There are so many things I want to tell you. I want to tell you all about my wonderful time in Lambert’s Bay, South Africa. I want you to hear stories about walking around with the home care workers, about Mariki, about my amazing host family, about the singing in the United Reform Church. But it’s been over a month since I’ve been there and I don’t know if I could do the stories justice anymore.
Likewise, there are so many things that have happened in Mozambique that I want to tell you about. I think I could have written a blog every day I’ve been here… explaining some funny, crazy, or surprising thing that happened. Mozambique is filled with the unexpected. I want to tell you all about my host granny and how comfortable she’s made me feel. I want to tell you about each of my brothers and sister and why I love each one of them differently. I want to describe the laugh of my favorite little girl, and tell you how she seems to always make my day. I want to tell you about how homesick I’ve felt, the struggles I’ve faced, and the times I’ve felt like giving up. But I think what I need to share most is what I’ve learned during my time here so far. It’s crazy to think there’s just over a week left in this country and then we’re on to Lesotho! So here they are, the good, bad, and downright crazy, Life Lessons From Mozambique:
- Fresh papaya is downright the greatest thing on a hot day. Let me tell you, it has been H-O-T here! But the sound of a papaya being knocked to the ground by some ten year old neighbor creates heart palpitations I haven’t felt since the good ol’ days of the Ice Cream Man.
- Let me preface this next one with a simple statement: “clean” is a very relative term. BUT that being said, I can now clean my entire body using 1.5 soup bowls full of water. I really just want to impress my mom and dad with that one J I think while I’m trying to convince my parents I’m a changed girl I should tell you all that I’ve been going to bed between 7:30 and 8:00 and waking up between 5:00 and 6:00. Yep. Emily Bostrom.
- The word “avo” means so much more than grandma in Portuguese. It means provider, comforter, protector, friend… and it means that if you hear her calling your name, you drop whatever you’re doing and run to her.
- Clean, flushing toilets with a seat are such an underrated luxury. On a side note, I am so sick of my little hole in the corner of a brick square, the floor of which is always covered in a liquid I can only describe as urine at best. Sorry for that guys, but I just had to get it out there.
- Here, if you want to eat you must farm. Farming means getting up even earlier and walking (at times great distances) to the small patch of land you’ll use to support your family. Since it’s October, I was under the impression that we’d be harvesting soon. It just makes sense to a Midwesterner. But alas, it’s not. We hoed and hoed and hoed. I’ll be honest, I didn’t even know what a hoe was really used for before this. It sucks. Sometimes it means ripping up things that are already growing in order to prepare the soil (sand) to plant something new. It means hacking away at hardened ground to get to the good stuff underneath. Although it wasn’t my favorite moment thus far, I had a great God moment in the field. One of the reasons Mozambique has been such a challenge is that we’re just living with people. We spend all our time building relationships. That is an awesome thing to be doing, but it’s one without tangible results. So as I was in the field with my 73 year old grandmother, I felt God just say to me, “Emily, this is not your season to reap. This is your time to work.” Someday, I think I’ll look back and see the purpose of my being here. Someday, I think missionaries will come to this community and be thankful for what we’ve done. Right now, I don’t get to see that. It’s not harvest time in Mozambique. It’s time to prepare the fields.
- Taking care of the widows and the orphans makes so much sense. This one took my granny literally telling me, “We’re suffering here in Mozambique” to actually understand. They seem so happy, and when I’m staying with them there’s always food to eat. But my granny said to me, “We are suffering. My husband died a long time ago. Without a man here, there’s no work. Without work there’s no food. You have to farm if you want to eat.” That broke my heart. Widows and orphans are vulnerable. They need care and provision because they can’t provide for themselves. It’s not because they’re weak, it’s because society has been set up for them to fail on their own. We’re called to care for them. After 5 weeks of living with them, I finally understand why. They’re the outcasts of society, the downtrodden, the poor, and the unloved. We’re called to change that.
- Finally, I just want to share one last little thing that God’s been teaching me. For a lot of this trip I’ve been nervous about the future. I’ve questioned school, my major, whether or not I want to do fulltime missions, where I want to live when I graduate… and I’ve just been stressed. I felt like I started this trip with a vague picture of what God had planned for my life. I felt certain passions and desires were leading me somewhere. But now I feel a lot like I’ve been searching and searching and questioning and just wandering in my future plans. Then I read some Deuteronomy. The Israelites wandered for 40 years while they knew the promise that was ahead of them. God had somewhat shown them their future, yet they had to wander before getting there. I’m sure at times they felt alone and abandoned by God. But the fact that they felt a certain way in no way diminished God’s character or changed His promise for them. I think sometimes God has us wander before we receive our promise. I think when we’re wandering we have to live in complete dependence on God. And I think that we wander so that when we see the real promise, when we get to a land so sweet, we know it’s the real deal and we’re grateful for what we have. When we get out of our wandering phase we know that God’s been holding our hand the whole time. “For the Lord your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He knows your going through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you. You have lacked nothing.” –Deuteronomy 2:7. I think I’m in a slight wandering period right now. But, I don’t think that’s because God is changing His promises for me. I think right now, God’s just holding my hand.
Sorry it’s been long. I feel like there’s so much more I could say and so much more I want to say… but I want at least a few people to actually get through this whole thing J Keep the team in your prayers! We’ll need it as we’re finishing up here. Lots of love from Africa, missing you all quite terribly!
lovefromafrica 