Pemba, Mozambique

Place: Iris Ministries in Pemba, Mozambique, Africa...
Reason for visit: missions work...
What does that look like? For me, it was supposed to be photography work, quickly I would realize that it was so much more! I had been given words from more than a few friends that God was sending me to Africa for more than picture taking, and I agreed with them, however that was still my focus. When we landed in Pemba, I was so excited, I had dreamed of this day for a few years now and it was finally here. While the rest of the team I was on was tired, I was ready to run! I have this amazing ability to have the excitement of a 5 year old at all new situations, some find it childish, I see it as Gods way of keeping me young! We walked right through the customs and visa portion of this tiny airport, which I have seen closets bigger than(a total favor thing from God), and went to the room to wait for our bags.
The bags came, we loaded them into the trucks and off we were to journey to base. I asked how far we were from base and the driver, a friend we will call Sam said “oh, about 2 hours”, I was perfectly content with that answer as the girls I was with laughed because 2 of them had been there before and it was only about 10 minutes away!
We arrived at base at around 8pm, so it was dark and we did not see much of our surroundings. We were shown to our rooms and given a brief intro with a more detailed one set for morning. We sorted out who would room with who, I was with our leader in a special room(more favor), the three other girls roomed together and our one lone guy was in a room with another man from a separate trip(he would later join our team with his sister). We meet quickly to have our leader give us a, “well we are here, get some rest” talk and we were off to explore, well I was. There was one other team in the community with us and they were from England, they were decorating for a party for a girls birthday, they were from NGM, New Generation Music; a christian organization that uses non christian methods to reach the unreachable. Over the next week we would grow very close to this group due to the closeness in age and living quarters, and the fact that they were all so friendly.
Here at Iris breakfast, which is at 6am which comes early when you did not get to bed till late and is over by 7 so to get ready for lunch. Lunch is served at noon and is over by 12:45 as to get ready for dinner that is served at 4, all times are approximate due to the fact that it is Africa and they work on a much more relaxed time system then I am use to(mostly because of preparation time, all things are made for the meal they are making when they are needed, over an open flame in giant proportions). We learned all things happen early and end early due to the hours of sunshine, the sun comes up at 4:30 am and goes down at around the same time in the evening and by 5 pm it is totally dark feeling like 10 pm. The time thing and going off base at night took a bit to get use to, base is a safe place to be on after dark(seeming to be the biggest part of the day if u are a night person) due to guards and the residents that make up the base mostly Iris kids, staff, students & visiting missionaries. However going off base is not recommended, in fact it is discouraged because in the past there have been incidents that left someone injured. This was a hard thing for me, I am a night person and thought that if we went as a group it would be alright and learned from others & their stories that group or not, if we were to walk to town there was a chance that a larger group would try to confront us to take what we had because they think as visitors we have a lot of money. We do not consider ourselves as having a lot of money but in actuality we do. The exchange rate is good there for us, what is considered small change in the states is wealthy here. For example 100 meticack(their currency) was equal to $3.00 US dollars. So if a guest of Iris had changed $100.00 that was like a million dollars to a person living in Pemba and I am sure they could live on it for a very long time, as things are very inexpensive(even cheaper if you are the same color as the seller, a prejudice we encountered everywhere we went in Africa). So, there was no leaving base at night, that time was spent getting to know the kids on base, the missionaries and other visitors.
We did a neat exercise called I Think, I feel... it was good, we all talked about what we thought God was going to do, what we were feeling from the first impression, and how nice it was to get sleep in a bed after traveling for almost 2 days, oh yeah and how good the shower was even if it was cold! I was thinking how amazing it was that people could live so simply, I mean it is very basic here and I was feeling very excited to see what God was going to do with me and with the team while here in Africa!
Our leader had planned for us to join a 2 day outreach, tenting over night in the bush(not completely sure what that was when we signed up but it was amazing) a few hours from base. I was excited for that, not looking forward to the food, but looking forward to the ministry. We got all things packed up and headed out packed semi tight and totally uncomfortable, but sometimes we got to move out of our comfort zone to see what God has for us! As we were driving we came to a stop, like a random place along the road that would be like a convenient store at home and we were rushed with many people selling items, mostly food. It was amazing, there were bananas, papaya's, mango's, bread, grilled goat on a stick, chicken that was grilled and cold drinks. We never even had to get out of the back of the army style truck we were riding in, just reach out the canvas top with our money. Some of the items they were selling I was not interested in but people on my team ate them and enjoyed them, like the goat and the chicken. I bought some amazing looking bread to go with the peanut butter I had brought from home, in case I did not like what was for dinner and bananas. All had made their selections, paid the few cents it cost and we were off again headed to the village that was waiting on us.
