All in a Day’s Work

Life has become considerably more hectic since the changes made. To give you a small idea of how things are now, I'll just describe yesterday.

Very early I had a knock on my door from 4 of my precious "pequeninhos" (the little boys under 12 years of age) asking for the soccer ball that I keep safe in the house. I grabbed the busted ball that they had only had 2 days (just the outer cover was ripped, the inner ball was still inflated) and a roll of duct tape and took them out to where all the boys play soccer. I gave them a little lesson on how they need to avoid playing close to the wall that has spikes on it, because I couldn't buy them a new soccer ball every week. Then one of them helped me wrap the ball completely in duct tape to protect it from further harm.

Augustino (one of the older kids) asked if he could have his MP3 player back that he had given me the day before to charge, though it took me a minute to understand what "empetres" meant: in Portuguese the letters Em Pe and the number Tres.

The night before I was told that our massive leaders' meeting for the afternoon was cancelled, and it was my responsibility as administrator to let everyone know (over a dozen people). Problem was, I didn't know all the leaders' phone numbers, so after the soccer ball lecture I ran around the base asking everyone either to give me their phone number or the numbers of other leaders. Once I had collected everyone's numbers I composed a text in Portuguese and sent it out to all of them with the news, and received so many responses that my phone's inbox filled up and couldn't take any more. Thing was, since I composed the message in Portuguese I forgot to tell one missionary.

Three workers were supposed to have a meeting with some visiting missionaries, but they either weren't told or forgot, so I had to run around and collect them. When I finally got them to the meeting place, one of the said missionaries asked me to translate a conversation she wanted to have with a pastor about his future.

Vito (one of the younger kids) had come up to me the night before saying he needed 20 mets for school (less than a dollar), so when I saw him again in the morning with Luis (the Mozambican staff person in charge of the kids' school), I ran back to the house and grabbed the money. Later I had to make a receipt for it, because the financial world here revolves around receipts.

It was payday for all the workers, so even the workers who are off this week came to get their money. I wanted to have a quick meeting with all my children's leaders, so I ran around and collected them all, but then later had to cancel the meeting and ran around again to tell them all not to bother. I still forgot one of them who sat waiting for me for some time, I felt bad.

Luis brought me a little boy named Antonio who looked very sad, and explained that he had lived here before but was reintegrated to live with his family members in the community. However, he wasn't happy at home and today he returned to the base to tell us he wanted to come back. I sat down with him and Luis to get the whole story—he came to the center when he was 4 years old, lived here 6 years and now is very unhappy at home. He said he has problems with his stepfather and he's lonely without his friends. I was completely lost, I haven't even been in charge of the kids for a whole week and this was a huge decision to make. I prayed with him, and told him to go get his mother and bring her back so we could talk about it further with her present.

Pastor Pascual (leader of the Bible School) said that one of the Bible students was very sick, possibly with malaria, and needed to be rushed to the hospital. I ran to find the missionary in charge of transport who ran to find a driver, then I went to the financial office to get the 101 mets Pascual asked for (1 met for the consultation, 50 for tests and blood-work, 50 for any medicine). Then I ran back to the house, wrote up a receipt, and ran back out to find Pascual to have him sign it.

Domingo Fernando (to distinguish him from my other 3 Domingos) then came up to me saying he needed a pencil for school. I took him and his little brother Minesse to the "biblioteca", or library, on the base to find him one. As they were leaving they showed me that their backpacks were ripped, and I promised to fix them over the weekend.

I was just about to meet with a couple of the older boys about their futures when Antonio came back with his mother, who had his little sister strapped to her back. She didn't speak any Portuguese, so I had to get Luis and Maria (the other children's leader) to translate her Sena to Portuguese for me and vice versa. She said that Antonio was much happier on the base with his friends, and that she didn't like to see him sad and lonely at home, so she fully consented to having him come back. I explained that our vision was to help children who are orphans as much as possible, and that if kids have the opportunity to grow up with a family, that in the long run that is usually much better for them. I still didn't know what to do, but since it looked like Antonio wasn't in any immediate danger or starving, I told him to give me a week to think and pray about it then come back for my decision. I also encouraged him to pray, saying God would let him know what he was supposed to do. (I still don't know what to do about this situation).

