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It’s hard to believe our time in Mozambique is drawing to an end. The lesson has been so very simple but how in the world will we ever explain something that runs so contrary to normal Western values and thinking namely that as Surprise Sithole says, “relationship is more important than hard working”. The Mozambiquens understand it because as one youth explained “We live in a place where you can get sick at any time and be dead in a just few days.” 
The village of Namoto sits peacefully on the shores of the Ruvuma river about four kilometers from the Tanzania border. “Namoto” actually means fire and was the site for one of our “Bush Bush” outreaches. 
After ten and half hours on the road we finally arrived at the village of Namoto. There is no electricity there and the village was already asleep except for a 13 year old boy named Shamsi who stepped out of the dark to greet Cathy and me. Shamsi spoke Swahili and a just few words of English so it took some time for us to learn that Shamsi had recently fled his family of “another faith” in Tanzania to arrive barefoot and penniless in Namoto on the very day we met. Apparently his mother had recently died, his father was missing in action and he feared for his life. Several people did not trust Shamsi because his story seemed to change each time he told it. This was reason enough in the minds of many not to help him. But Shamsi would not leave Cathy’s side. Shamsi wanted a mamma and Cathy was the chosen one. Later the next day we went deeper into the village to invite people to the IRIS Jesus Film we would be showing that night. Shamsi witnessed a young man receive Jesus in Swahili and a he asked to receive Him as well. Everything seemed to be going really well. The only problem was that Shamsi was an illegal alien minor with absolutely no documents. This could mean prison for Shamsi and anyone harboring him if he were caught by Mozambiquen police. Shamsi was in effect a proverbial “hot potato” that no one wanted to touch. Everyone in authority within the village was completely freaked out and afraid they would be jailed for child trafficking. But later that night we met with the head pastor in the village. We squatted in a circle for about an hour while the pastor drew in the sand and told stories of how he had helped boys in similar situations. He assured us that he had favor with the local authorities and it would be “no problem” for him to take Shamsi in to live with him. Problem solved. Yay God! 
The next morning we jumped on the truck for the 10 hour drive back to Pemba. We had travelled about 5 miles when Shamsi suddenly emerged from the bushes and began running after our truck. Our hearts sank. Luckily another vehicle carrying a Swahili speaking pastor from Tanzania was close behind. They stopped and the pastor reexplained the plan to Shamsi before sending him back to the village. Obviously the language barrier had clouded Shamsi’s previous understanding but now everything would be fine. Problem solved. We returned to the IRIS base in Pemba and I gave a brief testimony regarding our awesomely successful experience of “Stopping for the one”. Yay God.
About a week later Shamsi showed up at the Pemba gate just as we were returning from visiting a family in the outlying village. He had walked/ hitchhiked for four days to find Cathy and me. We got him some food and water and not knowing what else to do, I brought the situation to the attention of the IRIS staff. They freaked out for the same reason that the Namoto village leaders had. “Is he impaired?” They asked as they organized Shamsi’s departure alone by bus back to Namoto. I could see the anger in Shamsi’s eyes. “That’s not going to work. He’s gonna bolt.” Cathy told them. “Don’t worry. He won’t bolt” a staff member replied.
The next morning Shamsi was outside our door, hungry and smiling and looking for breakfast. So we fed him our morning ration of bread rolls and brought him to church thinking it would be best to just take him straight to Heidi. After all she was the author of stopping for the one. Surely she would lay her life down and help this boy who had just come into the kingdom. “What? Who invited him here? How did he get the address? “Beats me” I said, “I don’t speak Swahili.” You’d better pray!” she said as I knelt beside her trying in vain to explain the situation. “We are in a lot of trouble! They could charge us with child trafficking, shut this whole base down and take us all to jail.” There I knelt, face to face with one of my all time spiritual heroes on the planet second only to Mother Teresa and Jesus himself, having “stopped for the one” and possibly destroying everything she and Rolland had given their lives lives too.
Ain’t missions fun. Yay God.

