On Friday we went to the Boccaria in the city. The boccaria is the city’s dumpsite that people spend all day sorting through to find things that they can sell or keep. There’s also a small community at the bottom of the giant hills of trash where Iris Ministries has built a church. The plan when we arrived was half of us would go up to the top of the dump and the other half would walk around the community praying for people, and then we would meet at the church to have a small service.
The smell was so incredibly strong and there was smoke from the burning trash everywhere. Its one thing to see large piles of trash everywhere, and to smell years of rotting trash, but it really broke my heart once I saw people sorting through all of it. I decided to go with the group that went to the top to pray for people and invite them to the church service. About ten minutes after reaching the top, the people were getting upset that we were there. They said they didn’t want prayer and they didn’t want us there if we weren’t going to give them money or food. They started to make violent threats, so we decided to leave. We met the other group at the church and passed out food after the service.
This is one of the most difficult outreach I’ve done. We couldn’t give them money because that isn’t going to change their situation. We couldn’t bring food up there because it would start a riot. The whole thing is really hard to process and I really don’t know what else to say about it, but I’ll never forget that smell.
You can see more pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/cksoundgirl/bocaria
This weekend, I had an opportunity to stay out in the bush and see how people in Mozambique really live. We stayed at Pastor Pedro’s house with his wife and two girls. The whole thing was a bit awkward because Pedro was the only one who spoke English, but it was interesting nonetheless. We watched the England V. USA game and totally sung along to the national anthem out in the Mozambican bush!
That night Pedro’s daughter got really sick and at 2 a.m. him and his wife left to go the hospital. The next day it was just us four Americans and an 8 year old Mozambican who didn’t speak any English. A woman we had met the day before came by and helped us with breakfast and took us to church. Because Pedro wasn’t there, they asked us to start by leading worship. Thankfully my friend Michael has had a bit of experience in that, so he picked up the guitar. I think you all will be happy to know that I picked up the Jimbe and helped lead Mozambican worship! (Adam Chavez—you should be proud!)
Pastor Pedro and his family.
Ill post again next week! hopfully with a viedo this time!
