Team Missions as a Collective Game

Game playing has been a part of our mission team’s culture from the beginning.  While we were still living in the USA in 2000-2003 we would meet regularly to do team formation activities, work out details about where and how we would serve in Africa, meet with missions teachers and mentors… and have fun together, too! 

Even now, after being in Mozambique for almost 14 years, game playing is still part of our team culture.  Every Tuesday night we share a meal, worship together, put the kids to bed, and play games.  Each family has their own collection of games and depending on whose house we are at that week, there’s a bunch of different game options that we can bring to the table.  

There are basically two kinds of games.  There are competitive games, where individual players, or a team of players, is trying to beat the other participants (like Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan).  In contrast, collective games, on the other hand, are different in that all the players are working together to win as a group (like Pandemic, Forbidden Island or Flashpoint).

While our team enjoys playing both kinds of games, we function best when we remember that what we are doing here in Mozambique is not a competitive game, it is a collective game.  When we get distracted and start thinking or worrying about which one of us is “winning” (who gets the credit for this or that), then we’ve begun playing the wrong kind of game.  If we forget the truth that we all win or lose this thing together… that’s when things start to fall apart.

Often that means that team members end up “taking one for the team” and do things behind the scenes that could often go unnoticed.  So, one of the keys has been remembering to name and celebrate together our collective wins. 

We win or lose this thing together.

In my mind, Romans 12 may be the most underrated… and yet the most important chapter in Paul’s letters for team missions.  It provides a powerful vision of what it means to serve and minister together.

May God help us see clearly that we win or lose this thing together in Jesus’ name.

Grace and Peace,

Alan  

Story Warren: The Soundtrack of Childhood

Check out a new post I wrote for Story Warren, The Soundtrack of Childhood, for some thoughts on what it means for the Islamic Call to Prayer to be a part of our lives here in Mozambique. Enjoy!

Acts and Allies

Lately, the story of Philip has captured my imagination.  Acts 8 tells the story of his encounter with the Ethiopian Eunuch.  It is a powerful story of the first convert to Christianity outside of Abraham’s family.  And it is a fun story to teach here in Mozambique.  The area we live in is predominantly Muslim and a critique often leveled by people here against disciples of Jesus is: “Oh, Christianity, that’s a European religion… the true religion of Africa is Islam.”

So, it is inspiring to walk through this text with our Makua-Metto friends and point out that the first story of an individual non-Jew or non-Samaritan to become a Christian was not of an American, Portuguese, Korean or Chinese… he was an African.  AND his baptism and subsequent return to Ethiopia happened roughly 600 years before Muhammad was born and about 700 years before Islam eventually made its way to Africa.  So, Christianity existed on this continent for around seven centuries before Islam did.  That fact may not mean much to you, but it does to them.  It has been fun to see how moving it is, both encouraging and empowering, to tell first generation Christians in this area that Christianity is THEIR religion!  An African paved the way for the rest of us Gentile Christians, myself included, and they should be proud of that!  

Another reason why this story has been appealing to me is that I have found myself identifying more with Philip.  Philip is called outside of his normal realm of experience to play a role that he surely didn’t expect (he’s already moved from Jerusalem to Samaria and now this?).  Philip certainly isn’t the hero of this story and it would be difficult to prove that the Ethiopian Eunuch is the main character either.  Instead the real protagonist is the Holy Spirit.  It is God who is primarily at work to save and to bless.

I’m in Nampula this week helping out with the consultation check of the translation of the book of Acts in Makua-Metto.  Now, I’m not a linguist or a translator so it has been a stretching experience – a challenge to know how to help appropriately.  On my first morning working with the translation team, our friend Domingos Aurelio shared a devotional thought from Mark chapter 2, the story of the four friends who carried the paralytic to Jesus.  He talked about how all of them had to work together to carry the person. They even had to break a hole in the roof to lower this man down to the Lord.  In the same way that they had to be careful to match each other’s speed and follow each other’s lead to effectively work together to meet a common objective, we too needed to pay attention to each other and find a way to collaborate to bring this translation work before the Lord and the people of Mozambique.

I recently read Drick Boyd’s book, White Allies in the Struggle for Racial Justice.  As someone who has struggled to understand my role as an outsider working to be a blessing here to our African friends and neighbors, I have hungered for appropriate models of what it looks like to do that well.  Boyd tells the stories of white Americans who resisted the pull of their own cultures to participate as partners or allies with African-Americans to make a more just system.  It was encouraging and challenging to read about how these men and women allied with neighbors of different backgrounds and skin colors at, sometimes, great personal cost.

