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During my stay in Mozambique I spent most of my time hanging out with the boys at the Zimpeto Iris Center. There are 300 boys and 30 girls living at this center. They live in dorms, go to school and church at the center, and play on the centers grounds. Ages go from babies to boys in their 20’s. There was a group of five 14 & 15 year old boys that I did everything with. There was always other boys around but these 5 boys were always there with me. Sumate, Eduardo, Morgado, Paieto, and Bento are all unique in their own personalities and passions. I had heard about what was going on in Africa and forgot that they are still kids. This trip cleared the dehumanization from my eyes. Every single one of these boys is created in the image of God and unique in their own way. They are not just a sad face with a swollen belly and flies all around them. They are more alive than many of us who have everything. I have come to love these boys through the friendship we developed. The kids living at the Iris center are educated through high school, but there is no money for further education. Mozambique has a 90% unemployment rate at his time. When I asked these boys what they wanted to be when they grew up they just shrugged their shoulders. They were never taught or had the ability to dream! The never got to want to be a fireman or doctor or president. It just wasn’t in reach for them. On the last day of my trip I sat these five boys down and told them I was going to put them through university or trade school if they choose. Myself and my family are putting in the money to support these five boys, but there are more. The cost to put a boy through university is only $8,000 dollars total and only a few hundred dollars for trade school. If anyone of you are interested in putting more of these boys through university or trade school please contact me at nuke33@aol.com. The education of boys like these is the key to the future of Mozambique. They need to learn in order to take the betterment of their country into their own hands. Your investment in these kids lives will change their possibilities forever. It will be without a doubt one of the best investmnents you could ever make!
This is a letter from a man living in Zimbabwe right now. While reading it this morning I felt an urgency to share it with you. Zimbabwe is directly west of Mozambique. While I was there we constantly prayed for the situation in Zimbabwe and Iris has been sending teams and relief.
I reckon that these are the last days of TKM and ZPF. The darkest hour is always before dawn.
We are all terrified at what they are going to destroy next……..I mean they are actually ploughing down brick and mortar houses and one white family with twin boys of 10 had no chance of salvaging anything when100 riot police came in with AK47’s and bulldozers and demolished their beautiful house – 5 bedrooms and pine ceilings – because it was ‘too close to the airport’, so we are feeling extremely insecure right now.
You know – I am aware that this does not help you sleep at night, but if you do not know – how can you help? Even if you put us in your own mental ring of light and send your guardian angels to be with us – that is a help – but I feel so cut off from you all knowing I cannot tell you what’s going on here simply because you will feel uncomfortable. There is no ways we can leave here so that is not an option.
I ask that you all pray for us in the way that you know how, and let me know that you are thinking of us and sending out positive vibes… that’s all. You can’t just be in denial and pretend/believe it’s not going on.
To be frank with you, it’s genocide in the making and if you do not believe me, read the Genocide Report by Amnesty International which says we are – IN level 7 – (level 8 is after it’s happened and everyone is in
denial).
If you don’t want me to tell you these things-how bad it is-then it means you have not dealt with your own fear, but it does not help me to think you are turning your back on our situation. We need you, please, to get the news OUT that we are all in a fearfully dangerous situation here. Too many people turn their backs and say – oh well, that’s what happens in Africa. This Government has GONE MAD and you need to help us publicize our plight— or how can we be rescued? It’s a reality! The petrol queues are a reality, the pall of smoke all around our city is a reality, the thousands of homeless people sleeping outside in 0 Celsius with no food, water, shelter and bedding are a reality. Today a family approached me, brother of the gardener’s wife with two small children. Their home was trashed and they will have to sleep
outside. We already support 8 adult people and a child on this property, and electricity is going up next month by 250% as is water.
How can I take on another family of 4 —–and yet how can I turn them away to sleep out in the open?
I am not asking you for money or a ticket out of here – I am asking you to FACE the fact that we are in deep and terrible danger and want you please to pass on our news and pictures. So PLEASE don’t just press the delete button! Help best in the way that you know how.
Do face the reality of what is going on here and help us SEND OUT THE WORD.. The more people who know about it, the more chance we have of the United Nations coming to our aid. Please don’t ignore or deny what’s happening. Some would like to be protected from the truth BUT then, if we are eliminated, how would you feel? ‘If only we knew how bad it really was we could have helped in some way’.