Then I got to meet with the older boys. Jack is about to leave the center in May, because that's when he turns 18 and it becomes illegal for him to live here anymore. Unfortunately, he has dyslexia and has had such a hard time in school that he had some behavior problems and got expelled twice and now isn't going. I tried to talk with him and see if there was any training we could find for him to work with his hands that wouldn't necessarily need an education. He said his dream is to be a mechanic, so we talked about how we might be able to find him an apprenticeship before he leaves. The other boy, Ricardo, has been off the base for a couple years now, but hasn't made much of his life yet. He wants to get training to be a driver, but he has been asking for work on the base for a while now, so we need to consider where we could possibly use him.

Keep in mind, all of this was before lunch.

I finally did get to sit down with my "massa" (the staple food made from cornmeal, kind of like really thick grits) and beans. After eating I collapsed on the bed for a while, and I think I dozed off for a bit (praise God for siesta time), but not for very long. Shortly after I got up Jon got a call from the visiting missionaries, who right after lunch went out to a funeral. They were calling to say that there would be a missionary couple from Brazil coming to Dondo to stay for a few weeks, and the wife and kids of another missionary couple for a few days. The only thing was, I'm over hospitality too, so I had to make sure they had spaces prepared…

We have a good deal of vacant long-term housing on the base, in faith that we'll eventually have more missionaries. There's an apartment on our strip that we thought would be good for the couple staying a long time, and the family could use the visitor's center. The only problem with the apartment is it hadn't been cleaned in ages, and I didn't have enough time to get both rooms prepared alone. Jon was frantically working on getting our next month's financial estimates submitted, so I knew I couldn't ask him. Most of the kids have school in the afternoon, but I did find a couple that didn't—Zito, 14, and José, 7, who is arguably one of the cutest and sweetest kids on the planet (not that I'm biased). They were a good balance, because Zito was very thorough and could work independently while José was extremely eager to help, but needed a lot of direction and supervision. I'm definitely learning a lot about the patience of a mother. Even with my helpers, deep cleaning that house took most of the afternoon. I gave them some kool-aid as a reward.

At dinner time I grabbed my little bowl and went to the kitchen to eat with the kids. I want them to feel like they're part of a family, so I like to check up on them as much as possible, and in Mozambique the best way to connect with people is over food. They've been having a lot of tests in school lately, so I like to ask them if they thought they were easy or hard—that's usually a good indicator of how their grades will be: if they thought it was easy, they probably did well.

After supper I realized that I had totally forgotten about the commission of pastors coming in that night, who all needed beds prepared in the clinic (which we use as a guest house for visiting pastors since we don't have any medical staff yet). I tried to do that all at once, but every time I tried to walk between the clinic and my house for supplies I would get stopped 3 or 4 times for other issues, problems, or questions. Manuel needed a bike early in the morning, so I needed to tell the guard to unlock the shipping container where the bikes are kept let him have one. The missionaries got back from the funeral and needed to eat (but the kitchen was already closed), they wanted to meet with someone before he left, and they needed me to find the translator. I finally finished preparing the clinic nearly an hour after I had started.

Then I could start getting the hospitality room ready for the family. I grabbed all my cleaning supplies yet again and trudged over to the visitor's area. First I had to just sit down and pray for a minute, because I was so exhausted I could barely lift the broom. I did finally get the room wiped down, dusted, swept, and the bathroom cleaned and beds made. Then I had to wait for the visitors to arrive. I told the guards they could expect a car coming very late and to come knock on my door when they arrived. I knew they were due to get in well after 11:00, but I didn't think I'd last that long so I just laid down and dozed on our wicker couch to wait for a knock on the door. The knock finally came, but thankfully Jon was still up and had more wits about him than I did, so he was able to attend to the visitors and direct them to their respective rooms. As soon as that was done, I promptly crawled under our mosquito net into bed and dropped off to sleep.

All in a day's work.

When cultures collide

There are just some things that you wouldn’t think would be cultural differences. You expect clothes, food, greetings etc to be different when you are in a different culture, but others just surprise you. For example, names. Whenever Carla and I introduce ourselves at churches with our full name, there’s a collective gasp in the audience. Here, your last name is actually the name of your father – when you get married, your last name is still the name of your family. When I introduce myself as “Joao (Jon) Reinagel”, then Carla introduces herself as “Carla Reinagel”, the audience naturally assumes I married my sister! No wonder several pastors have taken the mic after us and explain what’s going on! Now, we just introduce ourselves by our first names unless asked.

A Visit

Being placed over the kitchen has been a very good opportunity to make friends with the workers. Last week Ester, one of the workers, invited me to come visit her home. We originally arranged for Monday at noon, but after waiting for an hour I gave up and figured she had forgotten. She hadn't forgotten, she just came at "noon" Africa time: closer to 2:00. I had a meeting at 3:00, so that didn't work out and we rescheduled for Wednesday.