We arrived to find so many people there already, expecting to see the Jesus film we brought, so we got out and the pastors that came with us set it all up. We were setting up our tents and getting situated as to where we were, when we got word the generator was dead so there would be no film tonight. The people were told we would pray for them instead, a good substitute, and the film would be shown tomorrow night. This changed the plans that had been made for us to spend one night here then do a jump to another near by village, but God is in control so it is all well. The team I was with mixed among the crowd as I photographed, I was also able to pray for people near me, as I was on top of the truck to get a higher vantage point. I watched many miracles take place from where I was, I saw a friend pray for a boy who could not hear from his right ear and God opened the ear and the boy could hear, I watched another friend pray for a baby with malaria and the fever broke(normally a sign of healing), I prayed with one of the pastors that was with our group(he was a student at the school) for a man that was ill and coughing and after we prayed he said he felt better and the coughing was less. I got down from the truck to pray for a boy that I had been hearing cough for the entire time we were there, it just took me a while to pin point who he was, I had no translator so I just prayed, God understood me because the boy while I was praying was coughing, and badly and after I prayed for him he was no longer coughing and he was happy, speaking words I did not understand but he was filled with joy, so I know he was healed! The night came to a close with us heading back to the tent area, eating diner(a spaghetti type dish) and having a lot of the village kids standing about 20 feet away watching us get ready and get into our tents. We woke up in the am to a beautiful welcome, first the sound of ducks quacking(I love ducks) so I unzipped my tent & climbed out to see the ducks and even better than duck kids! There was around 20-30 children of all ages about 20 feet from our tents, being silent just waiting and watching for any signs of life, it was amazing. I got out and took some pictures of them, no one else was awake yet, and as I got a few pics a pest soon came buzzing around, A BEE! It was liking me, I was not liking it, I kinda bobbed and weaved away from it, not swatting at it to not make it mad, and soon I became the morning entertainment for the children, they laughed at me in unison! It was great, I actually enjoyed being their “morning cartoon in life form”.
The team was soon up, due to the rising temperatures in the tents and we got going with coffee, tea & bread rolls(the normal Iris breakfast). We organized a few games for the kids, which went from 30ish to like almost 100 in the blink of an eye, and played for a while before heading to church for a meeting. We lead the meeting at church, 2 of our team preached with a translator and then after that we had lunch and rest time. We all gathered again after lunch & rest time for seperate meetings, the kids were in one group, the men in another and the women came with me and two other women from the team I was a part of. We got to go into the church, it was cooler in their, and we had books to hand out which we thought we were going to preach on. We found out when our translator came in that one of us women needed to preach, Ha, seriously! Well no one had anything prepared, but I asked what the women wanted to learn, and their answer was how to pray better. I took over and taught them what I had learned about prayer, how we need not think of God as this far off being that we had to be all proper and impersonal with, I taught them to just speak to him as you would speak to a close friend, to communicate with him was most important. It was so great, I taught them that they have the same authority that men have and they could see miracles before their eyes too if they would just ask and know who they are in Christ! At the end, instead of us praying, I had them pry for each other, so they could activate what they had just learned. It was so amazing to see them praying with power, and watching the chains that had held them in such bondage fall to the ground, God showed up in a mighty way in that room!
We all gathered together after the separate meetings to hear a great story from a missionary to Pemba, we will call him Shawn, God had given him this great story just days before about a lion named Karomu, an African word meaning lion, and it was a great evangelism tool, because it talked about a little girl who is saved by this giant lion from the bush. The entire church loved the story, Shawn told it with such life, people were laughing at the things in the story, no matter their age! After the story, we went out to do hut to hut evangelism, we broke into teams and off we went. I was in a group and I still am not sure if we had a translator, communication was very difficult but I was very popular, all the kids were with me, I looked like the pied piper walking from place to place. I had a camera, and a big one at this time so the kids would almost trip over themselves to get me to take a picture of them, it was so cute. As we walked we would come into contact with babies with their families but they had never seen white people, so the babies would cry from being scared of us, it was kinda of humorous to us until we learned why they were scared. We had someone tell us that parents would tell babies that while people were bad that they would do terrible things to them so to stay away from them, how sad is that. The kids that were older knew better and their parents had changed their stories after Iris had gotten involved(people learned that not all white people are bad, some come in love). We continued to walk from hut to hut and invite people to the film tonight and when we had covered the whole village we headed back to the base area. We had a rest, we ate dinner and prayed as a team while the village was watching the Jesus film. It was amazing, we each got great words and encouragement, well needed before going out and praying for God to show up and heal the masses. The movie ended and off we went to the crowd like the night before, the crowd was bigger and hungrier. The team spread out in groups of 2 and started praying for people, and healing after healing was recorded, God showed up again and did what he does best, Loved on people! After the night had come to an end we were off to bed, very tired and excited to leave and move onto the next thing God has for us seeing as we had only arrived in Africa 3 days earlier and had a whole 6 weeks ahead!
