Week 2

Another eventful week. Life here is extremely full. In the best sense of the word. I thought I might write a little about what the days are like. I am also thinking I ought to write a few times a week because I might keep a better record of what is happening in both daily life and in my spirit. I can hardly remember everything I mean to write about. Last week was so eventful and so meaningful. We are becoming a community. Every day you find another treasure. There are just so many amazing people here. My first week I was a bit overwhelmed at the sheer volume of new information to process. 250 people in the school to meet from all over the world and innumerable children who live here…all who speak two different languages. I was very motivated to learn portugese but I have slowed down a bit. The village kids know Maqua. Its their heart language. This week I went into the village for the first time. The contrast between what I spoke about last blog and the village is phenominal. So much poverty. So so much poverty. So much need. The conditions boggle my mind. I should have been prepared but I don’t think you can be prepared. At least I wasn’t. Yesterday we went with a group of people to roof a house. I got to play with the kids. It’s amazing to me how the language barrier is almost nonexistent when communicating to children. (Well that is if you are not afraid of looking extremely foolish and being gaucked and laughed at by the adults) There is nothing I would need to say that cannot be explained with hand motions and quite a bit of enthusiasm. Well that’s not entirely true but God gave me one little boy who knew both Maqua and Portugese. The village kids do not even speak Portugese until they are about 10. Saide found me and with my little bit of Portugese and hand motions I would explain a game to him and he would translate. Saide is the most beautiful boy with light brown eyes (very rare around here). He’s about 10 I think and has a very sweet spirit and is spunky and competitive as well. The child is winning my heart. We started off with duck duck goose and graduated to more exciting games. I have yet to bring my camera. I just have not been able to bring it to take pictures. It feels disrespectful at this time. As if the reason I would take them would be to convey the intensity of the poverty.Its also very easy to start a riot around here with the kids and since I cannot communicate yet I do not want to have anyone get hurt. Going into the village was very eye opening and it became very easy to see why people around here spend so much time on their face before God. The need is just too much. Speaker after speaker tells us the secret to what is going on here…its just waiting on and yielding to the Holy Spirit. No really. That’s it. We worship for hours here. Hours. Heidi and Rolland say nothing new only they live out what we all believe. We wait for the Holy Spirit. Heidi says “Go low and slow”. We wait on God. We worship Him. We listen and we obey. The need is tremendous but the fruit is speaking for itself. Yet no matter how much God does…we still need Him more. The need is just too much. If I leave here with anything I am hoping to walk away with an impartation of complete dependence on the Holy Spirit. In the last few months I have had a couple of request just burning inside of me and the first one is just Him. More of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said it would be better for him to leave the earth than to stay because if He left then He would send the Holy Spirit. And yet the funny thing is is that even though I came here desiring Him…when I got here I was offended by Him. He does strange things sometimes. He touches people in ways that I have never experienced and He makes people look extremely foolish. Its true. I don’t understand it. I don’t know how to explain it. He just does. Extreme joy and extreme peace and I wasn’t quite ready for the extent of it. Jesus offended people. Especially religious people. Why does it surprise me that the Holy Spirit would be any different? Well I had to face this this week. The process wasn’t easy but the breakthrough was worth it. I think God is a genius to get 250 of us all from different backgrounds to Africa and then completely offend half of us. Lol. So funny if you think about it. If we were in the states we could just leave the meeting but here there is no where to go. So we are forced to learn to understand one another. Rather than camping out on opposite sides talking about how weird or how wrong the “other” Christians are…we are living with them…we signed up for it and ultimately we all know God drew us here and well our ticket to go home is not for another two or three months so we learn to dwell together with understanding. I was pretty surprised at my reaction to be honest. Once again I thought I was ready for this. And once again I was wrong. I found myself fighting a battle in my mind and it was one of two