February 2013 News

Hello from northern Mozambique!

Our last newsletter was just before Thanksgiving, so we're a little overdue, but Alan has been blogging quite a bit lately about ministry and our life here - PLEASE check out his recent posts over the past couple months - you won't regret it! 

Thanksgiving was a very fun, huge party with other Americans in the area; we had over thirty people at our house, and we enjoyed a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, a slip-n-slide, worship together, a piñata bash, a dance party, and lots of Skype time with family members in the States.   December was a REALLY busy month for us; our activities included a ten-day-stretch in which we kept the five children of some missionary friends while they took a trip to Portugal to see a new mission field.  It was a circus with Alan and I keeping tabs on eight children ages two to fourteen, but we had fun and we all survived.  We enjoyed a very restful, peaceful, tropical Christmas and New Year's with our team.

 The rains started in December, and they didn't start timidly this year but with days and days of rain all in a row, which is great for crops (but hard to get the laundry dry).  Having more available fruit has helped us bear the extra heat and humidity though: we had more mangoes in December and early January than we could handle, vendors are now selling pineapples at the market, and the vines in our yard are heavy with almost-ripe passion fruit.

In December I picked up the pace a bit with the women's studies in which I'm involved, both so our family could take off for Christmas and so we could finish our studies before the ladies needed to focus on their farms in January.  I spent the night out with women three different times (twice with study groups and once for a girl's initiation ceremony).  Then on January 4, all the women from the two different groups came into town to finish our Sermon on the Mount study together.  All fourteen women participated (with fourteen of their smallest children, as well!), and we enjoyed studying, singing, dancing, eating, sleeping, laughing, and praying together.  We reviewed Jesus' words again the next morning, and we practiced praying a blessing over each other for the next few months.  I treasure my time studying Jesus' Kingdom words with those women; it is a privilege to share their lives with them.

Most folks plant sometime in December (corn, peanuts, beans, pumpkin, cucumbers, squash, rice, sorghum).  About half of the women from north of town with whom I study move out to live in their fields during the months of January to March because the baboons (and a few other small monkey and rodent species) will steal and wreck their crops if they don't.  So it is a natural time to take a break, and our plan is to start studying together again in April, Lord willing, once most of the harvest is in.

Over the past few months Alan has continued to work with churches and church leaders in Makua-Metto land.  Since our last newsletter he has taught at least once in the following places:...(deep breath) Siwewe, Nkunama, Cambiri, Marera, Nkororo, Pemba, Chipembe, Mwankina, Nekwaya, Namuno, Napai, Ntekiani, Mirije, Nakuka, Omeringue, Chiure sede, Nacivare, Nrassi, and Namarekwa...(phew!). 

Growing out of some interviews Alan has done over the past few years he has been developing teaching materials that address the intersection of divination, evil spirits and witchcraft in this area.  Our Mozambican friends are surrounded by these practices and we've only recently felt like we've had sufficient understanding and cultural capital to start addressing them.  These lessons have provoked a lot of good conversation and wrestling with what it means to be a child of God in this context.  It has been encouraging also watching them pass on this teaching to others.  Recently Alan had planned to go out with Chad to teach on this subject with church leaders in the Ancuabe district, but because of car repair issues, Cruz and Armindo, two young men that Alan is discipling, taught it in his place and did a great job!  Not only has it been encouraging to watch the churches wrestle with this issue, it also is good to see young church leaders take initiative and ownership in passing on what they are learning to others.

Two weeks ago we enjoyed our annual team retreat in Pemba.  We discovered a new place to stay right on the beach (but a little further outside of town), and we had several focused days of planning together.  We have found that it's very helpful to get away together (Pemba is about 200km from Montepuez) so we can have uninterrupted and focused time to look at our vision as a team and to spend some time praying and playing together! 

We've had a few days lately when we've felt a little discouraged and weary; this time of year is hard for everyone; the increase in mosquitoes brings an increase in malaria, and the increase in flies brings an increase in diarrhea, pinkeye, and skin infections.  SO many people are sick right now, and it's sad.  This is also the last 6-8 weeks before people can start harvesting some fresh corn, and so a lot of people are hungry, too.  The roads are a muddy mess with huge ruts gashed through them from rain runoff, and it makes travel longer and more painful as we are thrown around in the car.  So we pray for healing and we help our friends buy grain and we all watch the corn grow taller, knowing that in a few weeks, Lord willing, we'll be eating fresh roasted corn together. 

Our girls have enjoyed playing in the rain and mud and eating mangoes nonstop.  We were blessed to receive a number of Christmas care packages with LOTS OF BOOKS for the girls, which they were SO excited about!  Ellie has now joined Abby as a devourer-of-chapter-books - we are ALWAYS on the lookout for new chapter books if you have any to recommend!  They LOVE their teachers Kara and Rebekah (and we do, too!), and they love school.  Katie turned three a couple weeks ago, and is quite the snuggler.

