OUTREACH #2

BUSH OUTREACH #2 – July 11
I could write a book on each one of these out reaches…it’s really quite amazing! We load up a caravan of Land Rovers with missionaries, speakers, food and other supplies and head out into the deep ‘bush-bush’ (as Heidi Baker likes to call the really deep African bush,) Once we pull off of the main road, we then travel for hours on dirt roads that eventually become paths or even not much of anything resembling a passage way. All along the way local tribe’s people will appear. They’ll just be standing there…right dead smack in the middle of nowhere. Occasionally we’ll come across someone carrying supplies or riding a bike… which is usually a bit surreal. We’ll see various farm animals along with an occasional monkey and even traces of elephants. The elephants leave behind huge paths of destruction…. like someone drove a rather large tractor right through the brush …these guys are huge! One village chief asked us to pray that the elephants would stay away because of the damage they do to the village and their farms.

After quite a grueling ride in the back of the Land Rover, a group of mud huts appear. Each bush village is laid out somewhat different then the previous village but they all look pretty much the same…mud covered bamboo with grass roofs and maybe an occasional door, (Don’t think I’ve seen a glass window anywhere since I got to Mozambique, except on vehicles.) If they had Home Depots here…they would only have to carry four different building materials.

As soon as we pull into the village we’re swarmed by people…mostly children. (The average life expectancy of the locals is approximately thirty-two, and about one out of five babies actually makes it to infancy.)
It’s really something to experience as you make your way through the crowd moving about the village. The setting is mostly mud brown broken up by the vibrant colors of their varied clothing, I’ve been told that most of their cloths comes from India as well as returns from big box companies (Wal-Mart, Target…) Even though you’ll see t-shirts with familiar logos or names on them, they mostly look as though they should have been discarded years ago. The woman ware their traditional wraps or Capalona’s (a sort of half-wrap.)

The out reaches are organized to get us unto the village by nightfall because the first order of business is setting up a generator powered outdoor movie projector and screen. Years back a group known as Campus Crusade produced a film called the Jesus Movie, which has been translated into just about every language on the planet. There are two main local languages in the bush, Portuguese and Makua. The Jesus Movie that we show is in one of those native languages. Along with the setting up of the makeshift movie theater, we all set up out tents in a corral of sorts. It’s a bit of a surreal contrast to see al of the colorful tents amongst the consistently drab brown huts and roads,

Once everything is in place, music begins to play and most all of the village gathers around. The atmosphere is festive, lively and very upbeat. The children are usually the ones crowding up front close to the stage (which is the back of a flatbed truck.) Many of the adults will join in and begin to dance but the common posture is staring and liking around in wonder or amazement or curiosity or…I’m not really sure. They’ve never experienced anything like what’s presently going on right around them. The seasoned missionaries pretty much lead the way and carry on with what they know to do, the rest of us (newbie’s) kind of move about in a state of wonder at it all.

I guess for us it would be as if an alien space ship landed in the middle of our neighborhood, opened it’s doors and an army of happy, smiling creatures came dancing out and began to set up a show that we’ve never seen before. Then everyone in the neighborhood would just stop what they were doing to come out and gather around in amazed curiosity to take in what’s happening. (Could you imagine everyone on your neighborhood actually doing anything all together let alone all being home at the same time…not in LA anyway!)

So, after a bit of local language praise and worship, the projector rolls, (actually, everything’s on a portable hard drive and digital projector.) Picture this…we’re somewhere out in the middle of the deep bush-bush of Africa, pitch black. There’s a group of hundreds gathered around two polls with a sheet across them and a movie begins to play. Now, as I position myself behind the screen looking directly at the native audience, I have a full view of something spectacular. There are literally hundreds of faces, squeezed together, stacked one on top of another transfixed on what they’re witnessing…. A MOVIE!
[Please, keep in mint that these are an un-reached people group. Most of them haven’t even seen white skin before let alone music coming from a box or images magically appearing in the middle of the air. ]
The movie is about two hours long and no one’s going anywhere. They just gaze in wonder as the story of Jesus is being acted out (pretty well I might ad) in their local language… Makua.

