Well, where do I start. One usually start at the beginning.
It is just to define the beginning. Well as usual I was preparing myself, like
many others, to go on outeach in Mozambique, to “my” village Panhame. Well
then… plans had to be changed. Late in January the Limpopo river valley
received basically their yearly rainfall in roughly about 4 days time. Remember
the floods in January 2000. Yep, the same scenario replayed. (The border is still
closed.) Ok , so a new plan had to be made. Samaria Mission identified a couple
of villages in the Limpopo province for outreaches. We went to Mashushu. A
small village situated in the mountains at the start of the Orrie Baragwanath
pass. As you can imagine it is absolutely beautiful. It is just so sad that those who live there, don't see the beauty of it anymore. "Familiarity breeds contempt." And as a brother in the Lord who came with us on team, (who originally came from Zimbabwe) explained that those who are the poorest would usually be the ones who lived the highest up the mountain - so that had to walk furhter and further for water and firewood. In our point of view they would have the best views from up there but they don't see it anymore. In my lesson about creation they were almost laughing at me, when I said look around you and see, Who created these beautiful moutains and the stars in the nightskies. They were probably thinking what beautiful mountains is this paleface talking about?
Psalm 121: I lift up my eyes to the hills, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved; He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all evil; He will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and coming in from this time forth and forevermore.
A Sunset
We came alongside the local church “Back to Jesus Baptist
Church” with Pastor Lazarus Matlala and his wife, Rose. He is a graduate from
Christ Seminary. The people in the area has heard a mixture of “gospels” from
the ZCC to “give me your salary and then it will all go well with you and you
will be wealthy”, and anything in between. Hence the name of the church – the
area should turn back to Jesus.
We went on house-house visitations in Mashushu and 3 other
villages nearby. I went with Zachariah, Kate, Tracy, Mervyn, and two locals,
Lydia a youngster and Noria a gogo. We were visiting in Mashushu. The first
day, we visited about 6 homes, of which the last one was the local witchdoctor.
The moment we sat down, Zachariah who sat next to me, said we are now at the
witchdoctor’s house. I prepared myself to run if something happens or if we get
chased away. None of those happened. We could talk to them for a good while. We
can only trust God for the seed planted during this week.
The next day we went to several houses again. One of them
was Mama Esther. On walking into her yard I said a quick quite prayer “Lord
give me words to speak”. It was my turn to share. We all made turns to share
and pray with Zachariah interpreting for us. We sat down. She said that she is a born-again believer.
Years ago she got burnt on her legs and it is still painful. Because of the
pain in her legs she did not go to church anymore. (it is plus minus 1kms walk
to the church from her house in a mountainous area.) I felt peace in my heart
to be sharing encouraging words with her, and we prayed for her. We told her
about our ministries and evening services that we had on in the afternoons and
evenings but that we would understand if she would not come due to the pain in
her legs. Well, she showed up the whole week at the ministries and evening
services. It was a joy to see her at the ladies meetings, as her face lit up
and she listened so attentively with a smile on her face to the teachings.
On the other two days I went with other teams to the other
villages. On Thursday I went with some of the Boksburg family. They went to a
drop-in centre and gave Bibles to the ladies running the place as well as some
beanies and blankets for the kids. They
then visited a home they visited the previous day. They promised her a bible
and took it to her. She was so excited to receive one and read us Psalm 23 in
Pedi (Sotho). The previous day they prayed for her, and for some terrible pains
she had in her neck. She was overjoyed and excitedly told us that the pains in
her neck is gone. We can only praise God and thank Him for taking the pains
away!
The lady with the Bible in her hands, and the orange & beige shawl on her head is the one we visited whose neck pains were healed. Praise God!
On the Friday, a great deal of our team went to help the
church set up things for a conference they had.
We had children’s; youth; and woman’s ministry. The men
prepared for their teachings but no men showed up, so they had no men’s
ministry. I was involved with the woman’s ministry. We had 9 ladies on our
first day. We can pray that the seed of
what we taught them during these 4 days would grow. And that they would read
their bibles, especially those whom we gave bibles to. The only lady, Monnya,
hugged her bible when we gave it to her.
All in all, the week felt too short. For those who want to know, weatherwise, we had all kinds of weather in the week we were there. The days were mostly hot, but as soon as the sun disappareared behind the mountain it was cold again. The nights were cold (but thankfully not freezing). On thursday it was quite overcast and cold and friday we had rain! The stars are breathtakingly beautiful and clear. Lots of fellowship times were had by the fireside which was next to the shower (because it's the donkey's fire that makes hot water for the great showers.) We had several donkeys (the animal kind) walking around and whose noise was echoing in the mountains.