As Heidi likes to say, there are two reasons for being persecuted in the body of Christ. One is for the sake of righteousness and one is for stupidity. I have a lot more experience with the later. Needless to say I wasn’t feeling particularly righteous at that moment. I was kindly asked to remove myself from the situation while they investigated. Then the Harvest School staff obtained police permission to escort Shamsi back to Namoto. Where is Shamsi now? I have no idea. In fact he could be walking back to Pemba as I write. “This is pitiful!” you say. “Why are you even telling me this?” Bear with me.
To be honest I was angry. I was offended and disillusioned with Heidi and IRIS as a whole. Then I finished my tantrum. Did I really expect the IRIS staff to go to jail, to forfeit the current and future welfare of tens of thousands of people for the sake of one 13 year old boy? What would I say to them; “Sorry but you all have to go to jail and or die so we can help this one boy who couldn’t follow directions”? 
The reality in this life is that saying “yes” to the one usually means saying “no” to another. That we need to choose in the first place is a result of our choices not His. I was suddenly confronted with my own propensity to sit in judgment, positively and negatively, of all creation and subsequently upon God Himself. I realized that every time I am angry, depressed, offended or disillusioned, every time I slip into self-centeredness; every time I covet an alternative reality to what God has created I am actually condemning God. Gulp…
Instead of focusing on the character of God and acknowledging that his ways are not my ways and His thoughts are not my thoughts; I judge God and others according to current circumstances when I should be judging both according to the character of God who is good and seeing Jesus in everyone. 
How easily I forget where I came from, that I am where I am today because of His mercy that so frequently manifested as pain in my life. God is good and He is by definition love. That means His “yes” is love and so is His “no”. 
We live in a universe that is literally composed of relationships. Believe it or not the goal is not to feed the poor, heal the sick, help widows and orphans or anyone else for that matter. It is not about fixing people or situations. Our purpose is to simply love God. But how do I love God? Well, we feed the poor, heal the sick, help widows and orphans and anyone He puts on our hearts to help. It’s a paradox. God doesn’t need us to save the Shamsis of the world and yet He does. He’s a “yes and no” God not a dichotomous “yes or no” God. No thing or situation will ever make sense apart from an intimate relationship with Him because that relationship is the goal. Everything else is fruit. 
That is what we came here to learn or part of it anyway. That is why we quit our jobs, left our home in paradise, left our loved ones, sold our stuff, went into debt and came to a diseased and poverty stricken country literally on the other side of the world. We came to enter the fire, to have our self-centered pride, delusions and frivolous fluff burned off our souls. We came as proverbial Marthas to learn the lesson of Mary, that our lives are but a vapor and “relationship is more important than hard working”. There may be some here who’s dross is fully burned off and have fully comprehended the paradox of loving. As for me I’m still working on it. I’m still burning. I hope and pray that Shamsi is too. Because at the end of the day I am Shamsi, sincere, hard headed and wanting my own way.

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Mozambique is country filled with mostly untapped oil and mineral wealth. It is also a place where nearly everyone goes hungry some of the time and many are hungry all of the time. In fact it is nearly impossible to find anyone who doesn’t know at least one person who has starved to death.

The villages outside of the IRIS base in Pemba are perfect examples of this desperation. It is no wonder that the gate outside of the Harvest School is a place where young 20 something year old men congregate to sell cheap hand made jewelry to missionaries and students from the west in hopes of simply eating that day. Not dating or playing or partying like their western peers. Just eating a bowl of rice or Shima and maybe just maybe a piece of a chicken leg. Others invent tragic stories they hope will be believed and result in some one giving them money. The stories may be fabricated but the tragedy is real. Unfortunately begging undermines the dignity of both the beggar and the giver and frequently results in resentment on the part of one or both parties particularly when the giver’s money runs out. It’s not that there is zero opportunity for economic growth in Pemba. It is simply untapped. Sometimes it is  just a matter of these young men not knowing how to access opportunity do to a lack of education, ignorance of work ethics and or how the world of business and employment works. Some simply need a leg up to get started and a few hundred American dollars can mean the difference between a life of abject poverty and the dignity that comes with being self supporting. 

It’s a bit ridiculous in my opinion if not completely insane to preach the current and popular Ephesians based “Christian identity motif” to a culture already demeaned by centuries of white colonization when a Mozambiquen man still feels the need to beg for a proverbial fish from a white man just to feed his own children. Feeding the poverty mentality within a given culture is the epitome of disrespect and not what Jesus meant when He told Peter “if you love me then feed my sheep.”  People need discipleship not just evangelism. 

