Sorry for our delay. The past 2 weeks have been very, very busy!
The bush was a wild experience! So much fun. The 5 hour ride there was a bumpy one down dirt roads. The scenery was stunning-- it looked like a clip out of "Lion King". Poverty in the remote bush is on another level than villages here. The people live hours from the closest town. Their homes are mud huts with grass roofs, no electricity and it's about a 2 mile walk to the closest river to gather water by bucket.
Since it is hard to word what we experienced we will share a couple of simple moments that are ingrained on our hearts forever.
The Poor Prince:
One of the days we walked with the village people to the river to baptize. As we made the trek all of these beautiful children were running and giggling around us. I noticed many of them had shirts torn so badly it was hardly recognizable as t-shirt. One little boy I watched had torn shorts and his entire behind was revealed. He also ran around barefoot. As we reached the river he took off his torn shorts to swim. In this moment I said, "God I am so sad for this little boy" And I heard God say, "But he has joy. He has me, Jesus".
It was then it hit me. Jesus plus nothing = everything-- a revelation I have had before, but in this moment it grew in depth and reality before my eyes. I realized I was sad for someone who was not sad. It reminded me of the Beatitudes in Matthew 5... "the poor will inherit the earth". "The poor in Spirit are rich... for theirs is the Kingdom". Even though we cannot educate and feed every poor child in the world; we as believers can release the hope of Jesus to all nations, and those who have Jesus can have all their needs met through trusting in Him. They also can experience true joy as well as having the hope of heaven and a relationship with God.
Boom, pop, run!
We brought hundreds of balloons and candies to the bush. Handing it out became quite wild as the kids were worried there would not be enough for each of them. Jake and I patiently handed the goodies out and had to take off jogging a bit to calm the riot down. We had bloody hands from the hundreds of kids grabbing at us in excitement. It seemed as though they had never seen a balloon before. We demonstrated how to blow one up; however instead of using their balloons, we noticed each child took their balloon home and hid it. The day we left, several children came to see us off, holding their little un-flated balloon in the palm of their hands. How humbling to see a balloon as such a treasure. It did something deep to our hearts.
Cross-cultural humor:
As a gift, a very generous gift, the people slaughtered and roasted a pig for us. Being that there is no electricity, we ate dinner in the dark using head lamps. Rachel was eating without a light and thought she had consumed a couple of weird, large mushrooms, until the 3rd one was in her mouth and she realized something was NOT right. In spitting it out and grabbing a light, she realized she had eaten PIG skin. There were black dots on the skin from the pig's hair and on the other side there was a thick white layer of lard. OH my goodness. NEVER again. It took her a few minutes to get over the fact that pig skin was going through her digestive tract. The things you experience in other cultures! LOL.
A few other highlights of our time in the bush:
- The 1st evening we shared the Jesus movie in Makua (native tongue) and our Mozambican pastor shared the gospel. About 300 people received Jesus!
- Our team of internationals and Mozambicans got to pray over those in the crowd.
- We brought excess food so each meal we prepared, we shared with the village and many of the children who eat once a day or less got to be fed
- The village has a structure in process being built to be their 1st church. We got to dedicate the church and prophecy over the land.
- The witch doctors of the village tried to scare and intimidate us and they openly took their drums and chanted around our tents as we slept (cursing us), but we know the power of Jesus and His love overcomes and their spells had no authority over us. Whenever we saw them we would just smile and love on them.
Just a little light breaks up great darkness. God moved mightily in this village and also in our hearts.
Have a great weekend. Hope you all had a blessed Thanksgiving!
Love,
Jake & Rachel
