Prayer letter and home assignment dates

Great news, our first prayer letter of the new year is now available online! You can find it by clicking here.

Also, we'll be on home assignment in the UK and available to request as BMS Speakers from 6 June to 2 August 2013. Churches wishing to request us as BMS Speakers should use the online speaker request form at www.bmsworldmission.org/speakers or call the Church Relations Team on 01235 517600.

Please submit your request before the 18 March 2013.

Mozambique Floods

Today's blog post was written by our colleague Fiona Welsh and was posted on the BMS website earlier this week. The original BMS post can be found here. Since the post was written, the death toll from flooding in the lower Limpopo river now stands at 80 (according to Reuters news agency).

(Photo credit: Phil Hay/UN/Word Bank)

Intense flooding in Mozambique has displaced at least 150,000 people and killed 40 so far, the United Nations said on Monday, with the figure expected to rise further as fresh rains spread flooding northward.

BMS worker Fiona Welsh asks for prayer:

I'd like to ask you to pray for people affected by the recent floods in Mozambique. The rains are due to continue until the end of March so the situation could still get worse:

The flooding from the Limpopo river, which began on Wednesday, killed around 40 people and forced more than 100,000 others to flee.

Amid the catastrophe, two babies were born on roofs where their mothers had taken refuge in the southern village of Guija.

(Photo credit: Anna Wallenlind/IRIN)

The mud-filled hospital in Guija is empty, with all the furniture and equipment drying outside, while a nurse distributes painkillers to the sick and ensures the injured are airlifted to hospitals outside the area.

Local medical staff have already treated around 70 cases of diarrhoea and are keeping an eye out for cholera and other waterborne diseases. Apart from air transport, which is reserved for urgent cases, the only way to access the community of roughly 7,000 residents is by boat.

Local officials estimate that Guija will remain isolated for at least three months, the time it will take to rebuild the roads and bridges swept away by the Limpopo waters.

(Photo credit: Leonor Fernandez/WFP)

Four bodies were found in Chokwe, whose flood-ravaged streets were also littered with rotting animal carcasses.

A Baptist pastor contacted us on Monday to say that they have had 2.5 metres of rain in a few days in Chokwe.

Please pray for the local churches as they attempt to help their local communities at this terrible time.

Thanks

Fiona

Christmas Card

Tuning into the sounds of Mozambique

This is just to say that we recently had an article published on the BMS World Mission website that tries to describe some of the drama of modern-day Mozambique. You can read it by clicking here or going to www.bmsworldmission.org and looking in the list of recent articles. Enjoy!

Tradition and responsibility: Life after death in Mozambique.

A few months ago, Mario’s (not his real name) father died. Although he was an old man for Mozambique (life expectancy is 42¹), the stroke was quite sudden. He was brought from his village to stay near the city not far from our house to be with his extended family, most of whom have migrated to Beira for work. In Beira he was also able to see a nurse² but he never recovered and died about a week later.

The funeral took place on a Tuesday. A short service was held in a catholic church and he was buried in the cemetery. Back in the UK, we tend think about funerals as marking an end of a life, but in traditional Mozambican culture, the funeral is just the beginning of a series of ceremonies intended to help the safe passage of spirit of the deceased into the realm of the ancestors. The village shamans and healers play an important part in this. For example if the ceremonies are not done well enough, the spirit can turn malevolent, wreaking havoc on the family health, crops and livelihoods.

During one ceremony, the spirit chooses a family member to inhabit, joining the ancestors that live on after death in the living. Although not the eldest son, Mario was chosen to receive the spirit of his father, he said, because his father loved him the most. And with this honour came all the responsibilities due the new head of the family; no small deal for a young guy still studying.

We first noticed a change in Mario quite soon after his father’s death. He was less cheerful, less talkative and more sullen. We knew that he’d started turning up late for work but we put this all down to stress, mourning or the weight of extra responsibility.

Then one day he nearly got fired. He’d turned up for work drunk and unable to do his job. In desperation he spoke to us about his problem. Everyone knew that in life his father had liked a beer on a Friday evening, but he told us that in death the spirit of his father was making him drink away every last metical of his small salary. He knew he was in trouble but how could he reject the spirit of his father?

Whatever you believe about this kind of thing, in Mozambique the physical and the spiritual are believed to be intractably interwoven in the fabric of everyday life. Every action taken in this world is watched, judged and acted on by those that inhabit the spiritual realm. The only way to overcome a problem in this world is to also overcome the spirits who are causing it in the other.

Whether you believe Mario’s experience is a genuine one, or just put it all down to psychology, he needs to find a way of getting out of this mess whilst feeling that he is honouring his father. But in this culture passages like 1 John 4 really come into their own.

Test the spirits, writes John. If they’re from God then they’ll acknowledge Jesus, if not they’re false and therefore liers. He tells his readers that because God is in them they can overcome the lying spirits and in a twist of logic he says now that they are from God and the spirits are from the world.

We believe that through Jesus, there is a way out that both saves Mario’s job and livelihood and honours the memory of his father. Please pray for him as he begins to study his bible and discover this wonderful truth.


¹According to the United Nations, Mozambique has the second lowest life expectancy in the world:
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpp2006/WPP2006_Highlights_rev.pdf

²Access to rural healthcare is very poor. There is roughly 1 nurse per 5000 people and the vast majority are based in cities and towns:
http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/WorldStats/HNP-nurses.html#map

'Normal'

 

As I was driving down the dual carriageway on my way into town the other week, I carefully avoided the motorbike driving at speed the wrong way and very much on the wrong side of the road. A few minutes later what surprised me was my lack of surprise. I realised how I had barely thought about the situation, let alone been shocked by the disregard for road safety laws. It got me thinking about all the things that have become ‘normal’ for us over the last few years. Here are just a few:

1. Pot holes in roads big enough to swallow a car.

2. Never ending sunshine... So much so that we often long for rain.

3. The sight of small children wandering unaccompanied along busy roads.

4. Watching an incredible amount of development, at a scary rate. For example when we arrived, Beira had one supermarket. It now has four with two of them opening up just the month gone buy.

5. Having people asking for money when you get out the car in certain zones in town.

6. Seeing all types of vehicles, from bikes to large lorries, overloaded with all sorts of items, people, animals and machinery.

7. Seeing the countryside alight as people set fire to the old season’s crop in preparation for the new.

8. Some ‘special’ clothing choices. My favourite being a man who was selling rugs at a local market dressed only in a dressing gown.

9. Neighbourhood monkeys, some wild, some kept as pets.

10. People offering to work for me as a nanny when I take the children with me shopping.

New prayer letter

Our most recent prayer/news letter can now be found online on the BMS World Mission website. Click here to find it if you haven't read it yet! In this letter, Christine has tried to tell the story of the car accident in some detail, sharing how God has been at work through it all.