extremes. Either judgment or jealousy. Both equally in error. The judgement was more along the lines of…someone should be controlling this…this is crazy. And the jealousy was questioning my own relationship with God because I don't experience anything like what I'm seeing…I don’t experience Him like that at all. Well anyways this went on for a bit and I found the answer. The answer was not to talk with someone else who felt the same way as me. NO that would have been too easy. I went straight for the crazy people. Call me crazy but the fruit of this ministry speaks for itself and I didn’t come here to stay safe and comfortable. I came to be changed and I came to receive what they have here. If blind eyes opening and deaf ears hearing and dead people rising is not your thing than you know feel free to stay right where you are…but I want to see the Bible come to life in the US as it is here. So after about two days of battleing confusion in my mind I went to the craziest woman I could find and I asked her to pray for me. I wasn’t looking for anything expect to be free of confusion. It was so great. I didn’t flip or flop or laugh hysterically. I only felt peace and I felt released to be who I was. Pure and simple. Then it was amazing. The woman who was with me got up and gave a word of release and freedom for everyone and all the others who were battleing the same battle I was getting free and tears started streaming down my face. When I feel God’s presence I cry. It’s what I do. I’m not sure if I’ll ever do anything else but that’s okay with me. All I want is Him. So then the most amazing peace came upon all of us. It was so powerful and it was as if God was uniting all the denominations. No once screamed or laughed or fell to the ground. We just rested in the presence of the Holy Spirit. It was so sweet. There are no words to describe it. It was as if the Holy Spirit was slowing down for those of us who were just weirded out and bring us into unity as a school. Later on in the day four of us ended up talking for a couple hours and it was just so cool. Two of us don’t particularly react when we feel Gods presence and the other two definitely do. Haha. It was so good to talk and share and hear each others stories and perspectives without passing judgement and for me to see the “weirdos” are quite normal in real life. They have stories and they don’t necessary like what they do…well they do…but it is humiliating. Someone told me that when the Holy Spirit comes He humbles all of us. We are humbled if we shake because well it is quite humiliating to flop around on the floor and we are humbled if we don’t feel a thing. Those who are left standing can be tempted to believe the lie that God doesn’t speak to them or they are not as spiritual. Not true. The important thing is not what happens but where our focus is. Does it promote love? Does allowing the Holy Spirit to do what He wants promote love? Does controlling Him or putting a cap on what He is allowed to do promote love? Does giving Him a place where He has complete freedom promote love? Does communicating with those who believe or experience differently than us promote love? Does the body of Christ coming together in unity promote love? It is not love if those who do something special when God touches them judge those who don’t and it is not love if those who do not feel anything judge those who do. Love one another. That is the command Jesus gave us. And especially love the community of believers. Jesus said it. “They will know you are Christains by the way you love one another”. Sometimes love just looks like communication and understanding. This was an unexpected breakthrough for me. And like normal, I did not even realize I needed it. But I’m so thankful. So if I could say what it feels like God did this week is that He united us. No matter where we came from and no matter what our former experiences we are all here because we want to learn to love and we realize that there is more to learn. Heidi has been saying this phrase many times since we got here. She says, “love the One who is the One and then love the one in front of you”. Love God first and love Him most and love whoever is in front of you. Could it really be that simple? And could it be that the reason I have not experienced so much fruit of the Spirit in my life is that I have not REALLY been doing that. Hmmm…but I’m learning. I’m learning to go lower still and as slow as He wants. And I am learning how to love. God teach us to love You and love each other. Teach us to abide in you and to never quench You Holy Spirit. You have a great plan and we just want to learn to give You Your rightful place while we have the chance on the earth to voluntarily exalt You. You will be exalted. Be exalted in our hearts now. Be exalted in our lives. Be exalted in the way that we love you and in the way that we love each other. Show us what love looks like. And offend us if you must if only we can have You.

