October 31, 2000

Dear Friends in Christ,

Blessings from Mozambique! We thank you for your prayers. This first phase of overseas mission here in Maputo entails Portuguese language training, appreciation of this culture, and orientation to the Presbyterian Church of Mozambique. Our experience here is a launching pad for a move at the beginning of 2001 to a site in the north, most likely Chimoio, about 800 miles away. There we will continue to learn Portuguese in addition to a tribal language and begin more hands-on ministry. The PC(USA) has made a great
investment in us and our mutual ministry, for which we are very grateful, and we want to bear good fruit. We want to thank those who made it possible for us to acquire a Land Rover. Please pray for protection on the road, that we stay healthy, for progress in our language training, and for revival in Mozambique!

Diario de Diane (Diane’s Diary)

Anna Lena and I left Thursday morning, October 12, for a three-day "Retiro de Obreiros" (Retreat for Workers) at the mission compound in Mausse, Gaza province. It was a three-and-a-half-hour drive to Manjakaze, and would have been only another half-hour to Mausse but for getting stuck in the sand
and having to be towed out by a 4x4. We passed neat little yards of packed dirt swept free from leaves and debris, with one or two of the round huts artfully made of either bamboo banded together or a kind of reddish adobe and crowned with thatched cone-roofs. Often a yard is surrounded with a bamboo fence, and beside the road it is common to see bundles of bamboo eight feet tall for sale, leaning against each other like weary travelers at a bus stop.

Our route was northerly, then turned east, passing over the Limpopo River, which now curves so peaceably through fresh, green fields. We came to Xai-Xai, (pronounced "shy-shy," population 50,000), the capital of the province. We discovered that much of the video footage televised in the U.S. during the horrendous flooding this past February was shot at Xai-Xai. The well laid-out streets had been gutted by the floods, baring the foundations of the buildings so that they resemble teeth whose gums have receded. Dirt has been brought in and built up in the middle of the washed-out beds so that the new streets have deep trenches on both sides and look like they were carved out of the red earth. On the northern side of town where the ground is higher a refugee settlement is located. There are hundreds of neat, little, square, bamboo huts, spaced regularly apart, each with its own line of brightly colored laundry flapping like a castle banner.

We arrived at the retreat at about 2:00 p.m. and an assembly had just gathered. I remember my first impression of the "retreat" was that I could have been sitting in a meeting of the Presbytery of South Dakota. Everything was conducted with the decorum and mutual respect that should mark every presbytery meeting. At one point a gentleman protested that he could not follow the discussion, and we discovered he was on the wrong page of the hand-out. There was hearty laughter.

A block of time was allotted for ministers to discuss personal concerns, and a young pastor from a parish near the coast stood up. He said that he had been sick for a full month this past year because he has to walk so many miles between the churches of his parish. The sand is so deep, the air wet. A bicycle cannot maneuver in the sand. A motorbike with balloon tires was suggested, but there is little money. Several pastors share the same problem. An older pastor recalled something that had happened years before: a colleague had walked through the sand for so many hours seeking medical help for his sick child that the child died on the way.

The mission compound is comprised of old and new church buildings, a school, the pastor’s house, guest quarters and study (where we slept), and several huts. One hut was identified as a kitchen, but the cooking was done outside over fires built within a three-foot high enclosure of branches. We marveled at the women working with the pilar, a device used to grind maize kernels into flour. It consists of a hollowed-out chunk of wood that stands a couple feet tall and resembles an over-sized vase. With wooden poles
several inches thick and four feet long, two women stand on either side, alternately lifting and dropping the poles in a remarkably precise rhythm and with great strength. They invited us to try and we were clearly outdone by one 72-year-old woman who had borne seven children, but she hugged and kissed us anyway. One man in his eighties stood up near the end of the retiro to thank everyone for coming. He said, "I will die happy because I am a Christian, and now I know the gospel is going out to my people in the center of the country."

We had left our suitcase and overnight bag in the hall of the pastor’s house where we had been invited to bathe before supper. There was no running water, but a basin of hot water had been placed in the bathtub for us, and a lone, white, utility candle fixed in its own wax on the cement floor. The only generator in the camp is used to light the church building during the evening meetings. Dusk settles in early and gently, offering a Sabbath for sun-weary eyes. That first night we were standing at the broad center of the compound,
waiting for someone to bring us to the room where we would sleep. The only human-made light came from the cookfires of the women, a few windows where we could see the golden glow of a candle, or the occasional sweep of a torch ("flashlight" to us Americans). The sky was clear. The moon was full and low, casting long shadows across the ground. We were talking about how wonderful Jesus is when we both seemed to sense a light around us. We looked up in awe at the moon, perfectly centered in a circular opening in the canopy of branches above us.

Diane and Charles Wonnenberg