A week before Cyclone Idai turned into a category four storm and flooded the city of Beira, it hit the area of Mocuba. Relentless rain pounded down on the area, making it difficult for people to go anywhere.

So loud was the rain and wind one night that Amina’s children moved from the bedroom they shared to their mother’s room, where they all sat together unable to sleep. Amina remembered feeling fearful and helpless as there was nothing they could do but wait out the storm. That night the side of the house with the children’s room collapsed. The next day, when everyone was out of the house, the remaining room crumbled.

Larger items that had been in the home, such as a bed and chairs, were salvaged and stored at a friend’s house. Smaller items suffered water damage and were mostly beyond repair. “I feel bad that my children lost their school books and belongings,” said Amina.

The family stayed at a neighbour’s house for two days before moving to a government-designated camp for those living along the river whose homes had been destroyed by Cyclone Idai. The white tent the family was given was one of about two dozen such tents surrounding a large tree.

The camp itself is situated on the outskirts of town—far from the riverbanks where Amina’s house once stood. The distance has proven to be a challenge. Amina—who used to buy peanuts and then cook and sell them at the market—can no longer work as the place where she bought peanuts is located on the opposite side of town. Her children, aged 5 to 18, must walk two hours to get to school, except for her oldest daughter, who stayed in town. The daughter has been staying with a neighbour so that she can sell peanuts at the market in place of her mother after school. Any profit from the peanuts gets sent to her family.

Others from the camp have already moved back into their damaged homes by the river, citing the distance from town as their reason for returning. The stretch along the river is known for flooding, and residents have repeatedly been told to relocate, but life by the water is what they know and what they return to.

After meeting Amina at the camp, the OM team has continued to meet with her, hearing her story and looking at ways to help.

“One thing that really touched me when we were talking to Amina was that when she was talking to us, she didn’t talk about food,” said Mutita Kashimoto, Field Leader of OM in Mozambique. “She talked about the future of her children, especially their education—and that touched my heart.

The OM team enrolled Amina in Tabitha—a Freedom Challenge project that empowers widowed and vulnerable women by teaching them how to sew quality items in order to be self-sustainable. The classes start middle of April.

Lansipe learned about OM when its ship Doulos visited Papua New Guinea. She then attended the OM orientation by faith, confident that somehow the funds would come together for her to go to the mission field. She raised half of the funds she needed to cover flight costs and a few months of living expenses by selling small things such as fried dough balls, fresh produce and peanuts. The day before she was due to fly out, Lansipe received the rest of the needed funds from one-time donations. 

It didn’t happen overnight, but Lansipe continued telling her church about missions and urging them to get involved. 

When a few Christians decided to regularly support her, they planted a garden with the idea of the profits going towards missions. “They put the vegetables on a big tube and paddled down the river to the main highway to sell, so that was the money they sent to me,” said Lansipe. “It wasn’t easy; they really struggled. Sometimes they paddled down, and when they bumped a rock the tube turned over. It’s a big river, dirty, and all the produce would go down, and they would just cry, walk back home and start doing the garden again.”

Gradually others saw that they, too, could contribute to missions through what they knew or what they had. “I always told them it’s for our good. You will see the hand of God,” Lansipe said.

When Lansipe visited the village in 2015, the community was eager to show her the progress that had been made in the years she had been away. Roads and telephone network now connected the village to others, and students from the village were attending university. “They cried, the whole group cried, and they told me: ‘You know, because we supported you, this is what we see now in our village. Other villages called us ‘back pages’, but now we have highly trained people. We prayed, and we cried for missions, and we gave, and this is the blessings that we get, that God gave us in return.’” 

“Thank God for opening their minds to see as God sees. That’s why I’m back in Mozambique,” Lansipe smiled. “They are standing at my back.”

Slowly but surely individuals and churches are seeing the importance of missions and have begun sending missionaries of their own.

Mobilising the Mozambican church

Lansipe first arrived in South Africa in 2004 to do Missions Discipleship Training (MDT) before serving with OM in Angola for three years to literally help build the base up. In 2008, she returned to Papua New Guinea to continue mobilising the local church and working with OM in Papua New Guinea, which is when she learnt about OM in Mozambique and knew she needed to go there next.

Lansipe found many cultural similarities between Mozambique and Papua New Guinea — particularly the mindset that local Christians and churches should be receiving foreign missionaries instead of sending out their own and that they are too poor to give to missions, she said. Challenging these mindsets has become a passion of Lansipe’s as she urges students at Mozambique’s MDT — as well as local churches — that they need to step up and get involved in spreading the good news. 