Ester came to the center (actually closer to noon Western time) and called for me at the gate to the missionary compound. I quickly slathered on some sun-block, knowing it would be a bit of a walk and the sun was decidedly strong today. I met Ester at the gate and she grinned. "Mado kerowa!" She greeted me cheerfully in Sena.

"Tado kerowa pyadidi, penombo imwe?" I responded as she had taught me just last week. She laughed and grabbed my hand to lead me out of the center. You don't see couples in Africa holding hands very often, but same-gender hand-holding is quite common as just a sign of friendship and togetherness. Just outside the gate we were joined by Brazito, a very tall first-year student at the Bible School who had apparently developed a friendship with Ester and was invited to accompany us. Ester excitedly chattered with several people in Sena as we walked along the road, though the only word I could pick up consistently was nyumba which means "home", so I guess she was telling them that I was visiting her home; apparently a great honor to her. We walked for some time in the beating sun, Ester and Brazito chatting in Sena and occasionally addressing me in Portuguese. We entered the Dondo bus stop area just as the mosque began wailing the call to prayer over the loud speakers. Our area is dominated much more by witchcraft than Islam, but there are enough Muslims to have a little mosque in Dondo. There are a lot more churches—we're winning. We walked past the bus stop and all its little shops, restaurants, and bars, and made our way toward the market. All of the trees and concrete walls along the way either have a painted red ribbon—the symbol of a cure for AIDS—or they are brightly hand-painted with advertisements of some of the most predominate companies and products of Mozambique: the two cell-phone companies, yellow-and-teal mCell and blue-and-white Vodacom comprise some of the most common ads all around the country, along with the red Coca-Cola and beer ads, the green and black condom ads, and the occasional Colgate or laundry detergent ad as well. We passed some ladies selling pineapples and avocados on the side of the road. Brazito asked if we have avocados in America, and informed me that they are called bakoti in Sena.

We stepped into the little market area, which much smaller than the Beira market I described in a previous blog post, and is becoming a place I enjoy going as much as I can. I like the bustle and familiarity people have with each other, it being a fairly small town and all. There are sacks of beans and peanuts, little piles of onions, plastic buckets of all shapes and sizes stacked on display, clothes laid out in the dirt for sale, brightly colored capulana wrap skirts hanging from the bamboo-structures' ceilings, and the usual array of sundry other items at the little shops: matches, notebooks, thread, soap, etc. Ester bought a grass mat and had Brazito carry it for her out of the market.

We walked on in the blistering heat. The wide paved streets lined with big concrete houses gave way to wide dirt roads with little concrete houses, which gave way to narrow dirt roads with mud houses, which we finally turned off to a very narrow sandy foot-path through the coconut-tree-shaded village. Chickens and ducks scurried about our feet, and children squealed "Mazungu! Mazungu!" (white person) when they saw me. I just smiled and waved. We passed a whole parade of high-school students on their way to afternoon school, all in their matching uniforms of dark green pants/skirts with a matching ties and light green button-down shirts. After walking for half an hour since leaving the base, we finally arrived at Ester's house, which was one of the poorest looking ones in the whole village. The bamboo frame was completely visible as most of the outer mud of the house had fallen off. Some of the holes in the walls had rags and old clothes shoved in them to fill in the gaps. The roof was made of the common corrugated material, but it was all very tiny scraps that were pieced together and likely leaked with every rain. Ester is a widow, and though she does have consistent work on the base, she struggles to care for her 6 children plus the 4 orphans she has taken in. She spread out her brand new grass mat for us to sit on the ground under a big tree next to her house, then busied herself with being hospitable. She tried to get her youngest child, Marcia, to come out of the house to meet me but she was terrified and just kept crying (I felt horrible). Her other children and those that live with her were bold enough to sit with me, but they were awfully quiet and shy.

African village life is so relaxed, laid-back, and communal. It always feels so peaceful—there is very little noise except for the voices of chatting neighbors and playing children, the random farm animal, and the birds. Some teen-age girls, Regina and Alima, came by and sat with us the whole time I was visiting—there's no rush, no stress, no worries. Ester sent her son Pedro to go buy me a soda and some cookies, and again I felt a little frustrated knowing she was spending money on me that she didn't really have, but I also knew that turning down her hospitality would be a much worse thing in the long run. When Pedro returned with my almost-cold pineapple soda (my favorite) and the little banana-cream-filled cookies, I tried sharing them with the kids every time Ester's back was turned. Most of them refused, but one adorable little five-year-old girl, Lina, was absolutely fearless and accepted the cookies gladly and finished off the last bit of my soda.

