd grew bigger and bigger as the movie went on! The altar call at the end drew quite a response and the visitors that accompanied us prayed with the people. That was quite nice.
Then the last night that we went, there was a large crowd, but again most of the people just stood in the darkness, just outside the circle of light! Also just as the preaching came to an end it started raining, so we tried to pack up as quickly as possible – sound systems don’t like water too much! So we got packed up in record time, on the truck (a little baby camião!) and set off back to the centre, we hadn’t even been going 3 minutes when the rain stopped! It
was only raining there, nowhere else – even the road was dry!
My week in Zimpeto seemed to fly past, and very soon I was on the coach headed for South Africa.
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