Mission to the Makua of Mozambique

Well we made it!  We are so excited to be e-mailing you from Lisbon, Portugal!  It seems like so long ago when we sent our last e-mail from the states right before we left.  Our flight over the Atlantic ocean went really well.  Thank you for your prayers, Asher slept through the whole trip!  We safely arrived in Lisbon around 10:30 PM on Sunday.  Some missionaries who are working with the church here in Lisbon, the Silvestri & Nunes families, picked us up from the airport and gave us a ride to our hotel.  On the drive to our hotel the missionaries told us how hard it is to find furnished apartments in the city.  Our language school, CIAL, had been looking for us but we did not know what they had to show us yet.  As we crawled into our beds that night we asked the Lord to help us find a home soon, so we could quickly begin our language study.  The next day we met with CIAL and then dispersed into the city looking for apartments.  The whole day proved to be quite an adventure.  It rained the whole day, which added to the challenge of getting around a strange big city with a jetlagged family.  But the Lord was with us.  Although the day involved Ginger getting splashed by a speeding car going through a very large puddle, we ended the day wet but aware of God's guidance and help.  The picture below was taken at the end of the day in a metro station.  Asher is in my jacket which is where he stayed throughout the day asleep as we trudged through rain-soaked Lisbon.  That day we found an apartment that would work for either us or the Smiths so we took it and flipped a coin that night.  The Smiths won the coin toss, but we were able to stay with them until we found an apartment.  Within that week we found an apartment.  By the end of our first week everyone on the team had found an apartment.  We were the last to move into ours on the Tuesday of our second week in Lisbon!  We thank God for his providence!  Our apartment is located in a great part of town.  We live on the sixth floor and have a cool view of the city including the Tagus river.  We live near a number of bus stops that can take us to other locations throughout the city.  We live within fifteen minutes of the language school, and there are lots of sites throughout our neighborhood for practicing our language such as a nearby park.  Our apartment is furnished in a hilarious 70's decor.  I just can't help but humming "Staying Alive" by the BeeGees when I sit on my bright orange couch with a shag rug.  Put simply, our crib is jivin!! 

Many of you may be wondering how we spend our days in Lisbon.  We actually have settled into a fairly predictable routine during the week here.  On Monday through Friday, I leave the house about 7:30 to catch a bus and then the subway to school.  I have language class with Martha Smith (the other mommy on the team) from 8:00- 10:00.  Meanwhile, Kyle and Asher get things done at home or run errands around town.  Kyle brings Asher to school at 10:00 and we trade off.  Kyle and Jeremy Smith have class from 10:00-12:00.  Usually Asher and I go by the park (there are lots of those here!) on the way home.  Asher has lunch and goes down for a nap just as Kyle is getting home.  Then Kyle and I do homework and work on language together while Asher naps.  When Asher wakes up, we go out to practice our language.  We frequent all kinds of places like the huge market a block from our apartment where we get fresh fruits and vegetables, the local bakery where we go for fresh bread, or the park to chat with other parents while Asher chases pigeons.  We try to only speak in Portuguese- even with one another sometimes- so that we can practice hearing and speaking.  It is amazing how much we can actually say even though we have only been in class for three weeks.  People can often understand us, but hearing them has proven to be tougher!  Asher has actually been an amazing language learning asset as his blond hair and blue eyes draw many stares and smiles.  People are constantly striking up conversations with us when he is around- "Is that baby Portuguese?" and "How old is he? What is his name?" (I thought explaining the name "Asher" was difficult in America- you can only imagine the looks I get when I try here!) I am frequently mistaken for being Portuguese but Kyle and Asher don't fit the typical stereotype for Portuguese men- short, dark headed and dark skinned!  After two or three hours in town, we head home for dinner.  After dinner and the evening routine with Asher, which usually includes one more stroll though the neighborhood (we love the beautiful spring weather here!), Asher is off to bed around 8:00.  We spend the rest of the evening working on language- drilling each other with flashcards, finishing up our homework, and occasionally watching the news in Portuguese- even though we don't catch too much yet!!  On Thursday evenings, we have dinner with the entire team and we spend time in worship together.  Also, once a week the girls on the team meet together to pray and share together and the guys meet for the same thing once a week as well.  It is nice to live near our teammates and see each other more than once a month; we continue to grow closer and get to know each other better.  On the weekends, we venture out to scenic parts of Lisbon , taking in the sights and learning more about the culture and people here.  Occasionally, a teammate offers to watch Asher, and Kyle and I get a meal together alone.  The weekends are a good chance to relax and get caught up on things around the house as well.  That is our life here in a nutshell!  Most evenings we are fairly exhausted as it takes lots of energy to hear and try to speak a different language all day.  We sometimes look at our teammates without children and romanticize what their days must look like (more time to study, more time to relax, more sleep!) Having a one year old makes everything in life a little more complicated!! However, our minds never wander too far without God reminding us what a precious gift as well as great responsibility we have been given to raise our sweet Asher to know the love of Jesus.  Thinking about it that way makes us realize that the "sacrifices" of parenthood are truly every day lessons in grace.

 

Boa Pascoa (Happy Easter)!  As I finish this email, Easter weekend is coming to a close.  As participants in the community of faith which Jesus established, we organize our lives around the weekly remembrance and celebration of resurrection.  Especially so, on Easter we can understand that the world cannot having meaning without the mystery of resurrection.  As disciples of the Resurrected One, our work of living in, serving, and interpreting the world around us can often become confusing and fruitless.  As a recent resident in a large urban area, I have experienced the feeling of anonymity and namelessness in a dense matrix where thousands of lives bounce off of each other everyday.  Sitting in a packed bus or metro of unrecognizable faces, or living in a large building with hundreds of other unknown human lives can cultivate a sense of loneliness and amnesia.  Without finding recognizable faces and places we cannot have history and without history we have no memory and with no memory we have no meaning, no direction.  So, it would seem that to 'remember' the death and resurrection of Christ is a powerful act.  This afternoon I walked down the street to a nearby cemetery.  I found families in mausoleums who had lived in the eighteenth century.  The mausoleums were corroding and had not been visited for a long time.  I've heard that many African cultures believe that once you are not remembered years after your death then your disembodied spirit passes into oblivion.  As I walked among the hundreds of small structures holding the dead I realized that their fate of passing into oblivion by the amnesia of the living was the same fate as mine, unless, unless in the act of remembering Jesus, I can receive the same story of the Resurrected One as a rendition of my life and therefore be remembered in the life to come by a God who does not forget.  The Gospel of Mark ends with three women fleeing from a cemetery in 'terror and amazement.'  (I think I would have fled from the cemetery down the street if I had expected to visit a mausoleum with a freshly dead body in it and found nothing in the structure!)  Maybe Easter is about remembering the resurrection so that we learn to run our lives in 'terror and amazement.'  If we can remember the mystery of what happened in that cemetery outside Jerusalem then a certain kind of 'terror and amazement' could grip us and infiltrate our consciousness in such a way that we can truly live in, serve, and interpret a world without memory.   Blessings   

By the tender mercy of our God,

The dawn from on high will break upon us,

To give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,

To guide our feet into the way of peace.

Luke 1:78-79

April 2003/Vol 3 No. 1