Mission accomplished! Praise the Lord!
Came back 2 Fridays ago.. with a nice tan 
Wrote a loooooonnnngggggg letter to my dad about Mozambique. I think it’s as detailed as it gets. Warning: It’s VERY long. I won’t feel hurt if you skim through it, or just not read it. Bottomline: IT WAS AN AWESOME TRIP 
:D
I dont even know where to start about mozambique! The trip’s just been filled with testimonies..
We brought 5 suitcases full of donations to mozambique. it was amazing how the churches and hospital colleagues donated so much to us to bring. And we didnt even do any special campaigns or appeals for stuff. We just gave simple announcements, sent an email or 2, and God really surprised us with so much generosity! We couldnt even bring evrything that was donated (clothes, books, toys etc) and had to leave some behind. And we were very overweight… but miraculously, we managed to get through the airport officials without being charged extra.. we prayed really hard tho! God is good!
We (myself, Ben, Josh, Winnie, Will) flew into south africa on fri the 14th and stayed there with Ben’s friend. It was amazing timing coz Ben has not met his friend in 5 years, and his friend just happened to move into Johannesburg from durban. So he picked us up and we enjoyed a mini holiday in Joburg for 2 days before flying off to Mozambique.
South Africa is so rich and modern (or what we saw anyway). Big houses, swimming pools, big malls etc. But there’re also black ppl hanging around the roads begging, waiting to do odd jobs. And there are also dangerous shanty towns with rats running everywhere. Very strange country..
We didnt have any specific agenda in Mozambique (though we were a ‘medical’ team). Our vision was mostly to come in response to a vision that Heidi had about medical teams coming in to help them in the future, and to see the kingdom of God at work there.
Background about where we visited - we went to the Iris base in Pemba. It’s by the sea… very hot.. 40 degrees, lots of sand (something like vellore, dad - but i think africans are much cleaner and tidier people!). there had 200 orphans (including an albino african!), and had sewing schools, gardens patches for the widows. They also had a school on the site. But it was holiday time when we went. The base was started about 4 years ago.
When we first arrived we were so excited about what ‘medical’ stuff we can do to help. We planned (along with the nurses) to do health checks on all the kids at the base. The doctors werent around as they were out on a mission outreach. We started the checks on tues morn. We’ve just started when the doctors came back. Dr Angela Walker was kinda like the woman in charge there. She;s a consultant paediatrician from England and has been out there since July.
She wanted us to stop what we were doing. At first we were surprised and it felt a bit like confusion in the camp coz the nurses wanted us to do it in the first place. You know, i think there is a big battle there and the devil tries at every opportunity to throw spanners in the works between people. But we prayed for wisdom and guidance in the situation, and for God to show us what He wanted us to do.
Dr Walker is an amazing woman. She explained from the start that the work there is about Kingdom Medicine… building God’s kingdom, and that it’s spiritual as much as physical medicine. And i came to realise that she wanted us to understand this before doing anything ‘medical’. Coz we were doing what we initially started to do based on our own understanding of medicine, which was from the west. But she kept emphasising that GOD heals, and that in a consultation, we have to ask people about whether they have visited a witch doctor, or have anger, unforgiveness or anything against anyone, and whether they have Jesus in their heart. Coz a lot of illnesses, she said, especially cancer, psychiatric, inflammatory (eg Rheumatoid arthritis), and chronic pain have spiritual roots.. and we have to adress that as much as the physical symptoms. She said she had to die to herself and all that she had learnt and allow God to teach her medicine again. Coz she said her qualifications were just a tool to get into Mozambique, but in terms of practicing medicine, God was teaching her everyday.
So every consultation has all these questions and then we’ll pray with the person, asking for forgiveness and repentance if there are any areas that need be, and also breaking curses and bondages upon their lives. Which could be from the witch doctor, or generational, or things they or others have said about them. And then if they’ll have to acccept Jesus into their lives (otherwise she wont pray for their healing coz if they dont have Jesus in their lives, more evil spirits will come in etc - you know the story).
It was pretty cool hearing and seeing all this. We had a spontaneous worship prayer session one evening and God just spoke to me about how He’s planned everything out in my life.. growing up learning about the deliverance ministry, doing medicine… it all seems to fit in. And i realise (Dr Walker said as well) that being a doctor also includes being a pastor, and evangelist coz spiritual health is just as important. I mean what I’m learning now is not totally un-useful.. she still gives out antibiotics, and dresses wounds etc. but ultimately God heals. There was a girl with a bad joint infection who would have been hospitalised in england.. but no such thing in mozambique. She need IV antibiotics, but the Dr Walker could only give her oral antibiotics. But they both prayed and prayed and after a week, the knee was well, and now she has a perfectly normal knee joint with no complications. Praise the Lord!
And there are other testimonies about the blind being healed, lame walking… i was there over christmas, so there wasnt any outreach to go on.. so didnt see as much as we heard. Well.. maybe will go visit again!
At christmas they gave out lots of presents to the kids. Then we helped with crowd control coz they cooked for the community and fed about 2000 people and gave them all presents. It was really WOW. I mean, ‘richer’ churches in England dont cook big meals for the community and give them presents. It just shows how God provides for everything when we step out in faith.
We went back to SA the day after christmas. This time, we stayed with the parents of a friend of a friend in England. Haha…thank God for connections! The parents told us to hire a car or take a taxi to their place. My friend was just talking to a taxi driver when a couple came up to him and said "we were on the same plane from Joburg to Pemba and on the same plane back, and the Lord told us you were missionaries, and to give you guys a lift to wherever you want to go". Wow! They were a couple on honeymoon in Mozambique. And they happen to live near to where we were going…praise the Lord. It’s just amazing.. coz taxis are expensive and we’d probably have gotten lost if we drove coz its highways like KL.
That’s it in a nutshell… can write more… but you’ll probly fall asleep! hehehehe.. the kids were really sweet.. climbing all over.. very affectionate.. but quite sad also coz can see the rejection and kind of ’slave mentality’ they have. Dad you said India was oppressed, i think it was more clear to me in mozambique. there’s an american nurse there who wants to stay on permanently coz her kids are all grown up. and she’s organising new latrines and making improvements.. really cool stuff. and she said sometimes when missionaries come for short term, the kids build attachments and then feel rejected when they leave. so dad and mom, if you;re thinking of a retirement plan… mozambique needs more people! but its VERY HOT and i’m not sure if you’d like that! even the whites are tanned!
and ate lots of mangoes!!