“Coming from a background similar to theirs, it’s not the funds that comes from outside,” explained Lansipe. “It’s inside, it’s your own people.…There is a command from the Lord that you have to go; no matter if you are in a first world country, second world, third world.…And if God calls you [to go], that’s your calling, and He will provide. And you have to tell your own people back home. If they don’t believe you, you have to keep on talking and talking and talking until it gets stuck in their head.”

A local team member told Lansipe that missions had never been clarified to them and that is why it is hard to get the local church involved in missions. “I told [him]: ‘To you it’s difficult, but to God it’s not difficult, you can do it. It’s only giving more awareness to the church, that’s all.’”

“It’s not people from the city; it’s people right from the village [who can support missions],” said Lansipe. “…I always tell [Mozambicans] ‘I don’t want to hear this word ‘poor’. You are not poor. If you were poor, you wouldn’t wear these nice clothes. Why buying all these nice clothes? No, you have enough. Then this 15 Metical (0.25 USD), or 100 (1.67 USD), give it into missions, and you will see.’”

Lansipe smiled. “I want to see [the Mozambican church], for the first time, to raise support and send one [missionary], and they will see what God is going to do.”

James is from a predominately Muslim village in northern Mozambique where OM works sharing the gospel and reaching out to people—primarily through friendship evangelism.

“Whenever I want to know something, I want to know the foundation of it,” said James. “So when I [learnt] about Jesus [in 2003], I was anxious to know the meaning of these things. As a Muslim, I used to see Christianity as something that had no sense.”

Introduced to the Bible by a friend who had become a believer through an OM missionary, James first learnt Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (NIV). He pondered the verse for weeks while asking his friend questions about what it meant by 'sin' and 'eternal life.' In 2004, James made the decision to accept Christ as his personal Saviour saying, “it is better for me to give my life to Jesus.”

“Now that I’m with Jesus I feel happy,” said James. “I never thought to go back to the old life, doing what I was doing before.”

Challenging the culture

James’ family did not welcome his new faith. “In my family, I was the first person to accept Jesus. [My family] didn’t like that.” They called a family meeting telling James that as the only Christian in the family there would be no one to bury him if he died as they would not do it themselves. James told them, “‘If I die today, don’t worry about my body. …If you want, you can just leave me inside the house; I can rot. I am not worried about what will happen with my dead body.’” This greatly challenged his family as the ceremonies when a person dies are culturally very important. James’ unconcern for what would happen to his body when he died meant he was no longer bound to the rituals that are a big stronghold on the community. 

“By the grace of God, now they understand,” said James. “They are now willing to make a decision to follow Jesus because they see a change in my life. Before I was addicted to drinking and smoking. Whenever I used to drink I never respected my family. …But now, they always come to me, asking that I council them.” 

“God is working in this community. We had so many traditions,” James explained. “The first was concerning food. ‘This we eat, this we can’t eat.’ But after Christianity, [the village is] now discovering that eating any meat doesn’t put you in sin. Another change is concerning rituals. Before, there was a ritual for when a women is pregnant [with her first child]. But when they saw the Christians not doing the rituals for their first pregnancy, they stopped. Another ceremony was concerning death. After someone died, they would do a party on the 30th day, party on the seventh day, party on the fourth day—that law was a serious law that everybody should obey. Now it has reduced. Many people are saying, ‘Ah, doing ceremonies for the dead is nothing.’ This is the impact [we see of] Christianity started changing [this village].”

Family values

James married his wife in 2009, and they have one son and one daughter. For work, James did the same as most of the other men in the village: finding a job here, a job there. From the fields to the mines, James was often away from his family seeking work to sustain them. 

“When I came back [after being away for two months working], I stayed up until 21:00, and my son was not in the house. I asked my wife, ‘Where is the child?’ She said that this is his life when I am out. I felt deeply. I discovered that I was at fault. If I was around during those two months, my son would not be out from the house at night,” said James.

So James made a decision to no longer go seeking work, but to create sustainable work at home in order to spend more time with his family. The solution: vegetables.  

No one grows vegetables in the village. Located in a conservation area where “whenever you throw a seed on the ground an animal comes and eats it,” as James put it, gardens have not flourished. Those who plant rice and maize around the village spend 24/7—rain or shine—in the fields warding off the elephants, hippos, monkeys, buck and other animals who can decimate a crop in no time at all. James has planted his vegetables right outside of his house in order to better watch over them, which has so far proven to be effective.

