Day 6: When the Floodgates Open

Today was mostly a travel day.

We packed up from Casa Koinonia (the mission house we stay at in Maputo) and made the drive north to the compound in Gaza where we'll spend the next several days. We drove six hours, or actually, I should say five hours and forty-four minutes because one of the cars took guesses to see who could get the closest. Shout out to Adi Wilson for guessing five hours and 45 minutes. He was almost right on the dot.

Anyway, a travel day may not sound blog-worthy, but once again, God had other plans.

One of the things I love about Mozambique is just how much diversity exists within one country. If you laid Mozambique over a map of the United States, it would stretch from San Diego all the way to Canada. It's long.

So, even after nearly six hours on the road, we're still in the southern part of the country, and this is actually as far north as our team travels.

The difference between where we started and where we ended, though, isn't measured in miles nearly as much as it is in culture.

Maputo is a busy city. There aren't any towering skyscrapers, but there are businesses, markets, restaurants,  and of course.... traffic jams.  (See yesterday's blog). This might be surprising to anyone who only knows Mozambique through poverty statistics. It is still one of the poorest countries in the world, but there's also a rhythm of everyday city life.

Gaza  feels completely different.

The "cities" here in Gaza are often just a few blocks of busy shops before giving way to miles and miles of rural villages, reed huts, dirt roads, and outdoor bathrooms or, as Valmir  calls them, "all the-star bathrooms," because when you're in the bathroom you look up and see all the stars.

After being on this trip several times now, the transition from Maputo to Gaza isn't much of a culture shock anymore.  Ironically, it's usually the drive back to Maputo that feels shocking after getting used to village life.

But this year was different.

If you're part of our church, hopefully you may remember praying for Mozambique earlier this calendar year. From roughly November through February, southern Mozambique experienced relentless flooding. Homes were destroyed. Crops disappeared. Roads washed away. People lost their lives. Some families spent days trapped on rooftops waiting for rescue with little or no food or clean water.

I knew those facts. I'd heard Pastor Benedito describe them over phone calls. But seeing them was different.

Places I had seen several times I now barely recognized.  Places that used to be dry fields are now massive lakes.  Entire sections of road are scarred with giant sinkholes, potholes, and places where the flood carved a new path through the earth.

A few weeks ago, I preached a sermon back in Ohio and jokingly (kind of) complained about the road construction outside my house. I even adapted that illustration while preaching here in Mozambique just a couple days ago in a way that would fit the local context.

Driving these roads today felt like someone gently (but firmly) putting their hand on my shoulder and giving me a needed reality check. I was reminded of just how quickly I can lose perspective. The inconveniences I complain about back home suddenly felt incredibly small compared to what our brothers and sisters here have endured.

Now, let me be clear.  The purpose of this trip is not for us to come home saying, "Wow, we're so blessed."  Of course we're grateful, but the goal of this trip is not to get a pseudo sense of gratitude where we come back thinking, "I'm so much more grateful for my stuff because I saw a bunch of third world poverty close up so I should be more thankful."  No. That would treat our brothers and sisters as object lessons instead of family. We're here to serve them, encourage them, and stand alongside them in Christ.

Scripture tells us to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. And today, we were invited into the weeping.

Pastor Benedito and Pastor Maulidio rode in my van, telling story after story about the floods, the families, the churches, and how believers have tried to care for one another through unimaginable hardship.

Again and again, Pastor Maulidio repeated one simple sentence, "Mozambicans are resilient people."

Those words have stayed with me all day.

Tomorrow morning, we're scheduled to visit some of the agricultural fields where ministry normally takes place. For a while, we weren't even sure we'd be able to go. One of our ministry partners told me this morning that there really aren't any fields anymore.

The floods destroyed them.

I had heard those words months ago. But after today's drive...now I understand them.

Tonight, after dinner, our entire team gathered in a circle to talk, sing, pray, and prepare our hearts for the days ahead.

That conversation became the highlight of my day.

Sometimes we can come on these trips and think we've arrived to solve problems.

We can't.

We're here  to encourage faithful brothers and sisters who have continued serving Jesus through circumstances that many of us can barely imagine.

As we wrapped up, Pastor Maulidio explained something I didn't know.

After the rivers and dams became full from relentless rain, officials had to release water through the floodgates. Those releases added to the flooding downstream.

In a maybe strange sort of way, this image has given me a different prayer for the rest of this week. That God would open a different kind of floodgate.

May the floodgates of His mercy be opened.

May the floodgates of His grace pour out.

May the floodgates of hope reach villages still carrying the weight of loss.

And may the same God who brings beauty from ashes bring life where devastation once seemed to have the final word.

Tomorrow, Lord willing, we'll visit the fields, the villages, and meet the people who faced the rains head on.

I'm praying that the rains of grace will fall even harder than the destructive rains that ravaged this land.