This language of “allies” is controversial.  Some find it patronizing while others believe it is appropriate.  I don’t have the answer to that question or know a better label that should be used.  What I do know is that the language of “being allies” has been a helpful way of framing our engagement with the work in Mozambique – both in relation to what God is doing and what Mozambicans are doing themselves.  Philip was an ally to the Ethiopian Eunuch – helping and blessing as he could.  The four friends were allies to the paralytic – doing what it took to bring about his healing through Christ.  

There is a debate in missions about where the vision for ministry or development should come from. Ideally it should come from insiders, correct?  Does it invalidate a vision then if it comes from outsiders?  And what if insiders have yet to recognize the need or don’t have the resources to respond?  And if insiders and outsiders do work together what should partnership look like?  

Those are challenging questions without simple answers.  But, I find it instructive that in the biblical narrative we see the vision for change in a given region coming from both insiders and outsiders.  For example, the prophet Amos was an outsider. He left his home in the southern kingdom of Judah to go to preach a message of repentance to the wealthy in the northern kingdom of Israel.  But, Micah was an insider who preached his message to the people of Judah, his own region.  God can use both insiders and outsiders to cast a vision for what life should look like.

Going through the book of Acts this week, considering Peter and Cornelius, Paul and Tabitha and others, I’m reminded that whether we are insiders or outsiders what matters most is allying ourselves with the mission of God and finding others who are on that path, who are partnering with God as well, listening well and allying ourselves with them, too.  It won’t be easy, like Philip we may end up way outside our comfort zones, but it is there that we will likely see the power of God.

Grace and Peace,

Alan

Charcoal and Rejection/Redemption

I remember clearly the day that we learned the word for coal in Portuguese - carvão. Our mission team was in Lisbon to learn to speak the national language of Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony.  It was pretty early in our language study and when we saw “carvão” in class we pictured large train cars full of coal that had been mined underground. “Well, this little word certainly won’t be useful,” we thought. “We should be learning more meaningful, practical words.” Our team joked that this was an insignificant word, unimportant, and not worthy of remembering.  Little did we know that charcoal or carvão would be a common things we encountered in northern Mozambique - it is everywhere in Makua-Metto culture. 

Early in the morning, here in Montepuez, you can hear men walking through town yelling out: “Makhala, Makhala.” They are announcing in the Makua-Metto language that they have charcoal for sale as they carry their big sacks on the back of their bicycles.  It plays an important role in the local economy - Mozambican men go out into the woods and spend days making the charcoal to then sell it to others. 

When we go out to villages for visits or teaching, people often ask us to transport sacks of charcoal for them.  When we do, the fine, black powder of charcoal dust covers the back of our truck and gets on my hands and clothes. 

Charcoal, Carvão, Makhala – whatever you want to call it, it is everywhere! 

In John’s Gospel, the word for “charcoal fires” seems insignificant.  But it plays prominently in the story of Peter – at his betrayal or rejection of Jesus at the house of Caiphas as well as his redemption on the beach having breakfast with the risen Christ.  Eugene Peterson summarizes the story well:

“It was a cold night, and Peter and others were warming themselves at a charcoal fire (anthrakian, 18:18).  Peter was questioned by other spectators in the courtyard that night about whether he knew Jesus.  Peter answered three times with a denial… Now on the Galilee beach, Peter has just eaten a breakfast cooked by Jesus over another charcoal fire (the same word, anthrakian). When the Galilee beach conversation started, Peter couldn’t have known where it was going.  But when Jesus put his question to Peter a third time, Peter’s three denials the week before, while warming himself at a similar charcoal fire as Jesus was on trial before Caiaphas, pulled the memory of that awful night of shame into the present.  So that’s why there are three.  The three Jesus questions on the Galilee beach reverse and redeem Peter’s three denials at the trial the week before in Jerusalem.  The three affirmations of love harness Peter into continuing Jesus’s work – ‘Feed my sheep’ – a change of vocation, no longer a fisherman but a shepherd following in the steps of the great Shepherd of the sheep. It is a remarkable story. Peter… is now forgiven, is restored to continue Jesus’s work. Peter, for as long as he lived, never forgot the link between the night of denials and this morning of grace.”  (Peterson, As Kingfishers Catch Fire, 355)

The word for charcoal (anthrakian in Greek) could justifiably be perceived as insignificant in the New Testament.  If my counting is correct, it only occurs these two times (Jon 18:18 and 21:9). But my hunch is that this word is anything but insignificant for Peter. His rejection happened in conversation around a charcoal fire at night and his restoration and rehabilitation occurs in conversation around a charcoal fire in the morning.