As all the vegetables come from other towns and cities, James anticipates no problems selling his produce and believes that the garden will be a great conversation starter. “I will be selling to the community, and they will be anxious to know how I am managing to have crops inside of this village,” smiled James. “It will give me an opportunity to share about the Word of God with them.”

“I was walking too much [looking for work]. This project of doing a garden will help me to have time with my family.”

John is from a predominately Muslim village in northern Mozambique. There he works to share the gospel and reach out to people—primarily through friendship evangelism.  

Currently John is discipling a young Muslim man in the village. Both men were planning on building houses, so John decided they could make the mud bricks together. “I told him: ‘Let us make the blocks in my compound where the water is near—I have the hole. You will use my bucket, I will work with you.’ I told him, ‘We are going to make 5,000 blocks. After we burn the blocks, the broken blocks will be my own blocks. The complete ones will be for you to take to your house.'” 

Every day as they work—carrying water, mixing the mud, shaping the bricks and burning them—they do it together, providing an opportunity for John to share the gospel. “Our chapter is John,” said John. “Every day I share. He has many questions.”

“[To share] the gospel here is not the same way as [sharing] the gospel [in other areas of Mozambique]. The foundation of the gospel here is relationships, friendship. During that process of friendship is where trust comes. This is why it takes time for you to share the gospel and someone to receive Jesus. If you go and share and talk to [many people] about Jesus it is easier; talk to him, talk to him. But one day, you will see them all disappear. Because one of the listeners is a fisherman. Another is a hunter. Another one is looking for honey. Another one is a farmer. These four people, each one goes to his own work. If the fisherman goes to the river, you [need] to escort him to the river. [With] the gospel here, you just have to concentrate on [one person]. This is discipleship with quality. Any day that you release him, he will go, and he is going to make disciples.”

‘Zito, God loves you’

Zito, also an OM worker, was another one of John’s disciples. “When the gospel [came to this village], I did not understand anything,” said Zito. “Whenever I used to see a Christian, [it] was as if I was looking at a very fierce animal.”

After one of Zito’s close friends became a Christian, he was angry, thinking his friend was following nonsense. One day John asked Zito to go for a walk with him. Zito agreed, all the while thinking: “he is my enemy, a Christian.” While on the walk, John asked him a question: "If God came now and He asked you if you wanted everlasting life, what would your answer be?" Zito had no response, and tried avoiding John in the following days. In the small village, he was unsuccessful, and John soon found him to talk again.

“[John] said, ‘Zito, God loves you,’” Zito remembered. “I asked: ‘How can you say God loves me?’ He said: ‘God loves you, and He wants your life. The only way to go into the presence of God is Jesus Christ.’”

Zito continued on as he was, but John kept coming alongside him. “Whenever I said I was going to fish, he said: ‘Let’s go.’ I used to think why is this guy pressing me? So I decided I wanted to go to [church]; from there I started growing slowly, slowly.”

After one year of searching, Zito accepted Christ as his personal Saviour. 

“I am so happy that if I die, today I will be with God,” he said. 

John’s story

John’s mother was the daughter of the local king and imam of the area. His father came from a different area and was a Catholic until he converted to Islam in order to get married. John grew up as a Muslim and studied the Qur'an for three years with his brother, who is now the imam at the village’s mosque. 

It is common in the area to go to both the mosque and to witchdoctors, and John was no exception, though he commonly found answers elsewhere. “For me, fighting was a solution,” admitted John. “It was the base of my life.”

In 2008, a visiting Christian shared the gospel with John. 

“The verse that touched me was John 8:30-32. That verse saved my life,” John remembered. Though the Scripture deeply touched him, John continued going to the mosque and living his worldly life. Six months later John came to a breaking point after getting into a fight. 

“I started remembering what the man of God spoke with me. I had nothing, I had had to run, [I had] a need for God,” said John. “I received Jesus.”

John left his old life behind and changed dramatically. “Now I am free, I say thanks to Jesus,” John said. “Even the people ask, ‘Which kind of charm or juju (witchcraft) has this guy done?’ Because [who I was before] was so bad, very bad.”

It hasn’t been easy, though. “In our tribe there is no one that is a Christian,” said John. “I am just one person. Many people used to come to me and try to counsel me, saying this thing that I am doing, it has never happened in our family. Some other people used to come and offer money: ‘Do whatever you feel to do with it. Leave this Christianity, you are putting us to shame.’ I am separated. They are not looking at me as family. They talk to me, but there is no trust anymore."

“The same verse that saved my life [keeps me strong]," John said. “Jesus is the only way.”

