Nampula Conference

I'm sitting at the SIL center (a part of Wycliffe Bible Translators) in Nampula reflecting on the last several weeks here in Mozambique. As I look out the window, I can see children playing around the missionary school and it appears that our daily afternoon rain shower is headed this way. Things in this area are green and lush from this rainy season, a remarkable difference from the south of Mozambique where I can count the number of times it has rained in the last two years on my two hands. It is good to be able to simply rest a couple of days before heading back to Maputo.

We had a number of objectives on this, our second, church-planting conference. In this conference, all of our church planter-trainers assembled for a time of review, encouragement, challenge, and fellowship as we talked about the last year and looked to the coming year. As we started our conference, we began with an emphasis on the since of urgency – that one person dies in this world every second without Christ, that “today is the day of salvation”. We spent two days teaching the bible as one story, a method of teaching the Bible in a chronological manner that ties it all together through the use of pictures, stories, and even drama. These sessions were especially powerful and the questions alone were very revealing and allowed adjustment of our emphasis in future sessions.

We tackled difficult topics such as multiple wives, female ‘rites of passage’ in the north that are deeply disturbing, morality, marriage, and honesty. We reviewed our church planting manual and as the week progressed, we all sensed a shifting of the message as God tied all the sessions and speakers together with a message that this is “His work”. It is our job to tell the story, to share the Gospel, to offer the opportunities, to encourage new believers, but it is only God who can move the heart to the point of repentance; it is God who draws people to him. And with this, He needs people who have hearts clearly turned towards him – hearts that seek Him and His direction. We talked about who we are ‘positionally’ in Christ – we can add nothing to what was accomplished already on the cross - yet as leaders and church planters, we have a great responsibility to live holy lives before God, so that we might ‘save some’.

It was affirming, encouraging, and we saw hearts broken for God. A number of others at the SIL complex attended portions of the conference and have taken away our church planting materials, our chronological bible story telling materials, and our devotional materials to share in their churches. Just today, one man came to me asking for materials so he can go back to his home in I’m sitting in the conference room at the SIL complex Cabo Delgado – where there are no churches – and start a church and begin to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is awesome to see God work in this way and humbling to have even a small part in it. It truly is His work, a work that begins inside us, that fills us, and that then overflows to the world around us. It is nothing we can do ourselves that is certain.
Our conference days began with a simple breakfast at 0700 of fresh bread and jam and ended about 9 pm each evening after a worship service. We worked hard to cover all the material, trying to show different teaching techniques through incorporation of class exercises, group activities, discussions, lectures, and the like. At the end of the week, their work was taped on all the walls and we spent the last session reviewing all that we had covered and it was substantial. Juka and Xavier did most of the teaching, but everyone had a part.

In the one picture, we show Nelson, Dinis, and Paito with their "Pastor-licenses" which we renewed at the conference.

After the conference, many came to me and said that the highlight of the week was a teaching that Ann did on comparing the “young apostle John” with the “old apostle John”, using this teaching to show how living the Christian life is a process. That God will take you ‘where you are’ and over your lifetime mold you into who He meant for you to be. This was a very encouraging message.

She also spoke on who we are positionally in Christ, that the Bible even uses the term that we are ‘friends’ of God and ‘beloved’ of God. This is incredibly powerful and wonderful news and marks us ask the question, “why is it so hard for us to live that way!”

In my Western way, I divided the class into three teams for two sessions of “games” outside as a part of team building and just a diversion in the middle of the week. I had devised four “stations” with unique games, including horseshoes, using a golf club to hit a plastic ball over a net, an a game using balls, ending with an exercise to go over a rope as a team. The objective was to start people on each station – rotate people through, and then do the scores at the end of the week. Bad idea! We started the first game of horseshoes, and it was such a hit, that I couldn’t get anyone to move to the next station. After much trying, Juka came to me and said that the entire group wanted to stay together - they already were a team! So that is what we did. The Mozambicans love to be together and work and play together – and we had great fun with this new game. As the weak progressed, more than one American was humbled by a Mozambican lady with a baby on their back, tossing horseshoes and absolutely annihilating the Americans who have played horseshoes all their lives. We gave up on the scoring, but we did get through the stations!

We have spoken a lot of Portuguese this trip – I wish so much I could speak better, but we did ok. I was translating to English for the team, and then preached one day five times in Portuguese (with subsequent translation to Makua or Lomwe) and we made it through. My vocabulary is not as great as I wished, but then again, the gospel is not tricky or complex, the story is not tricky or complex. Sometimes I think it is just the pride of men that tries to complicate the stories in the bible or layer over “this is what it really means”. It is simple, God demands a penalty for sin and that penalty involves death. It starts in Genesis as God teaches a people this. But, he also shows us that we are incapable of approaching Him because of our sin – but He had a plan all along because He loves us so much. So, he sends a son, Jesus, the “God-man” who is wholly God and wholly man, with the expressed purpose of offering the final sacrifice for our sins; past, present, and future. And sinful man, to return to his intended place of fellowship with the Creator who loves him, need only accept this sacrifice, by faith, and God will accept him, and guide him, and be with him. What an awesome story, a story that millions of people can say without doubt is true, because ‘it happened to me’. And we saw it in the faces of many hundreds of Mozambicans in the last few days. Thank you Lord.

We are exhausted beyond measure, but it a good kind of tired. We’ll rest here and look forward to the ride back with Juka and Elina as we discuss the conference and share the stories, and as Elina pounds the back of my head when I mispronounce a word she has already taught me more than once! They have been such a blessing to us and it has been a privilege to watch them lead this work, this conference, and to just stand with them as this wonderful group of Mozambicans works to reach their nation for Christ.

Thank you for standing with us and being a part of God’s work here in Mozambique.

Dave & Ann