Poverty: Then and Now

How should we think about poverty’s causes and effects?

That question has been an important one for us in our ministry here in Mozambique.  It led me to do research and interviews resulting in a project that examined the “Giant of Absolute Poverty” among the Makua-Metto.  You can read more about that project here.

I’ve been reading through the Edmund Morris’ trilogy on Theodore Roosevelt – it’s terrific! In his second book, Theodore Rex, I stumbled across a quote that succinctly encapsulates a part of the problem of poverty that my article didn’t address, its one I know others have been considering for a while, and I’m becoming convinced that it needs more attention.   In a discussion of both rural and urban poverty during Roosevelt’s time, Morris notes,

“A laborer might trade his hoe for a hammer, for a few extra dollars a week, but the increment was meaningless, given urban costs.” (37)

That sad summation – people who flee poverty in rural areas and can find a job in urban ones often find they don’t gain any economic ground because of increased expenses in the city.  I’ve seen this dynamic played out over and over here in the Montepuez area.  We have a number of friends who have moved from a village setting to leave behind subsistence farming in order to come to a city to make a living.  While they may find employment, the increased costs of an urban area make the improvement minimal at best.  The hidden expenses of “city life” swallow up the extra money that can be made in a town like Montepuez.

This is a reality that we need to consider carefully – it is an old problem, and one that is certainly not going away.  Urbanization affects how we think about poverty and how we should think about ministry.  In his book, Understanding Christian Mission, Sunquist notes, “In 1800, only 3 percent of the world’s people lived in urban areas; by 1900 the percentage had grown to 14 percent.  Over the next fifty years the number grew to 30 percent, and today it is over 50 percent. Thus, most of the people who are in need of Christian mission and ministry live in urban areas.” (344)  Urbanization is not inherently bad, instead it can be empowering when we realize that it “creates traction… God is scooping the masses and placing them carefully together, making it easier for the gospel to get to them.” (McManus, An Unstoppable Force, 47).

Our team’s work has focused mostly on unreached or under-reached villages, but it is important to remember that “earliest Christianity was mostly urban” (Sunquist, 355).  The way of Jesus has found a way to thrive in cities since it's beginnings.   

The rural/urban difference offers challenges to the way we think about both poverty and ministry.  I want to keep chewing on these connections and their significance for our work here…

Grace and Peace,

Alan

Chickens vs. Rubies... and the importance of telling One Story

Chickens are a part of everyday life here in northern Mozambique.  Their behavior really is puzzling.  I never fully understood the origins of jokes made at their expense until I began living among them and had to learn to dodge them with our car (“Why did the chicken cross the road?”).  They wander all over the place, pecking here, scratching there, obtaining seemingly insignificant bites to eat as they scramble haphazardly around.  It often seems to me that they must expend more energy rushing around looking for food than they actually consume...

Digging for rubies, on the other hand, is a process that looks very different.  Rubies were discovered not that far from our town and the methods that independent miners use for locating and acquiring them is something that our friends are very familiar with.  It involves picking a spot, digging deep, painstakingly transporting the dirt, and diligently sifting through that dirt to find something of value.

We work with mostly first-generation Christians here in Mozambique and a common trap for preachers is attempting to try to say too much and/or try to use too many biblical texts in one sermon.  I teach the Preaching class at the Theological Institute here in Montepuez.  So, I often reference this comparison between the way chickens eat vs. digging for rubies to encourage the students to pick just ONE BIBLICAL TEXT and ONE IDEA to share with the church.  We talk about the importance of not preaching like a chicken (wandering from biblical text to biblical text, from idea to idea, picking here, pecking there in a futile attempt to feed on God’s word).  Instead we focus on learning how to encourage the church to follow the preacher in, using the right tools, digging deep into God’s Word and finding beautiful, life-changing rubies.      

Another example that illustrates this dynamic well, in my mind, comes from “Phineas and Ferb.” Unfortunately, our Mozambican friends have yet to discover this amazing show(!)… so this example would be lost on them… but I will share it with you.  In the episode, “Norm Unleashed,” our heroes have created nanobots and have used them to do one amazing thing after another. Their sister Candace, who in every episode is doing her best to catch her brothers in the act of inventing or doing something incredible, corners their Mom, attempting to tattle on the boys: 

Candace: MOM! MOM! Phineas and Ferb are making a giant tape dispenser, but it's also a faucet, and a rowboat, a baseball hat, and gingerbread man with a fist for a head, and a pig face -- 

Linda: Stop. Okay, your stories are always full of holes, but it's usually just one story. Here, let me demonstrate. I'll be the "Candace" and you will be the "beautiful mother". (Clears throat)(Imitating Candace) Mom, Phineas and Ferb have brought Genghis Khan back from the past and he's teaching the neighbors to throw hatchets from horseback. (Normal voice) You see? One story. 

Candace: (long pause) They'll probably do that, you know.

One story!  Candace’s Mom gets this right.  This key is telling one story… digging deep into one text.  That is how you share a message that is meaningful and powerful and resonates with hearers.

Instead of teaching and preaching that wanders around like a chicken, powerful preaching looks more like digging for rubies and focuses on One Story, inviting the church along in the discovery process to find life-sustaining treasures.

Grace and Peace,

Alan 

January Newsletter and an Announcement

Happy New Year from Mozambique!

 

Many of our friends have moved out to their farms, the rainy season is off to a healthy start, and we are so grateful.  Ripe mangoes are everywhere, mosquito breeding season is in full swing, trees are lush and green, and the roads are full of potholes! With the strong winds and almost daily rain, though, we’ve had some problems with our power lines – I’m writing this newsletter to the rattling and humming of our family’s generator (we are thankful to have a back-up power supply when the electricity goes out so often and so unexpectedly!).