“Even as he spoke, many believed in him. To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” – John 8:30-32 (NIV)

“All my stomach and liver fell out,” Antonio jokes about the seasickness. “I decided to go back [to land].” But the ship’s personnel department told him no, that the rough waters would pass. As they predicted, during a 10-day trip from Madagascar to India, smooth sailing eased Antonio’s mind for the rest of his time on the Doulos.

In 1997, Antonio’s time on the ship came to an end in Australia, but his work with OM was just beginning. Returning to his native homeland, Antonio began to collaborate with the OM field leader for outreach strategies in Mozambique. During the Mozambican Civil War, which lasted until 1992, OM had focused on outreach through aid—providing food and shelter for refugees. In the years after, then-OM Mozambique field leader Raymond Robyn shifted his focus to set up mission training in northern Mozambique. Antonio willingly shared Robyn’s vision for church planting—a vision that led Antonio and his team to the northern village of Mecula.

It took the team five days to travel to Mecula, due to a lack of roads.

“We had to take our bush knives to cut trees, to make a bridge so we could cross a river,” Antonio remembers. In the year 2000, when Antonio’s team traveled north, the village of Mecula had only one house structure. The rest of the village came into view as little more than clusters of mud-thatched huts. The village existed separate from the civilised world—though it was not without Islamic influences, as several imams resided in the area.

The OM team was offered shelter at a nearby military barracks, but Antonio asked government officials to move them, due to the threat of insurgent landmines. They were taken 10 km east to Musoma, a village on the Lugenda River. At a mosque built on the riverbank, the local Imam charged the other Muslim leaders in the area to care for the OMers; Antonio, his family, and the OM team were directed to a local nature reserve—a “place of many beautiful stones,” Antonio immediately saw, but carrying a dark secret: the OM team heard reports of demonic activity there, causing the locals to flee as the number of deaths in the community continued to rise.

The Imams asked Antonio and his team to pray over the area, to combat the evil they couldn’t overcome. The team complied, praying over the stones for God’s glory to be revealed there.

“From the year 2000 until today, no one has died there,” Antonio says. “The ladies can wash their clothes, the kids can swim, the fishermen can fish.” On the river by the beautiful stones, once a place of fear and darkness, OM Mozambique now shares the gospel of peace, as local Muslims have asked Antonio to show them the powerful God who could overcome demons.

“I cannot show you with your blind eyes,” Antonio told the locals. “You need to have spiritual eyes to see this God.”

To this day, Antonio’s church in Mecula is growing amidst the Muslims as they encounter Jesus with spiritual eyes.

Please pray for Antonio and his team as they try to determine ways to help the locals grow food. Currently, any attempts to grow crops are ruined by wild animals, and the villagers have no way of protecting their food from herds. Pray for resources to secure sustainable food production.

Submitting a proposal, they began looking for a location. After seeing a few possible buildings to rent, they were advised to build the library themselves instead of renting to ensure that the library could remain there for many years to come. 

The city gave the land to the team, and the plot is not far from the main road. In addition to the library, the property will also be home to “Tabitha”; a skills training programme that enables women to provide for themselves and their households through sewing and tailoring. The library building consists of two offices, two open rooms for people to read and study, as well as the cataloguing room that holds all the books. 

The vision for the library is to provide locals with the opportunity to read and educate themselves; to motivate children to read; to give churches access to Christian resources and material and to create opportunities to transform lives and the community through education. 

“The activity of reading is hard for (Mozambican people),” explained OM worker Arnaldo, head of the library project.  “(We want) people coming to read at the library and being helped in their interests, their school work and their ministries. Seeing people reading and getting something from the books; that is the project impact. People being transformed and their way of thinking transformed.”

Books, books and more books

A library isn’t a library without books. Therefore, the library team is currently accumulating books from stores across Mozambique; researching which will be most useful to students and pastors as well as finding the best prices. 

The idea is that the library will span a wide range of topics, as well as literacy levels, in both English and Portuguese. 

Portuguese is the official language of Mozambique and as such the team would like to have more Portuguese books in the library than English.

With the visit of the Logos Hope to Maputo in late February 2016, the library received a great number of Christian books to be added to the shelves.

Each visitor to the library will sign up and receive a membership card that will allow them access to the library. Those who prove reliable and trustworthy will be permitted to take books home, while those who are not known to the staff will only be permitted to read inside the library. 

What will make this library different?