Ester busied herself preparing lunch on her little 1-foot-tall charcoal stove, so after a couple minutes of silence on the grass mat, I pulled out my notebook and informed all those around me that I really wanted to learn their language, Sena. I started with just pointing at everything I could see and asking them how to say it. Tree? Muti. Sky? Nkuzulu. Child? Mwana. Banana? Mafigu. After a while I graduated to simple phrases: I'm eating: ndiri kudya, I want: ine ndisafuna, she is washing a plate: akusuka prato. Little Lina would grin and giggle every time I attempted to repeat the phrases, it must have sounded strange to hear this foreigner saying things she understood (either that or I botched the pronunciation so badly that it was funny…). Ragina and Brazito were very patient and helpful teachers, and I had filled up two-and-a-half pages of my notebook by the time lunch was ready. Lunch was bits of fried fish with rice, and it was quite good. There was no silverware, so I was grateful for the experience I gained in Bangladesh eating rice with my hands. I tried out some of my new Sena with Ester, and she just gave her usual high-pitched "Shee!" (a sound the Sena people make when they're surprised) and looked very pleased. The fried fish was a little salty, so I was very thirsty afterward but knew better than to accept the water—didn't particularly feel like getting giardia this week.

After eating together and visiting a little longer, Ester picked herself up off the grass mat and asked if I was ready to go home. Honestly, I would love to spend far more time in the village, just making friends, learning the language, and eventually sharing the love of God with them when I have enough to communicate. But for this afternoon, my village time was up, and it was time to make the half-hour trek back to the mission base.

The African Way

Things are so different here than they are back in the states. I think, coming from America, we were ready for the difference in language, the difference in clothes, and the difference in living styles. What I hadn’t quite anticipated was just much everything changes – from what a handshake means to what’s rude to what money is used for. Even things we think are unchangeable, like logic and fiscal planning, are so different here that we barely recognize them. We missed a lot of this the first time around because we were usually working with large groups of missionaries – a large enough group that the Mozambicans around us had to bend to our ways of doing things. But now it’s us that need to conform to the Mozambican culture, and it’s quite a bit different than we first thought.

For example, if you were working in Africa, would you buy a washing machine or hire someone to do your laundry for a couple dollars a day? Most westerners think that it would be better to buy a washing machine than to put someone in a position of servitude. Here, where unemployment is over 50%, it’s incredibly rude to buy a mashing machine and put someone out of a job. If you do your own laundry and you can afford to have someone do it, you’re seen as selfish!

Another example – if someone comes up to you and says, “When are you going to give me your car?” How would you react? Offended? Put off? Incredibly surprised? Here the question isn’t offensive at all. It’s a compliment (I like your car) and a conversation starter (you have to respond because it’s a question)!

I still haven’t figured out what makes up logic here… I can understand western logic (which goes from several things we know to make a point about something we don’t), Hebrew logic (parallels or opposites, like any of the psalms or prophets), and Paul’s logic (A to B to C… Usually connected by rhetoric), but even with a Physics degree and usually excellent logic skills, I can’t quite figure out African logic. There’s definitely a pattern; you can especially see it when listening to a really good pastor preach. At certain points, you can see the crowd react in a powerful way to what was said, but those points don’t seem to make sense. It’s like going from A to F – two points that, to me, seem unconnected. I’ll give you an example I actually understand; the evangelist at an outreach said, “If you are sick, come up and receive prayer. You wouldn’t feed one of your children and let the others go hungry, would you?” I was so confused at first, but the crowd all understood instantly – if we’re God’s children then all of us should be able to expect Him to give us what we need. He wouldn’t just touch one or two people’s lives.

I’m still praying for that “Eureka!” moment… Hopefully that will be a post in the near future!

To market, to market

Yesterday Jon and I were officially placed as the leaders of the kitchen on base. We got to meet all 12 of the workers, learn about the kinds of problems and issues we may have to deal with, and then they prayed over us to place us spiritually as the authorities over that part of the base. Every day, our base feeds the 35 kids, 70 pastors-in-training in the Bible school, the 5 missionaries, and several workers. That afternoon, Tiago, the Mozambican head over the kitchen, needed to do his weekly shopping run for the base, so we decided to tag along this time and see what all goes into shopping for 100+ people.