As we close, we'd love for you to join us in praying over these requests:

For the rains to continue steadily through March but without flooding

For healing for those who are sick right now

For vision and wisdom as we disciple and mentor

For God's Kingdom to come here in this corner of the world

For the truck and the pump on the well as both have been breaking a lot lately

Please know that you are loved and missed!

Much peace to you,

Rachel and Alan

the tension in our ministry

How can I describe my friend Latifu to you?  I have known him for 7 or 8 years.  He is a subsistence farmer.  He can't read and he can't speak any Portuguese.  He is really short - less than five feet tall.  He was the one who wanted a church planted where he lives in the village of Nekwaya.  His wife is crippled in one leg and they have a bunch of kids.  I have slept at his home and he has served me rat to eat...  There is a lot to tell.

The other day, Latifu and I were talking about some of the struggles in his church.  I don't know why, maybe my face betrayed some exasperation, but suddenly he looked at me and said, "Please don't give up on us.  Please keep working with us.  My wife is crippled.  She is limited in what she can do, but I'm going to stick with her.  I'm not going to leave her.  Please don't leave us, even if we're crippled."

That got my attention.  It made me reflect on what we're really here to do. 

My job here is not to plant one single church.  My mandate was not to focus on one body of believers.  Our vision is to try and help a movement of churches flourish among the Makua-Metto people.  Our team works with around 50 small churches spread all over the province of Cabo Delgado.  So, that means that we must do a good job of encouraging emerging leaders - which takes time.

I feel like I have these two impulses in my ministry.  Sometimes they pull in the same direction and sometimes they feel like they'll pull me apart!

One pole is what I'll call the 'pastoral impulse'.  This is the voice that calls me to compassion and patience in discipling people to live in the way of Jesus.  For me it is personified by Eugene Peterson whose writings have taught me so much about being a minister and embracing the calling to pastor and shepherd a specific flock of people.  His books (especially Working the Angles - thank you, Tim Stafford) remind me that you can't do ministry in the abstract - ministry must be rooted in a people, a time, a place.  This pole calls me to emphasize pouring life and energy into those nearby whether they may be much good at passing it on, or not.

The other pole I'll name the 'apostolic impulse.'  This is the voice that calls me to think and act strategically - to focus my time and attention on those who are able and willing to pour their lives into others.  This tug reminds me that I have a mission, I have been 'sent' (that's what the word 'apostle' means) to Mozambique with a purpose.  I picture David Watson, whose seminars and teaching on Church Planting Movements (see www.davidwatson.org, thank you, Sam Shewmaker), push me to look at the big picture and invest in people who are on board with God's mission.  This pole calls me to spend my time with the handful of people that I'm confident have the ability to go the distance.

These terms 'pastor' and 'apostle' are not ones used regularly in my own church heritage (Churches of Christ) - and I know the reasons why.  But they are good, sturdy words that have some sharp edges to shape with.  I am hoping that their lack of familiarity will give them some more power to mold me.   My hope is that these words will have something to teach me as we get better acquainted.

I heard Andy Stanley say something on a podcast that has been very helpful to me over the past couple years.  He says that when you are confronted with an issue in life/ministry the first thing you need to do is to determine whether it is 'a problem to solve' or 'a tension to manage.'

To be sure, there are problems to solve in life and ministry.  But I have a growing sense that the issue I'm describing is best seen as a tension to manage.  If I focused exclusively on the pastoral side and cut ties with the apostolic pole, I would lose out on the push for mission.  And if I thought only of strategy and ignored the cries for help from those less capable of 'moving the needle,' I would miss out on the fact that Jesus had so much to say to the last, the lost and the least.  

No, this is not a problem to be solved - It is a tension to be managed.

Some things in life thrive in the tension.  A guitar is worthless without the right amount of tension on its strings.  But, when the tension is just right, it is ready to be plucked and the notes come through loud and clear.

I can feel the tug between these two poles.  I see Jesus being 'pastoral' and having compassion on the crowds and the individuals.  I see him being 'apostolic'/strategic in spending hours and hours with Peter, James, John and their friends knowing that they, literally, are his only plan to change the world.  Jesus managed this tension well - and his life sang because of it.

May we live in the tension between the apostolic and pastoral poles.  May we manage this tension well,  and may our lives make beautiful music because of it.

Grace and Peace,

Alan

Of Composting Toilets and Life in Community

Many parts of life in Mozambique differ greatly from the lives of our friends and family in the US.  From strange foods, to odd customs, to the challenge of juggling multiple languages, we end up having plenty to share about as we try to explain just what exactly we do over here.  But when we talk about daily life in Africa the thing that provokes the most grimaces from listeners is the fact that we do not have a flush toilet.

 

Our family is using composting toilets...which is just a nice way of saying that we go to the bathroom in a bucket.  

The main reasons why we decided to do this were that we had experienced severe water shortages, and that I was tired of dealing with Mozambican plumbing parts.  They constantly leak and break, and in our last rental house especially the plumbing system was so poorly designed that it always smelled bad.  So, when we built this house we decided to go with composting toilets. Our friends, the Caldwells and Holtons had used this method for years in another part of Mozambique so that made the concept a little easier to implement.

