Here’s to another week completed in Mozambique. Things are going smoothly thus far. This past week was rather enjoyable. Starting from Sunday, I have become part of the regular service each Sunday. This past one I gave the offering meditation. The communion time and offering time, like they are in the states are generally observed around the same time, but here it’s done at separately. Each time when I give the offering meditation, it’s hard to do, only because like I’ve said before how do you talk about giving when your audience has barely anything. Due to that, I tend to just ask them to give what they feel they should give and that it comes from not out of having too but wanting too and the people here are really giving considering their circumstances. It does make me laugh though when my hat gets passed around to collect the offering and when people put in money that they feel is a lot, they like to make a withdraw from the hat, like say someone gives 10 metakysh (name of the money here) but they only want to give 5 metakysh, they will look for 5 in the offering. Not too sure yet how I feel about it, but there is some humor to it. Since my internship is part of my requirements to graduate from CCU, I actually have to have homework. There are several things that I need to fulfill, but just living things out here thankfully fulfills most of them. I do however have to read a book that describes Africa and what it’s like being here, ministry, living, etc… and take notes on it. So there are times during the days in which I do read quite a bit. Those times are used for filler when we aren’t busy or I’m learning a new language. In high school, I never actually had to take a foreign language. I lucked out on that, but as part of the requirements I need to know some of the language, plus I want to know some things because many times it’s just me and some of the nationals doing things. Learning a new language is indeed difficult, but I’m coming along with it thankfully. The next couple days after Sunday were filled with reading and language learning and just basic house maintenance. Here, since like I’ve said the resources aren’t readily available and if they are, it’s a ways to get to town, where finding something there can be hard if not even possible. So we could have something simple as the head of a plug go bad and we find another that isn’t being used and we replace it, or since the house is made of cob and it can easily crumble, we collect all the materials and patch things up. When it came to Wednesday, the three of us and Dionisio headed east for the coast line to a town called Beira (bay-tah). Dionisio had heard from a friend in the area, that a missionary was giving seminars to church leaders. Jacob and Jaynie actually knew of the man and his name was Tim Brumfield. So we headed out early Wednesday morning. Our drive was much shorter than what we did when it came to the travels north. We did experience some delay, that being you had paved roads with tons of pot holes or parts paved roads with big sections that had no pavement and were still full of holes and bumps. I couldn’t believe some of them and wonder how any vehicles suspension or even axles survive. When I get back to the states, I’ll be riding in luxury. After almost 4 hours of driving, we arrive in Beira. It was absolutely wonderful, being that it was a coastal town. It didn’t have a fishy smell, but occasionally we would run into it. The town is the second biggest city in Mozambique. We met up with Tim at a Catholic college where he was giving the seminars. He was renting a room for the week to do the teaching. We caught up with them while they were on a break. We dropped off Dionisio and then headed to another location in which we were staying for the night. We met the man that owned it, which was another Christian and he was a national. We told him what time we’d be back and then we left to pick up Tim for lunch. For lunch we ate a Mozambican yacht club. It was nothing like any yacht club we have in the states, but it was nice. It was like a Red Lobster, but a little less done up you could say. It still had broken lamp shades and cracked windows, but don’t judge a book by its cover, the food was absolutely amazing. I’m a big fan of seafood when I can get it, and since I was on the coast of the Indian Ocean, why not get some. Plus I was having a craving anyway. I had rice that had a little bit of vegetables in it with some vinegar and I had a huge filet of fresh caught Grouper that had a creamy garlic butter sauce over top and was grilled to perfection. My mouth is watering as I’m typing this. Some of the best fish I’ve ever had. The restaurant was on the beach and we could see clear out into the ocean. Across the water, several hundred miles, is the country of Madagascar. Needless to say I couldn’t see King Julian or Mort or any other dancing lemurs for that matter. I did see several cargo ships off in the distance and closer to shore, I could see little carved out wooden boats getting tossed around in little waves that had fisherman, catching their income for the day. While the other 3 were visiting, I walked out onto the beach and down to the water. The beach has several walls running perpendicular to the coast and water to help with water management since the town is technically 3 inches below sea level. I had some spray from the ocean and got several pictures and waited for a wave to come close and then run up and put my hand in the water to officially say I’ve touched the Indian Ocean. We headed back to the college and sat through some of the seminars. Jacob, Jaynie, and myself left during the afternoon break to go and let me really experience the ocean. We went up a little ways to a light house and in front of the light house was an old ship wreck. You can’t really make out the design because it was really rusted out, but it was cool to see. Jacob found it comical that the ship wrecked right in from of the light house. Dionisio knew that we were going to the ocean so he gave us a water container to fill with sea water, due to him thinking that the salt water helps his skin. I’m not too sure on that, but oh well. I hadn’t been in the water yet until this point to retrieve water for Dio. I walked into the water and it felt very comfortable. The waves weren’t too bad, but if you didn’t keep your ground you could get knocked over. As I was filling the jug, which was really difficult to do, it eventually got heavier and heavier and the waves started to catch it more and more and it was difficult to hold my ground and hold onto this jug that was pretty heavy as it’s being tossed around. The highest wave came up to about my waist and I still got wet from head to toe. Everyone in the area was freezing because it was winter time, but I, the polar bear, was enjoying myself quite a bit. As I got the last little bit, during the time I was filling up, some rain had rolled in and started right when I finished. We got to cover quickly and I went and changed. I loved every moment of it, even if I had salt dried on my skin. Then we went out for dinner and headed to the place we stayed, which was across from a military post. The place we stayed was an old orphan home and the rooms were a little sketchy. It was sort of like rooms that you’d see in a scary movie, but not at the same time. The windows had cracks or had been busted, but they had bars for thieves. It just had a bed or a mattress to sleep on and the bathroom and washroom was on the other side of the building and you had to step out onto a porch to get to the bathroom. I didn’t sleep well only because I had my shorts to use as a pillow and the street noise was right outside, we had a Muslim prayer call, and then a bugle to wake up the military post. We met with Tim again and spent the morning listening to his seminars. Since it was all in Portuguese, I would sometimes catch myself day dreaming. We then headed to lunch and I got my last piece of fresh fish before we headed home. With the travels that I’ve done here thus far, my favorite town has to be Beira. I’m a country boy at heart, but I do love the sea shore because I obviously don’t get to experience it that often. We arrived back and I slept the best I had in quite some time. Each day provides me with a new lesson learned and is enjoyable. I continue to learn so much as a missionary and just learning more about myself.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Jul 2013 09:54:18 +0000
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