“The way we will attend to our public, our readers, is that we will make them feel at home,” said Arnaldo. “We are training our librarians to attend to the people in a good way, with good manners. The people are coming to read the books; it will not be easy to go up to them and ask to talk about Jesus because they are busy reading. So we will not interrupt them. But the way that we attend and serve them will be God’s way.”

In addition to librarians serving with a Christ-like mindset, Christian booklets and pamphlets will be available on the tables and desks for people to read or take with them. 

The library will be opened after a few finishing touches on the building are complete and enough books have been purchased. Praise God for the provision of land for the library and good relationships with the local government. Pray that more quality books in Portuguese and English will be found and purchased so that the library can open and start reaching out to the community.

Pastor Jeong, who had previously spent 14 years working as a missionary in Angola, has been pastoring in Maputo for nearly a decade now. His Fridays include preaching to and praying over homeless boys from slum areas. The ministry usually draws a crowd of 30 to 40 boys from a wide range of ages, but only a dozen boys turned up that day - an effect of the rain.

The smaller crowd didn’t stop the ministry as planned; the group began by singing a hymn, simultaneously collecting an offering, which came to no more than a coin or two from each boy.

Crewmembers then encouraged the boys through their personal testimonies and prayers. Rafael Esau (Paraguay) shared his story of faith and the grace of God in his life, while Nicolas Knaub (France) told the boys that believers around the world together make the image of Christ.

Another crewmember, Dominic Notegen (Switzerland), experienced mixed emotions about the offering, wondering why Pastor Jeong would collect money from the homeless.

“Then I remembered the story where the poor woman gave all her money for the temple, and Jesus said to his disciples that she gave more than every rich man,” explained Dominic. “We should not take that privilege from them. God will pay it back to them a lot more than we can think.”

He didn’t always see it that way—especially in the beginning, when moving to Mecula meant great sacrifice for both his and his wife’s families, and when a pastor at the church he worked at advised him against it. He was told that if he and his wife went to minister to the Yao people, one of them would die to be a testimony.

With the support of his wife, Limardes responded to God’s call despite the threat that awaited them: in Mecula, the locals promised death for anyone who accepted Christ. Those who became Christians faced banishment with no food, but Limardes and his wife (now with a team including four other couples) planted themselves in the community nonetheless.

It was a miracle two years in the making that Limardes calls “The most important thing that I’ve received from God” during his time in Mecula. The testimony began when the local Imam—leader of the area mosque and dealer in witchcraft—became paralyzed. For two years he sought healing from Imams in surrounding areas, with no results; the man who had used witchcraft to “cure” many locals of their sicknesses could not be helped by others like him.

It took those two years of paralysis for the Imam to send his wife to Limardes.

“She said, ‘I want your help. You can give us another way that we can follow,’” Limardes remembers.

At first, though he visited the Imam, Limardes wouldn’t pray for him, because his house was filled with the instruments of his witchcraft. Instead, Limardes and three other followers of Christ went into Mecula and witnessed to the locals.

When he returned to the Imam’s house, Limardes told him he would only pray when all traces of the Imam’s incantations were removed from the house.

The Imam agreed, citing the ineffectiveness of his fellow Imams to heal him in the previous two years.

“The Imam said that he didn’t want to follow witchcraft anymore,” Limardes says. “They brought everything out and I praised the Lord because I saw the glory of God.”

With the house cleared out, Limardes prayed, and the Imam experienced healing—a healing that sent shockwaves throughout the village.

Though the OM team still faces persecution in Mecula—specifically when someone accepts Christ but their wife or husband does not—the growth in the church has meant increased outreach and witness in the community.

Limardes shares three prayer requests: for his family and his wife’s family, both of which have sacrificed much for their ministry; for God’s deliverance of the village of Mecula, with a population of around 5,000, many of whom still worship nature and animals; and for those in leadership positions with OM in Mecula, to have the wisdom to equip those who are coming to Christ and facing persecution because of it.

Unfortunately, Raquel is not alone in her plight. OM Mozambique’s Tabitha Project was created to assist women like Raquel—vulnerable, young, unmarried women and widows—who are often forced to either sell their bodies or marry against their will (sometimes as young as 12 in Musoma) for survival.

By equipping Christian women who minister in the Musoma village to become sewing instructors, OM Tabitha teaches young women and widows how to sew and make a living from their handiwork. For the elderly widows who are unable to sew, the Tabitha Project strives to sustain these ladies through some of the project’s earnings.

Not only do the women involved in the Tabitha Project receive a new skill, but they also are given a means to improve their situation and a greater measure of independence and security.

