“On-the-other-side-of-nowhere”
2011 — The Year the Mwinika people hear the Word of God for the First Time
It is Saturday and as I woke up early morning, praying and thanking the Lord about the new day (in which His mercies are always new!), I wondered what the He will bring about today. Saturdays is our “surprise” day and anything can happen… On weekdays, we have our normal routine and although never exactly the same, for me it means mostly running our home here in the bush and home schooling our kids in the morning, starting at 7h00 am. Late morning I work on the Literacy material development and prepare for the literacy classes that afternoon together with our teacher-helper. In the afternoons it is the literacy classes. Late afternoon is reserved for visits to and from our Mwinika neighbours, checking homework and preparing the evening meal.
This Saturday I have to pay salaries to our workers and helpers, since Francois (who’s job this normally is) left yesterday for a 10 day survey trip to Zimbabwe. The Tawara people live across the border and Francois with 3 other guys went to investigate the possibilities of working and reaching this unreached people group from the Zim side. Will you pray with us for this venture? Pray that the Lord will lead the men to the right people and that they will be able to get a clear picture of the situation from all sides. Pray also for those that must decide if they must join this team or not.
Just after this task was done, MayeApete visits me! What a privilege it is to be visited by her! This little old lady is so close to my heart. She has faithfully been going to the teaching every day and when we talk about what she has learned, it seems that she is understanding and tracking well. She walks with difficulty, using a cane and is nearly doubled over. Still, she is very independent and has been walking to the pick-up point herself each day where Francois gives her a lift to the teaching in our neighbouring community. It is only since she developed a sore in her foot, that she allows her son to take her to the pick-up point with a bicycle. I treated the sore this week, and therefore was very surprised to see her walking all the way from her house to ours (nearly a kilometre away)!.
She heard that Francois will be gone the next week and was so worried that she will lose out on the Bible teaching, that she came to hear what can be done.
As the Lord has it, Phil and Elin (our partners) just received more solar MP3 players that we use to record the teaching as well as Scripture reading. This has proofed to be very popular, although we discourage people from using this to substitute the teaching. Rather, we want it to be used as a help where people can listen to the lessons again and again as well as to listen to any lessons that they may have missed. In rare instances we give it out to people who simply life to far away to come to the teaching each day.
MayeApete was therefore very happy to be loaned a recorder and immediately started listening to it! What a picture she made… (See photo). As the voice on the recorder talks, she adds her own comments and gestures, just as if the voice is a real person and can see her. She will be able to listen to the lessons she heard in the past and at the end of next week, we will add the week’s lessons so that she would miss nothing.
MayeApete turned out to visit for a few hours. I tended to her wound and I ended up helping her to wash her all over and put cream on her wrinkly, dry skin. She loved the “treatment”! As she listened to the recording, I brought my Bible in Afrikaans and showed her the Scripture portions in my mother tongue, while I followed the “voice” along. Again we could talk about the wonder of God’s Word finally reaching the Mwinika in their own language! Since they are very proud of their language, the Mwinika have received the Scripture translation very well. This is indeed one of the open doors the Lord has used to reach this up-to-now unreached people group!
By midmorning, MayeApete left. In between the visits, I was doing the normal mommy stuff and of course preparing lunch.
Then, I had another surprise visit! This time from a guy who is the head of the Department of Agriculture in our district capital (about an hour’s drive away). He came to introduce his wife who now also moved to the area and is teaching at a school about 10kms from us. They are both from a neighbouring people group and he said he brought his wife since she does not have family nearby and few people can visit with her in Portuguese. She wants us to be friends and we soon chatted away, talking about our teaching experiences in Mozambique. (I have been involved with teacher’s training in Mozambique before we joined NTM). They are both very interested in our Literacy program as well as the Mwinika orthography we (Mwinika team) developed. She says that she finds most of the kids she teaches does not understand Portuguese and she would like to learn the eMwinika language and how to read and write it, so that she can translate her lessons into eMwinika as well. They ended up deciding to visit again next Saturday so that we can exchange more ideas – especially a remedial program I have been using – as well as the eMwinika literacy.
Wow, what a great morning! Francois called twice. They just made it over the border into Zimbabwe by lunch time… God is good.
Thank the Lord for all the opportunities He brings over our lives each day to witness about Him and to share the living Christ in us with those around us. May you too find that those “interruptions” in your days are not nuisances, but opportunities that Lord has brought your way!