Our two-day bush bush outreach was an wonderful experience. We were excited to know that we would be helping to gather supplies to build a new church in a remote village. It was also a privilege to have our Mozambican brothers and sisters from our group join us on this team outreach. I love how God is knitting us together.
Our first night there, we were surrounded by village children as we set up camp in the pastor’s backyard. The Jesus film was shown while we ate and then we prayed for those who responded to the alter call. A big lesson we both learnt here was to completely trust in the Holy Spirit as we did not know whether people were responding to receive salvation, healing or something else nor whether our prayers were having any impact. Without an interpreter and not being fluent in either Portuguese or Makua made it tricky to even ask what each person was needing or when we should stop praying. We realised that it didn’t matter because without Holy Spirit nothing was going to happen. When we trusted, we saw healings and others visibly touched.
After a hot and humid night in the tent, we were blessed to be able to cool off slightly at a lagoon that was 10 mins away. Children ran from the village to join us and soon our team of about 20 was joined with a small army of excited children.
Our afternoon was filled with children’s ministry activities and moving blocks from a nearby site to where the church was to be constructed. There was so much joy even in doing this in the seering sun as we formed teams into two lines to pass bricks onto the back of a truck (camilon). We sang and worshipped and the task was made so much easier.
Due to an unfortunate accident that the village pastor had at the end of unloading all the bricks, the outreach that night was called off and one of our leaders shared his testimony instead.
That night, witch doctors seemed to beat their drums and chant all through the night till 7:30am the next morning. Praise God no one seemed to be affected as we drifted off to sleep in our sweltering tents that we had to zip up due to the rain. The next morning we greeted the village chiefs before heading back to base.
Our bush outreach experience has stretched us even further with our trust in God as well as pushing us further beyond our comfort zones of living conditions. It made our humble cabins back on base feel like luxury. Outside of the salty sea, there was no way to shower and it was extremely hot and muggy in our tents. Temperatures during the day made it unbearable to be in the sun for a few minutes at a time. We felt continually dirty even after our wet wipe baths. We were also consistently replacing sticky sunscreen with less sticky repellant, to do it again as a new day began. Nonetheless, we felt privileged to share the experience with our Mozambican family and see God move in the lives of the hungry. It was all worth it to see love poured out for the sake of the Kingdom!