Tabitha’s first teacher

After her husband died, Lourdes sold enough cassava (manioc) to buy a sewing machine, thinking that it could be a means to her survival. However, Lourdes did not know how to use her new machine. Every night she prayed that someone would teach her how to sew.

As time passed, Lourdes worked on her sewing skills and was finally able to sew a straight line. After a lot of practice, she was able to sew and do embroidery work. Lourdes became the Tabitha Project’s first instructor. Lourdes’ story represents the heart of the Tabitha Project—empowering women to transform their own situations and communities.

New homes and new hope

Rosa is one of 22 widows OM Mozambique is assisting in Mocuba. After her husband died, Rosa worked on their farm, trying to pay for their five children’s schooling, but her efforts did not leave her with enough money to build them a new home after their old house caved in.

Belita’s family had settled in the Mocuba area due to her husband’s involvement with the military. When he died, she and her children could not return to their original part of the country and struggled to survive. With one of the walls of their home in shambles, Belita worried that the wall would fall in on herself or her kids and injure them.

Celina is a widow with three children. After her husband died, he left them his family’s land, but no house. Furthermore, his family kicked her and the children off of the land, saying it didn’t belong to her anymore.

In all three situations, one of OM Mozambique’s leaders, Antonio Da Gama, became aware of the widows’ plights and brought their needs before OM. Using some of the proceeds of the Tabitha Project, along with other funding, OM built the three widows and their families new homes, blessing them with hope and a fresh start.

Overcoming obstacles

“She just doesn’t have luck in getting married,” lamented an older church lady, referring to 26-year-old Otilia. This is a common mindset in Mozambique—the belief that women need to be married at a young age in order to succeed. Otilia has not allowed the sting of these comments to keep her from being a youth leader at her church and from pursuing an independent lifestyle while she works with OM Mozambique’s Tabitha Project.

Otilia is a member of a family with seven children. Her family makes and sells fritters (donuts) for one Metical each (less than three US cents each), as well as dried fish and small bottles of oil, in an attempt to make a living. They also farm peanuts, maize and beans to help feed the family, but these crops haven’t given them much profit.

After graduating from high school, Otilia tried to get into college to study health or education, as teaching is her dream; however, all her attempts have failed. Now her chances of being accepted to study are low, as universities typically accept those younger than age 25.

Thankfully, in 2011 and 2012, Otilia took OM Mozambique and the Tabitha Project up on their offer to teach her how to sew. In 2013, she started her own business making purses and clothes for women. Otilia still volunteers and trains at the Tabitha Project, while sewing from home at other times to keep her personal business going. 

She hasn’t yet been able to save much money with her sewing business, as she uses much of her proceeds to support her family’s daily needs. However, Otilia hopes to increase her profits in the future. She now realises that she can be self-employed and independent, embodying the vision of the Tabitha Project.

For more information about OM’s work in Mozambique, visit OM Africa’s website here.

*Name changed

Even though that’s not always the case, for many people such as Antonio Nipueda, living side to side with savage animals is still a daily reality. One day on his way from Mocuba to Mecula in Mozambique, he crashed into a lion with his Land Cruiser. Unharmed, he was able to continue his journey as this was just another hectic day in his life facing all sorts of human and natural challenges. 

Antonio single-handedly runs a discipleship school in Mocuba and ministries in Mecula. He has had helping hands here and there, but remains alone with his family to carry on with his good work. He took 30 disciples to Mecula to bring food and clothes to people in need, and to share some of the precious water from their well with neighbors whose well had totally dried up.  

Church donations of clothes, resources and volunteers have helped him so far and now he has started a project of building houses for people in need in Mecula. He and his team, with the help of three foreign workers, built two houses in six days! He strives for “education for transformation,” starting with the Discipleship School in Mocuba. 

The communities they reach out to are very poor, neglected and exposed to the elements and wildlife of the area; many of them have seen their crops trampled upon by elephants or eaten by baboons. The risk of being eaten by lions is very present for them on a daily basis, if they go even a little further than the most populated areas. 

Despite all of that, God uses Antonio where he is and beyond, as he prays and works. Recently while people where attending a funeral procession, they saw what his team was doing, building houses and giving out clothes and sharing their water with the thirsty. That touched them so much that at the end three people came to Antonio and committed their lives to follow Jesus.

On another occasion he met a lady called Sama in Nampula who had become totally paralysed because of the influences of darkness in that region through the “sangomas.”* She could not even speak.

He took her to his discipleship training in Mocuba for several months. There he and his team fed her and cared for her. When she went back home, more than 500 kilometers from where she was prayed for, she was suddenly completely healed! Now she can walk, she can wave her arms and sing praises to her Lord Jesus at the church she attends. She’s even got a good job working with her own hands.