So how does this actually work? Well, I will try not to be crass with my descriptions... I know how quickly this post could start to go down the...bucket (?).  In our bathroom, we keep a bucket of sawdust nearby (teak shavings from the local sawmill, typically) and anytime someone makes a deposit in the bucket, they scoop up some sawdust and cover it up.  The sawdust soaks up all the moisture and the lack of moisture knocks down the smell. It is then my job every week to take the buckets outside and dispose of the contents.  I empty the buckets into a little fenced-in compost pile, I cover everything up with leaves, dirt or more sawdust.  After the waste has sat for a full year it becomes ready-to-use compost.  

It was brought to my attention recently that I had hurt a friend's feelings, so a plan was made to sit down and talk it out.  It took some time between realizing the need to work it out and actually making the meeting happen, and I was nervous.  I dreaded the uncomfortable pauses in conversation, and part of me wished we could just leave things be.  But ultimately I had confidence that we would be able to clear everything up, I just knew we would have to deal with the mess first.

It just so happened that both my composting duties and this conversation happened on the same day. 

So, in the morning while I was taking out our family's buckets I reflected on the fact that later that day we would be taking out the buckets in that relationship.  It is not always pleasant work but it must be done.

In his book, Life Together, Bonhoeffer writes that, “The brother is a burden to the Christian, precisely because he is a Christian. For the...(non-Christian who is not interested in life in community) the other person never becomes a burden at all... (because) he simply sidesteps every burden that others may impose upon him."

There is a cost to living in community. 

It requires vulnerability. 

It requires trust. 

 

But most of all it requires a willingness by everyone involved to get their hands dirty - a willingness to bear each others burdens.  Rachel and I have felt that being a part of a mission team - a community that lives, works and prays together - has brought us both some of the greatest blessings and some of the hardest challenges over the last decade or so.

I am thankful to be a part of a group that is willing to take out the buckets with me, willing to do the hard work of being a community - the hard work of truly being the church.

Grace and Peace,

Alan       

The danger of having parents

Orson Scott Card's book, Ender's Game, tells the story of Ender Wiggin: a child prodigy who is being groomed to lead an army. The book has some interesting things to say about the development of leaders and how to create resilient people (but that is a topic for another post).  At one point two teachers are discussing young Ender; how best to train him and whether it is okay to come to his rescue.

"He can never believe that anybody will ever help him out, ever. If he once thinks there is an easy way out, he's wrecked."

"You're right.  That would be terrible if he believed he had a friend."

"He can have friends.  Its parents he can't have."  

One of the challenges involved in cross-cultural missions is the danger of paternalism.  This happens when leadership and direction stays in the hands of missionaries or someone outside the local church context.  Instead of an outsider acting like a parent, the goal (that was articulated to me as a student) was for the new churches to be self-propagating, self-supporting, self-governing and self-theologizing.  While this was an easy concept to grasp in the classroom, it has been much harder to implement in the field.  The reasons for this are varied, but I wonder if it is mostly due to the cultural make-up of the Makua people.

A few years ago, one of our missionary colleagues, John Isiminger, interviewed a number of Mozambicans trying to get at the heart of the Makua-Metto culture by naming and describing its' key values.  The results... (drum-roll please...): the top value was 'dependency' and the runner-up was 'conformity'.

To American ears this is incredible - we value the exact opposite!  The Makua people we work among are not part of a warrior tribe like the Massai or the Makonde.  They are not dedicated to their religion like the Mwani or the Yão.  Instead, they value dependency and conformity!  And the embodiment of that value of dependency is the patrão or patron: An enviable Makua-Metto person is somebody who has a patron - one that they can 'depend' on to bail them out when life gets rough.   

Last week, after our meeting, the guys from the churches in the Chipembe area lamented the fact that few church leaders (besides myself) from the town of Montepuez come and visit them.  They  wondered what will happen when Rachel and I leave Mozambique - who will they look to for advice, help, counsel and instruction?  I responded by telling them that that is the reason that I continue to visit them -  teaching and equipping them now - so that they will grow in their abilities and be able to 'do it' on their own and that they won't have to look to the city for leadership/salvation.  I am trying to get them to see God as their patron.  I am trying to get them to lean on each other as friends when they need help.

Then, I brought up the example of Cahora Bassa - the huge hydro-electric dam that powers all of Mozambique.  We talked about how Cahora Bassa is not located in Mozambique's capital city.  It is not even  in the capital of its' own province. It is out in the 'bush' and yet it provides power to light up the whole country.

My dream is that these believers and their children will not look for a patron, or a parent, from the 'city' to lead them, but that they will take the lead in reaching their communities and partner with friends to be a light from the 'bush' will reach all the way into the cities as well.


The danger of having parents, the danger of paternalism, is in looking to others to provide the power that has already been given to us by God - the power to love, serve and bring light to the world.

Grace and Peace,

Alan