As seems to happen every year, October through December were over-full, and it felt like a sprint for Rachel and I to make it to the holidays.  So many projects and programs are concentrated during the dry season while the roads are still passable and before our Mozambican friends begin tilling, planting, and hoeing in their farms.

In October, I spent a week in Nampula participating in the translation check of the book of Acts in Makua-Metto.  The full translation of the New Testament into Makua-Metto is still incomplete, and our teammate Chad Westerholm works regularly with the translation team.  Spending a week observing and assisting with the consultation was an eye-opening and stretching experience for me; I really enjoyed working with translation team.  To read more of my reflections on this experience check out the blog post "Acts and Allies".

You could say that long term transformation of individuals and communities into new creations really is the ultimate goal (here and everywhere!) – and this makes mentoring leaders so crucial.  A few months ago, one deacon serving in the area of communication and collaboration for his church cluster was removed from that role for stealing church funds for his personal use.  So, on a recent Sunday those five churches from that area worshiped together in Nikanda and chose a new deacon to serve in that role.  We first met Pedro, the man they all agreed on together, years ago when he became a Christian as a teenager; please pray for him and other leaders, that they will not cultivate selfish power but instead to grow into servant leaders.

The sustainable agriculture program has been going well.  After the training seminar in September Jessica put together a report using the participant data to help us decide what future directions to take; eventually we decided to buy high quality seed for distribution to the different village associations this year – we’re hoping that will not only increase their production but also improve seed quality in their areas.  These associations are spread out over five different districts and are our primary avenue for teaching and encouraging conservation agriculture principles in local farms.  Jessica also has been organizing short videos in Makua-Metto about sustainable farming practices for us to share on SD cards.  The long-term teaching potential of these videos is exciting; having short training videos available for people to watch on their phones and share with their neighbors can help spread the information about increasing crop production to reduce the yearly hunger season and increase the church’s capacity to share.

In December, I was able to reconnect with two young men that we’ve been discipling over the years; they both have had scholarship sponsors to begin university study in nearby cities, so it’s difficult to see them except when they are on school holidays.  It was a blessing to get to work with one of them who took the initiative to put on a youth conference in Montepuez for students on school holidays.  That same week I got to study through Ephesians with the other young man, and also spend time exploring the ways God is working in the Makua-Metto culture.  Helping students to further their education is an important investment for the future of the church in Mozambique.  We still need to find scholarship sponsors for these two young men and another young woman (between $1000 and $2000 for each of them – that amount covers all their school fees and room and board for the year – pretty good deal!).   If you are interested in helping with any of these scholarships, let us know and we can send you more information.   

The bulk of our team’s time and energy these last three months, however, has been invested in the Theology School (“Instituto Teológico de Cabo Delgado” in Portuguese).  Jeremy Smith has been working hard on the construction of a classroom building and cafeteria/kitchen; construction is almost complete and should be ready for inauguration right before classes start in April.  It is amazing and encouraging to look back over the development of this school since its beginning a few years ago when our team recognized that it was time to begin offering more formal training for church leaders.  In year 1 (2016) of the Bible school, we had 51 different students. Including the data from year 2 (2017) our total number of students is 121!  These students come from 8 different church backgrounds, 5 districts from Cabo Delgado as well as students from Nampula and Zambezia Provinces.

Over the past two years our team has taught 22 classes (offering 10 out of the 14 required courses).   I recently taught the New Testament Survey class in September, a class on “Giants: Challenges Facing the Church in Cabo Delgado” in October, and a Preaching class in December, and Rachel taught a week-long, intensive Church History course; she had 15 students and they loved her class.   

Over the past three months Rachel finished up studying through the Sermon on the Mount with women in the Ancuabe district as well as a few other studies in other villages and in town.  She also juggled an online theology class from HST, participating in young women’s initiation ceremonies, teaching some science and some Portuguese in our team school, as well as taking our team kids through a survey of the Old Testament culminating in Advent.

We mentioned difficulties with our team’s residency documents in the last newsletter; thank you for praying about this with us! This issue has been prolonged over more than two years now, and has been further complicated by some religious violence in a city about five hours away, and then additionally delayed by leadership changes at the provincial level.  Please continue to pray with us as we are still working towards the resolution of this issue. 

The big news for our family, though, is that after much prayer and seeking input from American and Mozambican colleagues, we have decided to leave Mozambique in December of 2018 and return to the United States.  It is strange to begin wrapping up this chapter of life for our family – we love our work here, and our girls have grown up knowing Mozambique as home. We’ve begun to experience a swirl of emotions as we try to intentionally plan our final year in Mozambique; hope for the future and also grief in the upcoming goodbyes.  That decision to leave is popping up in more and more conversations with Mozambican church leaders as plans are being made for this year and beyond. 

Please keep this process in your prayers, both our leaving Mozambique and our moving to the States.  We want to “leave well,” not underestimating the impact of stepping away from Mozambique after 15 years.  We also want to move forward in trust; we don’t yet know where we will be going or what we will be doing next, and we are waiting on God.   Thanks so much for supporting us and this ministry!

Please join us in prayer:

• For healthy farms and healthy people during the rainy season
• For church growth and maturity
• For resolution of our document issues
• For wisdom about wrapping up our work in Mozambique and peace about what God has for our family in the future

Grace and Peace,

Alan and Rachel Howell