Hola! de Mosambique!!!

Hola! I am here safe and sound and loving EVERY moment. It kind of feels like I'm living in a dream and so far I have had little to no time to process so please forgive me if this first blog is not life shattering ;)lol. I know my life is being shattered right now...but I'm not even sure how to communicate clearly what it is like here.

Hmmmm....what is it like to be on a compound with 300 other people from all over the world who share the same heart's cry for more of God. I'll let you try to imagine. Crazy is probably an understatement. To be honest sometimes I feel extremely mellow in this place if that tells you anything. I am a small fish in a big pond. In some ways. In others I feel like this is the most natural place on earth for me to be.

I am already in love with the Mozambiquean people. The way they worship and cry out to God is unreal. Church on Sunday was three hours translated into three different languages. Tears streamed down my face as I opened my eyes during worship and saw little kids genuinely basking in the presence of God. I have never seen anything like it. Eyes closed, hands raised, some kneeling, some lying face down. Not because they were told to. Just because they love Him. It is powerful. When the men sing I feel like I'm in the closest thing to heaven on earth that there is. The worship goes on for hours and the dancing!!! The dancing is sooooo fun!!! I know one thing for sure. I am coming back freed up in the dancing arena! We dance all the time. All the time. There is so much joy here. So much joy. The sound system is awful, the floor concrete and the walls open but the Spirit of God is here and love is the reigning order. Really. I'm not exaggerating. I wish everyone could come.

I'm trying to process, trying to put my thought in a way that can communicate clearly but I'm not sure I know how. Words that come to mind are, SIMPLICITY, OVERWHELMED and MORE.

SIMPLICITY: because everything is so simple here. Simply the gospel. Simply Jesus died to save sinners. Simple belief. Simply dependent on the Holy Spirit. Simply worship. Simply laying down our lives. Simply obeying. Simply loving Him and letting Him do the work.

OVERWHELMED: because I've never seen or experienced anything like this. Love in action so purely. Motives so pure. So much of the Holy Spirit I can hardly stand it. So much joy and peace. So much kindness. So much faith. So much faith. Rubbing elbows with men who have raised the dead and not a shred of pride. So strange that the miracles are not the main thing. Love is. Miracles are commonplace. I was talking with an eighteen year old young man the first day. I was asking him questions about how he met Jesus, why he is at iris ect. He had been a Muslim before He met Jesus. He tells me as if it is the most natural thing in the world that God heals the blind and the deaf and broken bones. He is not extremely excited. It's just how it is. He laughs at me when I tell Him I have never seen anything like this and that some people in my country do not even believe in God. He just said: you just have to believe. It is normal here. That overwhelms me (and excites me). Also learning two languages is overwhelming but its getting easier. I'm determined to learn both as much as I can. Its so fun. At meal times I hardly ever finsh all my food because I'm in a conversation (can you call it that lol) with a mosambiquan boy or pastor and we are using our limited language skills and laughing our heads off at and with each other. Ah, the living arrangements are basic, they are nice actually. The vegetation is beautiful and there are bamboo fences everywhere. Very exotic and so beautiful. (I'll take pictures in a month or so and post them--I've committed to not taking pictures until I really know the people) The plumbing situation is tenative but it doesn't bother me...it's fine. The living quarters are tight but completely doable. I think the only thing that might actually be difficult for me here is not having alone time to pray and read my Bible. But I found a friend and we go in the morning to the beach and sit in seperate places and have alone time (which always ends in a conversation with a village boy and me learning more portugese and maqua--looking completely ridiculous and not minding it a bit).

I thought of the word MORE because so far this week has been far more than I expected. I really can't put it into words. This morning I watched the Iris children coming down the hill from their rooms led by their Mosambiquan papas. They were in their lines and they were all singing (at the top of their lungs) and smiling and once again I was just stunned at the beauty in front of me. 160 of them marching along and singing about the love of God. These are kids who had nothing...literally nothing... and now they have been adopted into the family of God. Now they have more than many American children. They have love, joy, peace, purpose and a family. Look at how the Lord is so good!!!

Heidi and Roland time has been invaluable. They teach our classes in the morning (that is if we can ever stop worshiping) I am truly humbled to be sitting under their teaching and their leadership. Heidi's stories are so funny and so amazing. I can't go into it all right now because my time at the internet cafe is running out but I am just so honored that they have invited us to be a part of all this. Google her name and buy her books if you want to know some of the stories. I will write more later. It looks as though I'm going to be able to easily write once a week...so until next time...press into Jesus. Know Him and tell the Holy Spirit He is welcome to do whatever He wants in you. There is no fruit apart from Him. None. In the end what we did in faith is all that really matters. Love you all!