It makes me wonder if every time Peter smelled a charcoal fire or got charcoal dust on his hands or clothes he remembered those charcoal conversations and how Jesus could even use seemingly insignificant things to help turn rejection into redemption.

Grace and Peace,

Alan

Counting and Makua Culture

We speak the Makua-Metto language, but in the province south of us, Nampula, they speak a different dialect known simply as Macua or Makua.  Most of the villages we work in speak Makua-Metto (in the districts of Montepuez, Balama, Namuno, Ancuabe, Pemba) or Makua-Saka (in the district of Chiure). But in the southern part of the Namuno district in the administrative post of Macoka, near the Lurio River, the people there speak the Makua dialect from Nampula.

This Sunday, I traveled down to worship with churches in that area.  Along the way, a few of us talked about something I’ve been curious about for a while – their counting system.

Here’s a video of our friend Aquimo Saibo counting from #1-30. 

Now you might think it is interesting the way Aquimo starts counting with his pinkie finger and then when he gets to ten, he shows that by putting his fists together.  My Mozambican friends often think it is odd if I start counting with my index finger… (for more on culture and body language differences in Moz see my post from a few years back: "What's in a Shrug?")

Anyways, what I think is really interesting is their counting system as a whole.  We’ve wondered if it is should be categorized as a base-five number system.

Here are pages 225 and 226 from Gino Centis’s book Método Macua (2000), along with a few observations for clarification:

Both Makua-Metto and Makua use a noun class system and numbers must correspond to the noun class of what you are counting.  For example, in Nampula Makua, if you were counting people you would say: mmosa, ànli, araru, axexe, athanu.  But if you were counting goats you would say: emosa, pìli, tthàru, xexe, thanu.  Those are examples of two different noun classes and their impact on the counting system.  The four columns that follow on the page are examples of each of the four noun classes.  (Ah, so fun and complicated…)

As you go down the list you can see that literally the way they count is:

a.      One to Ten: 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 5+1; 5+2; 5+3; 5+4; 10

b.      Eleven to Twenty: 10+1; 10+2; 10+3; 10+4; 10+5; 10+5+1; 10+5+2; 10+5+3; 10+5+4; 2 of 10

c.      Twenty-One to Thirty: (2 of 10)+1; (2 of 10)+2; (2 of 10)+3; (2 of 10)+4; (2 of 10)+5; (2 of 10)+5+1; (2 of 10)+5+2; (2 of 10)+5+3; (2 of 10)+5+4; 3 of 10.

d.      Once you get to 100 (on page 226) – it is literally “a group of ten of ten”).

Some more observations:

Interestingly, if you look up the word they use for ten, Muloko, in Dicionario Macua-Português (1990, p. 151), the first meaning that is given is “group, line or list”; then the secondary meaning that is given is “ten or group of ten.”  So, in Nampula Makua, Muloko is “group” or “ten” and Miloko is the plural form which means “groups” or “tens.”  As a side note, that word Muloko is also used among the Lomwe people (a sub-dialect of Makua) as a name for the church.  The churches of Christ among the Lomwe people, for example, often refer to themselves as “Muloko a Kristu,” or “the group of Christ.”

If the Makua Nampula number system seems cumbersome to you, rest assured that Makua people that I’ve talked to also find it difficult.  They say that once you count to 20, 30 or above, Makua people will almost always switch to Portuguese (the national language that is taught in schools).

For the Makua-Metto people in Cabo Delgado, their number system follows a 1-10 system.  Their numbers 1-5 are very similar to Makua from Nampula, but 6-10 are normally borrowed from Swahili (the language spoken in Tanzania just north of us).

I’m not exactly sure, but as far as I understand what the Nampula Makua speakers are using is not truly a base-5 system. Instead it seems like a hybrid system where “two groups of fives” forms a “ten group” that is added to from there.  I would love to hear any thoughts on what this system should be called.

Thanks for indulging my curiosity for a few minutes!  I hope it added up to an interesting blog post on the intersection of counting and culture.

Grace and Peace,

Alan