Jon and I piled into one of the big "camions" (large, flat-bed trucks) with Tiago, kitchen-worker Jeremias, pastor Luis, missionary Julie, and driver Ricardo and made our 45-minute journey into Beira. The scenery going by reveals a variety of small, rural towns, fields with women working in them (you rarely see men in the fields), mud huts with thatched roofs, concrete huts with metal roofs, giant 12-foot-tall termite mounds, coconut palm trees, mango trees (which just went out of season), papaya trees, and tiny little bamboo-structure shops selling a few odds and ends by the side of the road. As we draw closer to Beira, which with over 1 million people is the second largest city in Mozambique, you begin seeing 2-6 storey tall concrete apartment buildings with winding spiral staircases and bars over all windows. Beira is the main shipping port for central Mozambique and all of Zimbabwe, and when that country was in its prime, Beira thrived as well. Zimbabwe's economy has been in the sewer for a while now, which has hurt Beira's economy somewhat as well, but that's digressing from my account of the shopping day…

Our first stop was a bulk food store where we picked up sack after sack of rice, corn, and sugar. Tiago tried to get fish at this stop too, but that particular merchant was clean out of fish that day. He didn't seem worried though, he would know of other merchants. Next we stopped at a propane store where we swapped out our empty 5-foot tall tank for a full one. They said they go through one and a half of those tanks every week, so next week they will need to bring both tanks in. We stopped again, this time to pick up two 4-foot long boxes of frozen fish from a shop that wasn't out. Julie, the missionary who does food distribution for the orphans living in villages, also did a bit of shopping with us to get 528 liters of oil for her trip next week. We picked up said oil at a big warehouse that had the oddest assortment of goods we had ever seen—part of the store had hi-def TVs, computers, printers, refrigerators, and A/C units, while the other part had pallets of sugar, juice, oil, and the only Pepsi products we have seen in a country ruled by Coca-Cola.

Our next stop was the huge Beira market, where the real African experience started. Just Jon, Tiago, and I went in while the rest guarded the truck from thieves. The market is a tight, winding network of stalls, some big and official and made of concrete (from Beira's golden days), but most made of whatever scraps of metal, wood, and bamboo people could find and throw together. The narrow dirt walkways are shaded with opened canvas bags, which was a mercy because it was a VERY hot day. A 2-foot deep foul-smelling ditch winds through the market with wooden pallets slapped over it to make bridges. The shops are together loosely by category—most of the tomato sellers are together, the onion merchants, and so on. I had to hold my breath when we passed the dried fish section. As we walked through the sellers would grab a few of their wares to show us and call out, "Amiga! Tomate!" or "Amiga! Cebola!" Occasionally a merchant would know a bit of English and call out, "Sista'! Hello sista'! Carrots!" Most of the merchants were men, and most of the shoppers were women, so they tended to try to get my attention more so than Jon's or Tiago's. Our first stop was right inside the market where we got 80 kilos of beans, 12 kilos of onions, and 2 kilos of garlic, all weighed in sacks from a spring-scale dangling from the rickety shop ceiling. We could tell that our presence was giving Tiago a hard time, because the merchants automatically made the prices go up when they saw our skin color and he would have to bat them back down to what he knew was the correct price. He does this every week, so he would know. We walked on, some shops were selling a variety of common items like the little packs of laundry detergent and toothpaste, while others had oil in recycled soda and water bottles, and others had bulk tea and spices in huge canvas sacks. A large, friendly lady named Louisa sold us our 11 kilos of tomatoes. Most of the shops didn't have their own plastic bags for buyers to carry their purchases, so many times after merchants would make a sale they would start shouting, "Plasticu! Plasticu!" to get someone to bring them a bag from another shop. At each stop Tiago paid for the goods then asked the shop keepers to hold on to them until we were done with all of the shopping and we would pick it up on our way out. On we plunged, deeper into the labyrinthine market, finding the 7 kilos of carrots, 20 heads of cabbage, and 30 coconuts we needed, but not the bell peppers—the market was fresh out of peppers for the day. Tiago got the help of a few adolescent boys to pick up the goods as we wound our way back to the entrance, stopping again at each shop where we had made a purchase to claim it.

Ironically, our last stop was Shoprite, the only western-style grocery store in Beira. The contrast of walking straight from the hot, bustling, smelly market into the air-conditioned convenience of the store was almost jarring. Tiago said Shoprite had the cheapest dishwashing detergent in town, and he would know.