[I know we chose to stay here and that some feel we deserve what's coming to us]
For now,— we ourselves have food, shelter, a little fuel and a bit of money for the next meal – but what is going to happen next? Will they start on our houses? All property is going to belong to the State now. I want to send out my Title Deeds to one of you because if they get a hold of those, I can’t fight for my rights.
Censorship!—-We no longer have SW radio [which told us everything that was happening] because the Government jammed it out of existence-we don’t have any reporters, and no one is allowed to photograph. If we had reporters here, they would have an absolute field day. Even the pro-Government Herald has written that people are shocked, stunned, bewildered and blown mindless by the wanton destruction of many folks homes, which are supposed to be ‘illegal’ but for which a huge percentage actually do have licenses.
Please! – do have some compassion and HELP by sending out the articles and personal reports so that something can/may be done. ‘I am one. I cannot do everything, —but I can do something.. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do.’ – Edward Everett Hale
4/26/08
Mountains upon montains of garbage hovered by smoke of burning piles of sorted trash. There are hunters and gatherers here. Those that hunt for food for themsleves and their families to eat and those that gather recycleables or anything of value to sell on the streets. Everyone knows the schedules of the garbage trucks and when they come it is a madhouse. Fights break out over scraps of rotting food, everyone elses trash is their lifesource. There are some that live in the dump and others live in the community surrounding the dump. Iris Ministries started and built a church amongst the houses immediately surrounding the bocaria. The children sing, dance, and play as they worship Jesus. These kids are more playful and joyful than I’ve ever seen! They jump and hang all over us, longing to be held and touched. I have become a human jungle gym, I never imagined that my lap was big enough for eight kids but I know it is now. We then go up on the bocaria to pray and witness. We pray for two ladies rummaging for food. They are both Christians and one tells us her child is sick and she can’t get a job (Mozambique has 90% unemployment rate) but she refuses to be disobediant to God and steal so she digs for trash to support her sick child. Wow! Such great faith! I see two boys standing at a distance. I hear the spirit say go to them. I grab a “translator” and we go to them. Through his broken english and my very broken Portuguese we tell them about Jesus. When I ask them if they want Jesus inside their hearts they say yes. We pray for the Holy Spirit to fill them and tell them to come to the church to learn about this Jesus that lives in them now. We then go to a group of men atop a mound of trash. One wants nothing to do with us but others ask for prayer. One man (Zito who became my best friend and evangelistic brother) is witnessing to his friends in the dump and so we pray for filling of the Spirit in him to equip him for this ministry. As I am on my knees with my head bowed I see bugs everywhere. Bugs I’ve never seen before crawling in and on everything. By the time we are done praying my pants are covered with these things. One man we pray for is eating a bowl of the healthy diet, beans and worms. After the adult church service we distribute the bread, where I almost got my head ripped off, and we pile into the back of our truck and head back to the Iris center. It doesn’t get much worse than that. I don’t know what to think or do. What can I do? What does Jesus want me to do? I do not know and so I sit and wait on the Lord.
4/25/08
Today I went to the hospital to minister and pray for the sick and their families. Pastor Domingo heads up this ministry for Iris. I love this guy! He is my age (23) and training to be a pastor. His training is to head up the hospital ministry which he has been doing for the last eight years. His sidekick is Remitu, an eighteen-year-old evangelist in training. Their third team member is Alysse, a Portuguese woman who’s husband does sports ministry in Maputo. We bribed the guards with bananas to get in to see the patients (bananas & bread can get you anywhere). I prayed for a newborn boy with a cleft lip, a baby with a removed tumor from his stomach going through chemo, a young boy with a tumor on right side of face, man with tumor in his nose, a boy (Raoul Joaquim) with cancer that is untreatable. His blood is not strong enough for chemo and there is no pain medication. His entire body was in pain and he couldn’t stop crying. Raoul died six days later at twelve years old. I believe our God is a healer! I believe He wants to heal and He wants us to pray for healing. Yet, we prayed and prayed and no immediate healing took place. Why? Why not? Our God can do all things. He can do all things! I believe that with all my heart! However, I know that God is not a puppet whose strings we are to pull. I don’t know why He didn’t just heal these miraculously. Maybe He did heal them and we just didn’t see it right there. All I know is He is God and so I’ll just shut my mouth.