Antonio wants to continue God’s work. To do this he needs more hands and a big truck, one with three to four tons capacity, to carry all the building material. This will help him continue building not only houses, but also God’s kingdom on earth through prayers and good works.

* traditional healer or witch-doctor.    

The ministry started with 13 goats, and Antonio hired Valdimar* to shepherd them. Valdimar’s job was to make sure that the goats went out to graze on the fields at 7:00 in the morning, return by noon, go out again at 14:00, and then finally return to the corral for the night at 17:00.

Initially, Valdimar did not do his job. He neither checked that the goats went out, nor that they came back safely. Nevertheless, the goats themselves went in and out at the right times for several days.

This puzzled Valdimar to the point of asking Antonio, “What kind of God do you serve? I really want to know your God! I want to worship your amazing God!”

Antonio led Valdimar to Jesus. Today he still takes care of the goats – diligently this time – that “shared the gospel” with him.

On 18 December 2013, Antonio baptised 18 new believers in Jesus, among them was Valdimar.

Praise God for Valdimar’s new life in Christ! Pray that God continues to move mightily in Mecula, drawing more, like Valdimar, to Himself.

* Name changed

Paul’s logic in Romans 10:14 is irrefutable, and Christians have been taking these principles seriously for centuries. Entire mission organisations have devoted themselves to translating the Bible into hundreds of languages in an attempt to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth.

But for many, having the Bible in a language they can understand isn’t the problem. Sometimes the issue lies not in the accessibility of Scripture, but in the readability. Millions of people today are without the knowledge of Christ because they have never learnt to read.

It’s sobering to think that this fundamental skill can be so out of reach for nearly 200 million people in Africa—sobering because of what Paul says: “And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard?”

Here Paul tells us the solution to the problems caused by illiteracy. What if having words on paper isn’t the only answer? What if the spoken word is just as powerful?

AudiBible is a product of Davar Partners International, and for 200 South African rand (about 20 US dollars), they can put a little solar-powered Bible into the hands of someone who might never otherwise hear the gospel.

The device is compact, just larger than a cell phone, and easy to use. The buttons to navigate through the Bible (and any other resources on the AudiBible) use symbols rather than words, eliminating language barriers.

Last year, OM Africa’s communications director and the Africa link to Davar, Herman Lamprecht, sought to get AudiBibles to most OM fields in southern Africa. He’s since seen tremendous response.

One OM missionary in Malawi reported, “With the audio Bibles, I have established what I call Audio Bible Listeners Groups. One of them is a family [of another faith], whilst the other is a family that does not attend church. Through listening to the stories on the audio Bible, they have been confronted with many practical issues regarding responsibilities of husbands and wives in relation to what the culture says versus what the Bible says. They are asking questions regarding the correct way on raising their children. Their friends have also become interested and want to have their own listening group.”

The AudioBible is a powerful tool, and Herman has set some big goals. “We want to distribute many more AudiBibles in the next year,” he said. “In Mozambique alone we have 86 congregations we want to supply with AudiBibles.”

While the whole Bible is not available in some languages, most languages have a New Testament. Some even have an audio version of the JESUS film. And that’s not all. Davar also provides the software needed to add content to the AudiBible device.

“We have the ability to add extra Bible teaching as well,” Herman explained. He hopes to include discipleship material in the languages spoken in Madagascar and Mozambique, a tool that will be valuable for training pastors and growing believers.

“In general, OM has always had a passion for literature...and the same goes for audio,” said Herman. “We know the Bible is the most important thing to get in people’s hands. I believe we will try to grow each year more and more to get these AudiBibles out.”

OM Africa exists to assist the missionaries and ministries in many African countries. For more information about getting involved in the AudiBible project or to sponsor an AudiBible, contact info.africa@om.org. 

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Used by permission.

During the process of becoming an official association the group registered itself as a church and its 86 branches as congregations. But the group doesn’t really understand what a church is. A local missionary once told them, “To be a church you need Jesus.” The leaders looked at him with puzzled expressions but decided to follow his advice. They sent one of their younger members to OM Mozambique’s Discipleship Training.

The young man completed the two-year programme and graduated in November 2012. One evening, before their graduation, OM Africa Coordinator Francois Vosloo preached to a number of people at the training base. Leaders from eight of these “congregations” attended as well. Hearing the message, they became excited and asked to be told more about Jesus and the Christian faith.