Church Services

Even though there is great variety in the sizes, shapes, cultures, and people of the various Mozambican churches we have visited, they all have a great deal in common with one another. I wanted to give you a little taste of what it is like to attend church in our corner of Africa:

Our church building is on our base, about 50 steps from our front door. It is a simple building—mud structure to about shoulder-height after which it is a mesh made of sticks (great for ventilation) until the corrugated metal roof. The front is painted green with the words: “Welcome sons of God!” in three different languages. The inside is very plain, with hard wooden benches lined up in three rows and some grass mats on the floor to one side for older women and mothers with small children.

We hear the music start at about 9:00 every Sunday morning, but the missionaries typically don’t show up for another hour at least—few Westerners have the same energy and stamina as our African counterparts, and we honestly struggle to keep up with their excited dancing and singing, clapping enthusiastically, kicking up the dirt floor, and dripping sweat for two hours. When we walk up to the church, only about half of the people are in the rows of benches; the rest are up front dancing their hearts out with the music, which is often only accompanied by a keyboard. Sometimes they will form a line and dance all the way around the sanctuary, up and down the two aisles, pulling in as many people as possible to join the celebration. I’ve never seen angels worship, but I bet these souls saved in the depths of Africa would challenge even them to reexamine the depth of their joy and devotion to their King. The songs are very simple and repetitive—which is one of the most powerful tools for teaching in Africa. Many people in the church are illiterate, so even if they had a Bible in their language it wouldn’t do them any good. The songs express truths in a format that is so easy to remember, it will be stuck in their heads until next Sunday when they come back for more. The format is call-and-response, and usually says something like:

Verse 1: “God is good—He is” (repeat 20X), chorus: “He is, He is, He is” (repeat 20X), verse 2: “Jesus is good—He is” (repeat 20X)

“The blood of Christ—the blood of Christ—Shall never lose—Shall never lose its power” (repeat 20X, then sing 20X in another language)

“Holy Spirit, Comforter, pour out—pour out fire in this place” (repeat 4X), “Pour out fire, fire, fire, pour out fire, pour out fire in this place” (repeat 4X, then repeat whole song 20X)

 “Hallelujah” (repeat 20X), “I love You” (repeat 20X), “You are holy” (repeat 20X) “Thank You” (repeat 20X)

Not only are they simple enough to memorize easily, but this way you also don’t need hymnals or a projector screen with the words—after once through everyone can sing along. At some point during the worship time they take up the offering, which is done to yet another song. They have a few children hold the baskets up front and everyone who wants to give has to make their way there to give it. Many times, even in their poverty, the Africans prove generous beyond their means, and find it a true joy to give. Most tithe well over 10%, and often the collection is not just money, but corn and vegetables as well—whatever the people have to give, they give. They typically dance all the way up to and from the baskets, just from the sheer joy of knowing they are serving God with their possessions and that He will take care of them no matter how sacrificially they gave.

After the corporate worship, then is the time for “special music,” which is just any group of random people who happened to get together that week and wanted to sing a few songs as a special performance. It could be new songs, it might some we already sang that day, but at the appointed time everyone in that group of 5-20 people would get up and go out the back door, then come in singing and stepping in rhythm through the side door, sing 4-5 songs with their beautiful African harmony, often accompanied by a practiced dance, then go sit back down for the next group to come in… and the next… and the next. Usually about ½ to ¾ of the entire congregation is involved in some special singing group or another, and it lasts until about 12:00 (or until every group that wants to has gone up).

Then the preaching starts.

Our area speaks the Sena language, but since we sometimes have people from surrounding areas, and because of our ongoing Bible school that trains pastors from all over the country, the service is always translated in both Sena and Portuguese, the national language. This week we didn’t have our usual translator, but I was pleasantly surprised that I could understand the whole message (the Portuguese one, still working on Sena). It was about how God called Jeremiah, but he tried to make excuses saying he was too young. God confirmed that he was called to do His work no matter how old or young he was, and we all have a calling as well. It’s not for us to decide whether we are fit for the job or not—if God has chosen us, He will make us able to do it. After the sermon usually another pastor will come up and expound a little on what was said, make some more application, and then call everyone who is sick or in need of prayer to stand. Sometimes we pray for each one individually up front, other times they just do a corporate prayer for all those standing.

Then church lets out and everyone is free to mingle and visit. We often have many people come up to us even after the ending and ask for more specific prayer for healing. They really believe strongly in the power of prayer, and even the little elderly ladies are not shy to ask.

We usually get back from church exhausted and in need of rest—from the heat, the mental strain of internally translating everything, and all wears us out. But we have come to love it just the same.