Thursday, June 25, 2015

Jesus in the Mozambique Bush

We have been doing great in Pemba! God is blessing us with great fellowship, beautiful scenery, and His presence 24/7! Each day we realize this is the place God wants us to be and how blessed we are to be here. The weekend before this was a weekend of rest for us, but this weekend was filled with challenges, prayer, and Jesus as we went to evangelize in the Mozambique bush.

     We left for bush outreach on Thursday at 15:00. As we started everyone on our team, about 40 people of Mozambique and International background, was excited and ready to share the good news of Jesus to the poor and lost. However our initial travel time of 3 hours quickly passed and we were still not in the village where we were meant to be. After 6 hours of travel, including a stop for the bathroom on the side of the road, a stop to get a tire fixed, and a stop to get food, we arrived! Everyone stumbled out of the cameon into the dark village and we started to set up camp. 
Setting up all the tents in the dark is challenging, but it looked great once we woke up!
After a long drive it usually takes the team a little while to wake up and leave their tents. In Mozambique, the villagers wake up as soon as the sun starts to rise at 5:00 am! They start cooking, or taking care of their children so it gets too noisy to sleep. When we finally climbed out of our tent we were greeted by all these beautiful faces! The village children rarely get to see outsiders and they get so excited when Iris teams come to evangelize. After breakfast the team split and half of the people went to do baptisms, and the other half stayed back to help with the children's program. The children get to sing songs, play games, and receive a piece of chocolate! They really look forward to this part of the day.



There were 13 people baptized into the name of Jesus, and there was much rejoicing! It was a magical moment to see these beautiful brothers and sisters in Christ come out of the water in complete freedom from their past lives. Consciously choosing to dedicate their entire lives to live for Jesus. 

After this everyone gathered together for a Mozambiquan lunch of rice and beans. It was a very relaxing afternoon and we were able to watch and interact with the villagers and the pastors. It was humbling to see how simply they live and how they don't have the same worries as most people do. They have to walk around 5 miles each time they need water, they need to either farm or raise livestock to eat, and they have to make clothing to cover themselves. Very few village children ever go to school, so they continue to live as their parent s do when they get older. The saddest part is very few of these villagers have ever heard the name of Jesus. They don't feel the presence of our living God, they don't experience the miracles done through the power of the Holy Spirit, and they don't know about the love of Jesus. Thankfully after lunch and rest our team went out to houses all around the village to spread the gospel of Jesus! Over 20 people gave up their old beliefs to live a new life with Jesus, many people were healed of sickness, and many more were blessed to be reminded of the love of God. Every person we encountered we invited to our big evangelism night, where we would show the Jesus film, do a skit, share testimonies, preach, and pray for anyone who came. 

     When we left we were dirty, tired, and completely satisfied with what God did for those people. We had another long journey back to the Iris base due to another cameon breakdown, but we made it home that night none the less. It was amazing to see God moving for the people, but we were also beyond blessed to be a part of that team. The students who came with us were so fantastic and never complained once! We cannot thank God enough for blessing us in all the ways He did that weekend. 

This is our beautiful team from all over the world and Mozambique!


Love and blessings from the Reckless team! 

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