After a short blog break I wanted to get back to Liberation Theology, and specifically Christology. The cornerstone of Sergio’s lecture was based on Christology. The traditional Christology of the mainstream church is Jesus coming to earth as our savior/liberator of sin, out of love for us or to quench the wrath of God depending on your view. This is the Christology I grew up learning and before this lecture I knew of no other. Liberation Theology points to Jesus coming to earth to allign Himself with the poor. That He came to share in the suffering, oppression, and injustice of the poor in order to liberate them. And that now as Christians we are called to liberate the poor as Jesus began. He taught that Jesus did not come as a sacrifice for our sins because God did not need a sacrifice to forgive us.
I am all for liberating the poor, the oppressed, and fighting injustice! But my problem with this Christology lies in the basic gospel of Jesus. Jesus taught that we are sinners and that the punishment of sin is death. And so even if we completelty rid the world of poverty, oppression, and injustice, we are all still sinners and we still deserve death without the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Poverty is a sin, but it is not the only sin. Prophecies throughout the bible point to a final sacrifice of the perfect lamb of God for all our sins once and for all. How can you read the bible and miss this? Yes, Jesus came for the poor, He spent His time with the poor and the oppressed, and the outcasts, but He came for the foremost purpose of dying so that we might live! I cannot, because of the urgings of the Spirit of God, ever get away from the gospel of grace which is death, forgiveness, and life.
One of the days in Mexico City we received a lecture on liberation theology from a proffesor at the Lutheran Seminary on the outskirts of Mexico City. Sergio, the professor, was an excellent orator with a passionate, soothing tone. He spoke of the origins of Liberation Theology which made the ideas a lot easier to understand. The theology was born out of poverty. It was born in response to the conditions most of the world lives in. Some that he taught I agreed with, like his explanation of Hermeneutics. This is the discipline of interpreting scripture. The four steps described were: 1) see 2) judge 3) act 4) celebrate. This makes so much more sense than what many of us do which is see, judge, and celebrate. We so often forget about the acting. We see what is true in scripture, we judge that areas in our inner/outer lives need to change, we don’t act, and then we celebrate Jesus on Sunday. Where is our action to alleviate the suffering of the world. How can we see poverty, judge that it is sin, do nothing about it, then celebrate Jesus. Jesus is the one who called us to go to the suffering and give them a drink, food, and clothing. Now I know there are some reading this saying I do go and alleviate the suffering of the poor and oppressed, and don’t get me wrong, I think that is great. But join me in prayer to Jesus asking how much Lord? How much do you want of my life? And when we ask that of the Lord His response will always be, all of you. I don’t know what that looks like for each of us, and for everyone the Lord has a different plan and purpose. But the important part is that we be completely open to whatever the Lord has for us individually. As long as our hearts are completely surrendered to Him, that is exactly where He wants us to be. I know I don’t want to be like the rich young man who came to Jesus and had followed all of the commandments and asked Jesus what should I do Lord to obtain eternal life? Jesus knew this man’s motive, to give and do the least amount possible and still be saved. But this is not what God is after. He is after all of you. And as Jesus replied give all your money away and follow me, the rich young man went away sad for that was the one thing he was unwilling to part with. I am not telling you to go and give all your money away, but if Jesus told you to, would you do it joyfully or would you be sad for deep down you cherish your material security more than Jesus’ security?
I just returned from Mexico City two days ago. I was there with a group of college students from UCLA on a “mission trip”. It was called a mission trip but was much more a learning trip. It wasn’t the traditional go and serve all day mission trip. Instead we went and were taught about topics such as history, politics, economics, and theology. We heard many different opinions on these topics and many were controversial to our American Christian worldview. A question was raised that I can’t get and don’t want to get out of my head. Are you more of a Christian or more of an American Christian? If you grew up in a conservative church in the states like me this might rattle you a bit. I don’t know what to do with this question yet but I know what I want. I want to be a Christian with nothing else attached to it. I want to follow Jesus and Jesus alone. And if doing so happens to be controversial to my political affiliation or nationality then so be it. I say this not to bash being American, because I love this country and am so greatful for the freedom that we have and I know that fredom has come at a cost. But rather I say this to make sure I am following the one. I want to follow Him wherever He leads me even if it is unpopular. Jesus spent most of His ministry caring for the poor, the oppressed, and the sinners. Do we have true compassion on the least of these as well or do we care more about the state of our economy?
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