The next thing that had a great impact on me at Iris was the village feeding program, everyday Iris cooked food for the village kids. They came and there was a program set, they would sing some songs, hear about God for a bit and there would be from time to time a special guest, this day it was the NGM dancers(from England), and they did one of their routines, it was great the kids really enjoyed it. After all things were done the kids ate, first they came to the washing station where a mix of water and some sanitary solution was poured over their little hands as they rubbed them together, then they headed over to where the mounded plates of beans and rice were being handed out. It was so interesting to watch these children gather, they all seemed to take care of one another, there were children as young as 6 and 8 with younger siblings strapped to their backs with a African wrap, because there was no one at home to take care of them and this might be the only meal they get for the day. I was in shock over the level of responsibility the children have here, I know adults in the states who can not take care of a child and here at the age of 6 they have it down like it is natural. I would walk through the sea of little feet and faces as they ate and laughed and feed the even littler ones and began to see some not finishing their food but packing it away into what ever they could find to carry it home in, some used plastic bags, some had containers but most used their shirts to carry the “leftover” to a family member that was home or for themselves to eat later that night. I found myself stuck in the sea of little ones with tears streaming down my face, as they just looked back at me as if to ask why I was sad. I could not help but have the reality of the statement we as Americans use often when one of our children do not finish their food and throw it in the rubbish bin,”There is a starving child in Africa that would love that you know?” and it was too much for me to bear, the tears flowed like the Mississippi river flows from the great lakes, from my eyes down my face and fell in the dry red dirt that was beneath me... This would not be the only time I would be overwhelmed with this feeling, and I pray it is not something I ever get numb to, because too many have, that is why these children struggle. Along with this feeding program Iris has a widow feeding program, which feed the widows, handicapped & elderly. I was able to help with this one of the days I was there, I went down to the dinner hall where the dry storage goods are stored and found some of my NGM friends there. I asked what I could do and we started out by separating the bags of beans and rice, they were weighed out into 5gks each. Volunteers come for a full day every 2 weeks and sort in total a ton of beans and rice, they put 5kg of each into bags and piled at the back of the store room. This is done the day before it is handed out, so on the day it is headed out more volunteers come and move it to the front of the room, close to the doors in a bean section and a rice section. The people we are feeding then come to the doors, garage like doors that are fully open, they hand in a ticket and the receive a bag of beans and the rice is dumped onto a cloth that then they wrap and carry away on their heads. The way the people get the ticket is by working on base, it is like a trade program as so they know it is God that is providing not people. God sent the people here to start the base, God sent the work that they can do and God sent the food for them. They do odd things depending on their ability level, and the food is their payment. It was amazing to walk out of the store room and see how many people this program helps, it had to be more than 100, more than 100 families that otherwise would go with out food.
The last group I encountered personally at Iris was the sewing school. It is a great ministry that teaches local village women how to sew, that is headed up by a wonderful & cheerful women from New Zeland, we will call her Annette. I had been told of this place but each time I had gone down I had just missed the open hours, but not this day. I went down with a few other women from another group that had just arrived and we were in amazement. There were ten women, all sitting peacefully at sewing machines working hard to complete their task for the day, some even had little babies on their backs. I had to chuckle a min inside when watching the moms with the little ones strapped to themselves, they were working just as hard as the ones with out a child. I could not help but think of the excuse used so many times at home from people I know with children for the house being untidy or the errands not being handled, because they had the kids, seemed to have a whole new meaning now. I mean it was even as severer as when the baby got hungry the mom would swing the child to the front and allow it to suckle while she was still working, not something our society could handle. The women were not only talented seamstresses, but great moms and singers. They got together after each day after their work was done and checked, they prayed and sang to the Lord, it was great to be included in one afternoon session. They made beautiful shoulder bags, shirts, coin purses, & buttons of various colors and sizes. All the proceeds from the sale of the products goes directly back into the school to pay the ladies(so they can support their families), to pay for product and towards a new building so the women can live there like a boarding house with all the equipment for their work there also. It is a wonderful program and I pray for more and more success daily!
I had a great time, meet a lot of great people and participated in loads of ministry that I would never have gotten a chance to anywhere else. I was blessed by all the staff, missionaries and children there as well as the beautiful landscape surrounding the base.(it is located directly across form the Indian ocean). I would say to anyone interested in going, go, you will be blessed in many ways.