Right after the movie is finished, a work light is turned on and someone begins to preach about what they just saw and this amazing guy named Jesus. This is all being double interpreted.
Just as a side note: I was given the privilege of speaking to one of the tribes at an earlier meeting. It’s quite a challenge to speak one sentence at a time and having to wait for two other people to say the same sentence in two other languages before you get to say your next sentence. And any of you that have heard me teach before know what a challenge that actually was for me. No real extemporaneous Rhema happening over here.

I HAVE A RIDE COMING AND A POSSIBLE OPPORTUNITY TO GET TO AN INTERNET CONNECTION, SO I’LL TRY TO GET THIS MUCH POSTED AND FINISH UP WITH THIS EXPERIENCE LATER ON. YOU PRETTY MUCH HAVE TO ROLL WITH WHAT YOU CAN GET OUT HERE.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO MAKE COMMENTS ON THIS BLOG. IT’S NICE TO KNOW THAT THERE ARE SOME OF YOU ACTUALLY CHECKING IN – THANKS.

TUESDAY, 7-15

Man it’s busy on this base! It seems just about every time you want to get a minute to yourself, something comes up or someone comes up to you and BAM, you’re off onto something else. Just today I made mention that I feel busier here then in LA.

The Internet situation is becoming a mountain that I’m having a very difficult time climbing…it’s just not happening. As I mentioned earlier, things in Africa just don’t work anywhere near what you would expect. Most things in this country just don’t work at all or for a brief window they do but incompetence will be it’s middle, no…make that first name. Most things are very cheap here. Think of your local Mexican 99 cent store, downgrade it a few notches and then build an entire city out of its contents…that’s been my experience in this part of Africa. And the attitude of the people behind these products, parts and systems when they fail (which they are just about guaranteed to do every time) is quite nonchalant and a bit apathetic. It’s more like, “That’s just the way it is so – that’s just the way it is.” After time and time again, this can really tend to get under your skin a bit. (My fear is that over time, I might actually get used to it…)

Picking back up where we left off on the outreach experience:
OK, we’ve greeted the people, we’ve set up our outdoor theater, played the Jesus movie and after preaching for a bit, the speaker will than offer the village people an opportunity to receive Jesus as their Lord. So many people respond to this experience that Iris Ministry is helping to get thousands and thousands and thousands of village people all over the country of Mozambique saved as well as delivered from the evils of local voodoo and witchcraft…it’s amazing! (There are quite a few witch doctors in these villages.)
Music continues to play and people are rejoicing, singing and dancing into the evening. Many renounce their voodoo artifacts by destroying them right on the spot.

Eventually the village quiets back down and we all go back to our tents and camp out right smack in the middle of the village. The following morning, we take all of the people that received Christ to some body of water nearby and baptize them. More ministering will take place and whatever else happens (you just never know) and then we ether move on to another village or head back to base camp on the long bouncy, dusty treck. By the time we get back from two or three days of outreach, most all of us are cooked, filthy and tired. A nice hot shower would be so welcomed at this juncture but that just doesn’t happen…there isn’t any hot water. Last outreach, we got one of the Land Rovers stuck in a wash bed of deep, thick, sticky mud. It took an entire village of guys, a dozen missionaries and six hours to get it out…talk about filthy! I came back from that outreach completely grunged out. Once back in my room, I peeled off my cloths and headed to the shower only to find out that the water wasn’t running on base that day….aaagggg!
CAN I GET A WITNESS! I was momentarily devastated.
I wound up taking a bucket shower. A bucket shower is cold, idle water from a bucket in the bathroom that’s usually used to dump into the toilet when the water is out and you’ve finished your business, and you have to flush . . .you use the water in the bucket and scoop it out and pour it all over yourself. (Now I know that my brother is loosing it.) You really haven’t lived until you’ve experienced this…at least once, BUT…I have a feeling it won’t be my last time while I’m here.

We have another outreach this weekend. I’ll be traveling with Heidi Baker herself and conducting an interview with her as she takes us through the village outreach experience, top to bottom, from her perspective…aught to be a classic! Stay tuned.