With World Relief in Maputo

We are still in Maputo and head out tomorrow. One picture is from the village Tchakye, where we attended a strong church on Sunday. The kids are from the village and we wanted to bring some of them home with us :) They go to bed hungry most nights, and the lack of rain has brought much hardship to this village (where there is no irrigation system). The picture with Spencer and Dr. Pieter is of us trying to get a generator started (unsuccessfully). Pieter always asks for my engineering help, but that hasn't been too helpful for him :) The other picture is with Emily and the village ladies (World Relief volunteers in Mucatine). The video is from KokaMisava - this was the way the people greeted us for the first 10 minutes, then they gave a sendoff later that last almost an hour with singing and dancing! The people are pastors and women's leaders (from World Relief). Note the dancing pastor in the blue suit - that guy was a dancing machine and could flatout throwdown (I realize that the video footage doesn't show a whole lot of that)- we need to get him on Mozambique's Got Talent (or whatever they have on TV here :) The video is from 2 weeks back when we were with the Chapel team.

Yesterday was a pretty incredible day of meetings and vision from a variety of sources. Pastor Sebastiao Sitoe, however, left the deepest impression on both of us. What a man of God! He was a contact from our mentor, Dr. Pieter Ernst (also an amazing man). Sitoe traveled two hours each way to see us in a hot bus - he didn't know us from Adam. He is the head of a training center that is working with Zionist pastors, trying to encourage them toward the truth.

To give a bit of perspective, the Zionist church is perhaps the fastest growing in Mozambique and perhaps southern Africa. They have much fervor and zeal but many have no idea who Christ is. Some would say that the church is syncretistic (meaning that they mesh their own original religion with Christianity), but pastors Sitoe and Gumbe reminded us that many of these people are not willingly syncretistic, they just have never heard the true Gospel. You might be asking, "how can this be so if they have the Bible?" The problem is that 90% of the Zionist pastors are completely untrained, the Zionist church has no official doctrine (each church decides for itself), and there is little supervision or oversight. Perhaps even more important, 60% or more of the pastors are illiterate. Having a copy of the Bible is not helpful for them because they cannot read.

So, enter Pastor Sitoe. He was born in Mozambique but has had some training in the West (primarily in Germany, where he started walking with the Lord intimately). He returned in 1991 to Mozambique to help the church. For the first several years, he was rejected because he had more education than everyone else and was viewed as a threat by the pastors. But as he lived with them, he gained their trust and started to train Zionist pastors. A key problem with the Zionist church is they don't understand how Christ came and fulfilled the sacrificial system of the Old Testament. So, when someone has a problem, they go to the Zionist pastor. The pastor tells them that they need to do such and such a sacrifice. This is supposed to appease the spirits (their ancestors' spirits and God) and bring blessing. For many churches, this is a thinly veiled witch doctor. Other Zionist churches do not uphold this practice, but the majority do. To counteract this, Pastor Sitoe began to teach the leaders, beginning with passages in Leviticus and then showing how Christ is the fulfillment (either in John or in Hebrews). Many have repented and turned to Christ. Others have distanced themselves from Sitoe, but the ministry that he has started is powerful.

Most impressive was the teachers that he has seen the Lord raise up. He oversees 20 teachers in Maputo, 10 in Chokwe, 18 in Zambezia, and 6 in Beira (these are all cities/provinces in Mozambique). Each teacher has three teaching centers with between 10 and 40 pastors in each center. The teacher goes to one center the first week of the month, another center the second week of the month, and a third center a third week of the month. The last week, he stays at home. More amazingly, these guys are not paid but are completely volunteers who rely on the Lord for provision. Sometimes the local pastors at the training center provide something, sometimes it is an outside individual, but Pastor Sitoe told us that most of them live day to day. To give you a snapshot as well, these guys travel to training centers in rural areas - these are not the most fun places to live. They live in a little hut with another family for three weeks of the month for the sake of the Gospel and our Lord.

It's hard to communicate in words what we saw. Some might be thinking, "this guy was just pulling the wool over your eyes and had ulterior motives or maybe he was just trying to raise support." Much to the contrary, he did not want to accept even money for his transportation to see us. Likewise, he left his email address, but he gave no account information or way to give to support the ministry. One of our reflections has been that Western money in and of itself does little to solve any problem . If there is genuine partnership and deep commitment to each other as a part of the body of Christ, we from the West have some areas of expertise that can be helpful for people here. But it is we who will be the greater recipient in this relationship - I can almost guarantee you that. If one sits down with men and women like Pastor Sitoe, Pastor Daniel (from Chokwe), Pastor Lucky and his wife Sonnet, and many others, one can begin to see the state of spiritual poverty that we often live in. I'm not exalting them as perfect heroes of the faith, just simply saying that their hearts are much closer to the Lord, to sacrificing their lives as Christ did, to serving in humbleness, to joy in all circumstances, to submission to each part of the Word, and to always being prepared to give a reason for the hope that they have than those that I know in the US (most assuredly including me :)