Alright here
we go, first update from Mozambique! I’ll be honest I’m not entirely sure what
to write, so much has happened in the last month. Internet has been entirely
sketchy here so I probably won’t get to update more than maybe once or twice
more, I’ll just have loads of stories to tell when I get back. And loads of
pictures.
Life here in Pemba is good!! I’m
living in a house with 12 other girls so it is a bit cramped but we manage, I
think we actually manage extraordinarily well considering the incredibly tight
living quarters—there is a lot of opportunity to exercise grace. I absolutely
love love love the girls in my house, they are simply fantastic! They are from
China, Russia, Poland, South Africa, England, Norway, and assorted parts of the
United States with quite an age range. One cool thing is that most of my
housemates are in the medical profession in some way shape or form,
incidentally making our house very popular for all questions of a semi medical
nature. We make a lot of new
friends that way.
Classes are going well, I am
writing this trying to think of how to explain what I do with most of my time.
On paper it doesn’t look like we do much of anything but our days are so
full. Monday through Thursday we
have classes in the mornings. Some days are cross-cultural with the Mozambican
Bible School students that are here with us. Those days are always fun and
involve a lot of gesturing and hand signals as there are often 3 or 4 languages
from Mozambique that we are trying communicate across, plus Portuguese. It’s
good fun. Other days we have guest speakers come and speak about anything from
doing missions long term, to how to learn a new language, to more of a Bible
study format. The afternoons are filled with trips in to town, village visits,
beach trips, house dinners, and language lessons. Time is going so fast, we’re halfway through our time here
this week and I know the next few weeks are going to fly.
A few highlights so far…two
weekends ago I went with my group to the bush to do outreach. I got to go with the team that went with
Heidi, which was amazing. Basically we showed the Jesus Film and prayed for a
ton of people. People were healed, people were saved, it was fantastic. This one
little girl was deaf and mute, we all prayed for her and by the end she could
hear and repeat small words. What. The. Heck. I was standing there and I
couldn’t believe it. The next day I was sitting there in the dirt playing with
her as she repeated words I was saying. Absolutely aaaaaaamazing. We spent the
entire weekend in the village just being with the mama’s, learning the local
language Makua, playing with kids, and doing a lot of praying for people. The
experience was definitely a highlight of the summer. Another highlight was this
weekend I had the opportunity to go to a local church in the village right next
to the base. It was tiny, probably about 20 people total but it was one of the
best churches I have ever been to. What was awesome as well was that we are
getting to know people. So in this tiny church in the middle of the village we
see not just random people but friends who know our names and who we know. And
that’s really neat.
This summer hasn’t at all been what
I thought it would be at all. It’s been so much better in so many ways and so
much harder in so many others. So uplifting, so stretching, so much learning
about myself and God and other people. What an incredible opportunity to be
here, what a blessing.
I think this is getting to be a bit
of a novel…in summation I love it here! So hard and so good! I think I will go
take a shower now, since the water is on, and that doesn’t happen very
frequently bahaha and it’s been a few days.