When we first met Daniel he was selling Bibles to missionaries on base. I personally grabbed 25 before I realized that they were actually Gideon Bibles. I rebuked Daniel ever so gently explaining how selling Bibles that were intended to be free was not only wrong but also not good for him. “But papa” he began, “you don’t understand. I have no money to start my business and I have no money to eat. I need to do something.” “Hold on” I said “Tell me about this business.” “Papa I’m very good at cutting hair…” and he proceeded to tell me about his dream of opening a salon for both men and women in his village. (Hair salon?! I thought people were starving.  Well as it turns out  starving people are seeking dignity just like everyone else.) “I could make maybe 1500 Metacals ($20.50) per week” he said. So we proceeded to work out how much it would cost to get him started. 

As it turned out Daniel could get the required business license and build his salon for just under 600 US dollars. So he gave his remaining Bibles away and resolved to never sell one again and we started giving him money in increments. 

What began as a gamble quickly became a solid investment in Daniel’s future as he proved to be a man of his word in every way. Obviously we do not expect a financial return. That would not only be absurd but also illegal under Mozambiquen law. Our ROI comes in the form of the joy goes with helping another human being succeed and find dignity through empowerment. It is also a way to preach a Gospel that has teeth as we made it abundant clear that this was not about us.  Rather it was about the love God put in our hearts for Daniel. 

We are praying that God opens the door to similar opportunities in the future. Perhaps you’ll want to partner with us if He does. 

​​​​Be sure to check out Daniels short video https://vimeo.com/194167440

It’s been nearly a month since we left for Africa, the incredulous words of friends and family echoing in our ears.
“You’re doing what?!” “What will you be doing?” “That’s wonderful! What are you going there to do?”
What indeed.

The concept of anointing is derived from an ancient practice whereby Shepards would pour oil on the heads of their sheep to make the wool slippery. This prevented dangerous insects from getting into their ears and burrowing into their skulls which would eventually kill them.
Later anointing became a symbol of blessing, protection, and empowerment.

The body of Christ is filled with anointing. There is healing anointing and prophetic anointing. Anointing to teach and counsel and lead, to preach and intercede, to build and to feed. In fact there is an anointing to match near any need.
At the moment we are anointed for none of these. Instead we have been given a student anointing.

“What is a student anointing?” you ask. Basically it means we are back to knowing nothing. We are humbled. We are beginners again. Every morning we rise to sing and praise and worship God for hours on end with 250 students hand picked from 30 different nations all of whom have the most incredible, mind boggling testimonies of God’s miraculous power in their lives. We are then taught by some of the most powerful, layed down lovers and yes anointed men and women of God walking the earth today some of whom are young enough to be our children. The topics: relationship both with God and His children, honor, identity, and intimacy.  As it turns out being a missionary is more about who He is and less about what we do. As the amazing Pastor Suprise Sithole says “Relationship is more important than hard working.”

While the secular world continues to focus on endless climbing, competition and self promotion in order to achieve a sense of significance, we are learning to focus on relationship, giving preference to the other and dying to self.  Instead of learning yet another way to climb yet another ladder named success, we are learning how to go low. As Roland Baker wrote in Keeping the Fire;

“We not only go low before God, we go low before others. We do this by choosing not to seek favor with those who are influential or wealthy when we begin to cry out to God for revival in a city or a nation. We go first to those who have nothing and no food. We go to the poor, the destitute, the bruised, the sick, the widowed, the orphaned, the forgotten, the ostracized, the outcasts and the dying. We who behave as nobodies before God go to those who are regarded as nobodies by man.”

Water always flows to the lowest point. Going low means learning to swim or rather be carried in the direction of the living water flow until the day comes when 

“we, being rooted and grounded in love are able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that we might be filled with all the fulness of God.” Eph 3:17-19

It is the fullness of God that has powered IRIS from the start. We want this same fullness of God for ourselves. Not only are we willing but we earnestly desire to learn to go low. And so for a season we are anointed as students again, blessed, protected and empowered by a really great Father in Heaven.

Now on to Pemba for more revelation adventure and fuel for the low roads we will travel in the future.