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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