The region of Mozambique these men come from is infamous for witchcraft and people dying from strange circumstances or through extended illnesses; however, since, many of them have come to know Jesus and circumstances have changed radically.

Now the challenge remains to equip and disciple the leaders of the congregations so they in turn can disciple their church members. OM Mozambique desires to provide training in audio format, as well as much-needed Bibles to the new believers.   

Praise God for these new believers and fellowships. Please pray that OM Mozambique will be able to provide the discipleship needed for these pastors and congregations to grow spiritually.

English / Español

Manuel* visited his father in hospital. There he met Gilberto*, his father’s five-year-old roommate, who was gravely ill. Over the next days, Manuel prayed with them and both were allowed to leave the hospital. Manuel invited Gilberto’s parents to spend the night at his house because they lived some 400 kilometres (248 miles) away.

That night however, Gilberto suffered serious complications from his operation and died at Manuel’s house. Both parents were heartbroken—his mother cried bitterly and his father started smoking. Manuel gathered his faith and prayed to Jesus for the boy. And, to everyone’s amazement, Gilberto came back to life! The parents hugged Gilberto affectionately and, still awestruck, both recognized Jesus as their Lord and Saviour.

Praise God for miraculously healing Gilberto! Praise God for the new faith of Gilberto’s parents. Please pray that they will be encouraged in their faith by other believers.

*names changed

De Muerte a Vida

Manuel* visitó a su padre en el hospital. Allí conoció a Gilberto, el compañero de cuarto de  su padre, de 5 años de edad, quien estaba gravemente enfermo. Durante los siguientes días Manuel oró con ellos y ambos salieron del hospital. Manuel invitó a los padres de Gilberto a pasar la noche en su casa, pues ellos viven a 400 Kilómetros (248 millas) de distancia.

Esa noche, sin embargo, Gilberto sufrió serias complicaciones a causa de su operación y murió en casa de Manuel. Ambos padres tenían el corazón roto: su madre lloró amargamente y su padre empezó a fumar. Manuel hizo acopio de toda la fe que pudo y le oró a Jesús por el niño, y, para el asombro de todos, ¡Gilberto volvió a la vida!

Sus padres lo abrazaron afectuosamente y, aún absolutamente sorprendidos, reconocieron a Jesús como su Señor y Salvador.

¡Adoremos a Dios por la sanidad milagrosa de Gilberto! Alabemos a Dios por la nueva fe de los padres de Gilberto. Por favor orar para que ellos sigan siendo motivados en la fe por otros creyentes.  

* nombres cambiados

A group of students from the OM training base in Mozambique went to Namacurra, about 100 km from the base, to pray for people in need. While they prayed, a woman named Angelina appeared. Angelina was mute and also divorced from her husband. She first asked the team to pray for her so she could talk. The team prayed with Angelina and God heard their prayers—Angelina began to speak! Her first words were not noticeable, but later, as prayer intensified, she began to speak fluently using the language spoken locally.

Then she asked the team to pray for her husband to come back to her. They prayed again with her, and two days later Angelina's husband returned. God's answer to Angelina's requests touched many people and showed that the Lord is the one who deserves to be worshiped.

Praise God for these two answered prayers! Pray for many more like Angelina to be touched by God's love and grace. Pray that more people will come to the OM training programme to be discipled to reach many others in Mozambique for Christ.

O Poder Da Oraçao

Um grupo de estudantes da Base de Treino da OM, em Moçambique, foram a Namacurra, a cerca de 100 km da base. Eles foram para orar pelas pessoas em necessidade. Enquanto oravam, uma mulher chamada Angelina, apareceu. Angelina era muda e também divorciada do seu mammrido. Ela começou por pedir que orassem por ela para que pudesse falar. A equipa orou por Angelina e Deus ouviu as suas orações, pois ela começou a falar! As suas primeiras palavras eram imperceptíveis mas mais tarde, à medida que as orações se intensificavam, ela começou a falar fluentemente a lingua falada localmente.

Então ela pediu que a Equipa pudesse orar para que o seu marido voltasse para ela. Eles oraram outra vez e dois dias mais tarde o marido de Angelina voltou. A resposta de Deus aos pedidos de Angelina, tocaram muita gente e mostraram que Deus é Aquele que merece ser adorado.

Louvai a Deus por estas duas orações respondidas! Orem para que mais pessoas como Angelina, possam ser tocadas pelo amor e graça de Deus. Orem para que mais pessoas venham ao programa de treino da OM, de forma a serem ensinados a alcancarem outras pessoas em Moçambique para Cristo.