| Amie goes Africa For some reason God took me on an amazing adventure this summer and changed my life. I was on a missiontrip in Mozambique, Africa for 2 months. Now its not easy to write a short report about two months of seeing God work big time but i’ll try. We helped out and served an orgaisation called iris ministries (www.irismin.org). We stayed in one of the centers of iris ministries called Zimpeto. At Zimpeto live like more then 800 people, 500+ kids, mozambican staff, short and long term missionaires, and 100+ pastors who follow a bibleschoolprogram of 3 months. These pastors come from all over Mozambique and walk for days through sometimes flooded areas to go to the bibleschool, wanna learn something about commitment and obeying Gods voice..... learn from them! Iris ministries is led by an american couple. Heidi and Rolland Baker started it by taking in kids from the streets and dump. There used to be a civilwar going on in Mozambique til '93, and lot of those kids saw their parents get killed or abandon them. But today Irisministries give them a new home and life and teaches them about Jesus. More then 1200 kids have been taken in already and they continue to take new kids in daily. They also started a pastor school and out of that more then 1200 churches came. The last 2 years there have been floodings in mozambique and Rolland and Heidi and their team go into the flooded area's and refugee camps with food, medical care and the news of our Lord and Savior. They see many people give their lifes to Christ and get healed. God is taking care of the hunger of the Mozambique people in the natural way and spiritual way. Read the reports on their webpage to see the awesome supernatural miracles God is doing. Iris ministries has several outreaches to different places each week. Like church at the garbagedump ‘bocaria’, church in the street (with prostitutes, drunk guys, kids and guys who live in the street), camp 2000. This used to be the refugeecamp during the floodings in 2000. Now irisministries owns that area and has build a church there and now young ex prostitute girls life there, away from the city trying to start a new life. It is so amazing to have church in the garbagedump, in the midst of huge piles of smoking and smelly garbage, millions of flies and people who live on the dump. Babys are born and left behind on that dumb, iris ministries takes them in. A lot of the guys that life there have been in jail. There is a group of young guys thats kinda controls the dumb, like a gang called the boceria boys. They got saved and now they do the worship at the church there and help out with handing out of food etc. Its not that iris ministries goes there to do church for them, no the people there have church and irisministries goes to praise God with them and to help them grow in God with teaching and sharing. They really really love the people from the dump. It was so amazing to be there, God was there. We walked over the dumb, talked with people told stories about jesus to kids and saw them get saved by the bunches. The first time I went to bocaria was not easy. For me as a western girl seeing how people life there in poverty, filth, the triljons of flies, the smoke that hurted your eyes........ You could just feel the spiritual battle going on there. People who were sick, depressed, but so hungry for God. They wanted the food we brought, but much more they wanted to hear about God, get spiritual food.........so different then the people in the western world. I just saw God working there at the dump, Jesus was there! One of my favorite outreaches was the streetchurch. The youth from irisministries leads that, 16 and 17 yr old doing worship and preaching their hearts out, letting the Holy Spirit work through them. I felt like crying when I saw them so full of compassion for their own people and preaching their heart out to them. Sharing what God did for them how he helped them. It was so cool to hang out with the youth from the center and get to know them a bit better and what life is like for them. We also did several clinic outreaches when my parents where there, cause my dad is a doc. While he was doing doc stuff the rest of us team was praying for the sick. We prayed like whole afternoons, person after person. And each person is important for you. Its not like you are working down a line, no every person has a need, wants to get healed. We saw God work in amazing ways. God really gave me a love for the african people while we were doing that. One lady was a witchdocter and she got delivered. It was amazing, the bible sais ya become a new person once ya meet Christ, well we saw that happen in front of our eyes. God is good!!! We also did outreaches to other places in mozambique, into villages deeper into mozambique and at camp 2000. There we walked for hours into villages and when we met a large group of people we worshiped and preached and we saw hundreds saved in just 2 days! God is so awesome! At once outreach to a village called Zonguene we showed the Jesus film and had more then 1000 people comming and all got saved and cryed out to Jesus to come into their lives. Only thing you can do is cry out with them and thatnk God for working so powerfull. What you feel at that moment you just cant describe..... God also changed my life this summer. Mozambique is the poorest country in the world. But because the people dont have material things or money they are so open for God. Once they meet him their whole life changes. There is no person we met this summer who we told about Jesus that didnt wanna know him. No one said no, everyone accepted Christ! We gotta stop care about money and material stuff, we need God! I also spend hours just sitting with kids, holding them, loving them, hugging them, talking with them, playing with them. They where such a blessing to me. A bunch of them also knew some english. But i picked up some portuguese too so with help of hands and feet we were able to communicate. I really felt at home among them. God gave me so much love for them. When we were on outreach i could hardly wait to get back to ‘my kids’. The were just amazing. I experienced a lot with God this summer and i just hope I can hold on to that, that i wont loose what He showed me. That i wont forget what i’ve seen. That i wont forget all those kids, aidsbabys, pastors who are fighting for their lives and for the Kingdom. Please keep the people of mozambique in your prayers! Jeremiah 29:11 For i know the plans i have for you says the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. |
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