School Day in Pemba

School is full of the presence of God. It is awesome and such a blessing. It’s impossible to give a short, detailed review of the school because the Lord does wonderful and different things everyday. We’ll give you a general overview of a school day hoping it’ll capture the heart of what is going on.

The school is like a family, the family of God, abiding and working together with the Lord. Outside of formal class times it’s like a living community breathing the fresh air of the Holy Spirit. Every day the Lord disciplines, stirs, encourages, enlightens, fills and refreshes us through the Holy Given staff, International speakers (Heidi and Rolland Baker, Bill Johnson, Fred from Toronto, Lesley Ann, Shampoo Rice, etc.) and the students themselves. Several times during the classes, the Lord gives different students visions, words, songs, etc. and then leads the group in the next thing He is doing through the person He chooses. It’s amazing. Sometimes in the midst of worship, the Pastors in the bible school and the mission students are led to pray for one another. The fire of God rains down. Love flows like mighty, inter-twining rivers. People are being healed, set free from hurts and offenses, challenged by the Lord himself to live holy given lives and stirred for kingdom living. God does multiple things at the same time, but there’s complete order and decency.

The School Day

Breakfast starts at 7:00. 8:15 starts Portuguese lessons with long term staff. (Some things don’t start on time in Africa so 8:15 may be 8:30 or later). Worship begins at 8:30, and until 12’ish we may have international speakers minister to the group (just the students or the Mozambique student pastors may join us as part of their classes). Lunch is a huge plate of rice and beans (or rice and cabbage, rice and a little piece of fish, rice and a little piece of chicken). Our favorite is mataba which is rice with a topping of coconut milk, crushed peanuts and greens. Lunch time is also when we sit with the student pastors and learn Portuguese and just hang out and have fun with them and the Iris children (children that live in the center). A number of the pastors have only been saved for a few weeks…but that’s part of the reason their in school now. (It would take me a while to explain this so just rejoice in the Lord…already the Lord has used them to raise 3 people from the dead along with many, many healings and salvations. They are also maturing in the Lord). Depending on the day, the afternoons are for additional speakers or group activities. Tiffany and I are in different groups so one of us can watch our children. We’ve both had the privilege of feeding the kids from the village. The food from Iris is the only meal most of them get everyday (~200 children come from the surrounding villages). They often carry plastic bags around asking for food for themselves and their families. Poverty is so great here. It’s before our faces everyday. Evenings are for occasional homework, spending with the children or other Mozambican friends, spend one-on-one time with the Lord, cleaning, washing, etc. If the water is running we take cold showers, else its bucket bathes. One time the water was so dirty (no, the dirt doesn’t settle) our whole house skipped bathing. We’ve been able to get well water so we use that now when the water isn’t running. None of the water is drinkable. If it’s Tuesday, we lead our house’s “homegroup” meetings. We are the house parents for are house. Right now, it’s our family and 3 ladies, one from Sri Lanka, another from England and another from Washington.

Our children are with us during class and take part in worship. They got over being dirty all day long. Now, they enjoy running around the student houses, playing in the reddish colored dirt (where the flies lay their larvae), playing with other children, being very loud and just having fun.

Saturdays are a day of rest unless we are in a group that has overnight outreaches. The outreaches can be in villages where Iris has gone before or in other Muslim villages where the gospel has never been preached. Sunday is church and the afternoons are free time (unless the group is still on outreach). Free time means your doing work, reading, washing, relaxing, getting tired from having long conversations in broken Portuguese), playing with children, etc.

That’s it for the overview. There’s so much we could share, but we hope to share more detail information about activities that the Lord is accomplishing here.

We are all well, rejoicing in the love of Jesus Christ as He draws us closer to Himself. The children are having so much fun. Last week, the Lord delivered both of them from very high fevers and stomach and headaches!

The Wake Up Call!

Friday, June 1st, we received a wake up call in our hotel room in Johannesburg, South Africa just around 6:30 am. It was my mother in law (Mom) calling us all the way from Connecticut in the states to make sure we were awake so we’d be on time for our 10:40 am flight to Pemba, Mozambique later that morning. We had spoken to her the day before and had told her we might want to check out of the hotel around 7:30 am to be at the airport in time to check in and look around the shops before our flight. Moments after the phone call, God told me the next blog entry was to be entitled: the WAKE UP CALL! And here’s what the Lord has been sharing with me since then concerning the wake up call:
Many of you at home were shocked and some of you, admittedly, a little amazed at what God was calling our family to and some just couldn’t quite believe that we were doing the right thing. Since we’ve been here in Pemba, God has shown me just what a small, teeny tiny, light little thing we did that had some of you so amazed…and what a huge, great and awesome plan He has for us just because we took this small little step in coming to Mozambique. The whole kingdom of God has been opened before us because of this small step. On Thursday, May 31st as we were worshipping together in the hotel room, the Lord told me to read Isaiah 43:16 -21 and He said not to remember the former miracles , signs and wonders of old because “I’m now doing a new thing which you cannot even comprehend. Now you have entered into My joy…and NOW I will be your strength. The JOY of the Lord is YOUR strength.” We’ve entered into His joy and therefore have entered into a whole new realm of His glory…A realm where His love is absolutely everything, where nothing else matters. He’s opened up His love before us and we’ve walked right into it and the only thing left for us to do is to accept it and let it wash over and through us!
Let me share a story with you. Last Monday we went into town with one of our housemates to buy food and supplies for our house. After spending way too much time trying to exchange money at the bank and buy a Mozambican SIM card for our phone, we finally headed off to try to purchase the items we needed. We only had about an hour to get everything because stores are closed between 12 and 2 pm and it was just about 11 am when we finished with the SIM card business. We decided to trek down to the one store in town that would have mostly everything on our list, including groceries, but at a more expensive price than the markets along the street, since we were short on time. We purchased some food and household items at this “one stop shop”, and then headed next door to the electronics store which was owned by the same person. Tyren went inside while the kids and I along with our housemate, Nancy, tried to find some shaded spot just outside the door to rest. A man sitting behind a desk just inside the store called out to me to come and sit down inside on the other side of the desk where there was a nice comfortable cushioned chair. I hesitated for just a moment, and then went to sit down with the kids. After we were comfortably seated, he told me to call Nancy inside to sit in another comfortable chair nearby. I began to chat a little with this man, who I figured must be kind of important because he was just sitting behind this nice big desk while others were working behind the counters and helping customers. He asked where we were from and what we were doing in Pemba and we told him. At some point he told us his name, which happened to be the same name as the store. He was the owner. When he found out we were at Iris’ Holy Given School for Missions, he told us that the property we were staying on was some of the choicest land in Pemba -he knew this because he was the one who had sold it to Heidi and Rolland Baker who he considered to be his friends. The school is right across the street from the beach and one of the nicest hotels in town. I remembered that we would need to catch a taxi from his store back to the school, so I asked him if it would be easy to catch a taxi from that end of town. (We had walked from the center of town where the first taxi had dropped us off to the other end where his store was located and I didn’t see too many taxis around there.) He said, “Don’t worry about a taxi. When your husband finishes making his purchases, I’ll take care of you.” He then handed Nancy and I his business card with the store’s phone number and his cell phone number and told us if we ever need anything or ever get stranded somewhere to give him a call. He also mentioned to Tyren that he had given us his card and that we could call him if we ever needed anything. A few minutes later, Amerel and Isaiah began to complain that they were hungry because we had missed lunch being in town for so long. Mr. “O” said something to one of his employees and a minute later, the employee came back and handed a package of cookies to my kids. Shortly afterwards, Tyren finished up and Mr. “O” spoke to another of his employees who proceeded to carry out all of our purchases that we had made that day and put them into the trunk of a black BMW SUV. He then ushered us into the nice clean, cushioned seats inside and drove us all the way back to the school! Let me just mention quickly here that the man who did these things for us is a Muslim Indian whose family has been living in Mozambique for 5 generations. I know some of you are wondering why in the world a rich Muslim would show this kind of generosity to a few Christians who are learning about evangelizing the world for Christ at a missions school! I wondered myself, but God told me it’s just part of His WAKE UP CALL!
Wednesday, June 6th, Bill Johnson was the speaker for our morning session. He taught out of Ephesians 3:10, 19 to show us that when we walk in the calling that God has called us to, God’s wisdom is revealed to the heavenly realms…the angels and demons alike begin to understand God’s wisdom in sending His only Son to die for us that we might have eternal life with Him. They begin to see us being conformed into the image of Christ as we walk according to His plan for our lives. Bill said whenever we do exactly what God told us to do, God’s wisdom is made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 3:10). In Ephesians 3:19, it says that we are to be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. How can we even begin to imagine being filled with all the fullness of God Who has the whole earth as His footstool? He Who can span the heavens with one hand, how can we contain His fullness within us? This is the WAKE UP CALL! The WAKE UP CALL is this: Begin to see God in HIS fullness and you will walk out the plan of God for your life and you will begin to walk in the realm of miracles…Begin to allow His fullness to fill YOU and you will never again know lack OF ANYTHING-NOT love, NOT joy, NOT prosperity, NOT even a taxi to get back to school from town-NOT ANYTHING! Begin to see Christ in YOU…the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27)…this is the WAKE UP CALL! God has just begun to wake me up since we stepped out into this next thing that God has for us …I hope you are now beginning to WAKE UP!!