John: I grew up in a missionary environment because my parents were missionaries so I think that’s where I got a love for living in a different culture and having experiences in another culture and having a love for people who were different than me. I think that influenced my decision of wanting to be a missionary and as I went to college what I studied was agronomy because I was hoping to do something that would have a practical skill that I could use over seas and I think God just put in me a desire to serve Him overseas and at that time I thought that I would go overseas to live, possibly for the rest of my life, but I only ended up going for a couple of years.
Rogeria: I had a lot of teaching on how Jesus told us to go and share the Gospel and also I had a lot of contact with people who were overseas and that idea of going to other countries and meeting people from different cultures just sharing my faith and God little by little opened the doors for me to go overseas.
Before you became a missionary what did you think your experience would be like?
John: I thought I knew pretty much what we would be facing because we were going to a country that spoke Portuguese and it was third world which is similar to Brazil, or the part of Brazil that I grew up in anyway. So I thought I kind of knew what to expect and for some things they were what I expected but it was a lot different than what we expected in the since that it just took us a long time to understand the culture of the people that were there.
Rogeria: I had two experiences. My first experience I joined this missionary ship that traveled all over the world so I expected it to be very exciting traveling to different countries, and it was. The second experience is when we went to Mozambique and I was kind of scared about it because we had heard that there was a lot of malaria there and people were dying from it so I was very concerned about that. We had no idea where we were going to live and we knew it was a very poor country so I was concerned about that but God used somebody to tell me that when I get there God will give me the strength that I needed and it was true when I got there. It was amazing how when we got used to the living situation and everything.
Can you tell me some of the countries you went to and your length of time doing missions?
John: Rogeria and I were in South Africa for about 6 months for training and then we lived in Mozambique for a year and a half, so for a total commitment of 2 years.
Rogeria: My first missionary experience traveling on the boat we went to Europe, stopping port by port on all the countries on the coast. And then the ship went to Africa, North Africa, so I went to several countries there too. We stayed about 3 weeks in each port but all together it was for a bout 2 and a half years.
From now on let’s talk about the time you spent in Mozambique. Were you sponsored by any organization or church for this trip?
John: We were with an organization called OM (Operation Mobilization ) and they work around the world in many different countries. It’s a nondenominational mission sending agency. We were also sent out by our local church here in Atlanta which is called The Atlanta Vineyard.
What was the training like in South Africa?
John: Well our experience in training was not necessarily the most enjoyable experience. There were some good aspects of it, but I think for Rogeria it was a little more difficult because she had already been through her time with OM and gone through her training and for her to have to go through another training to where we wanting to go in Mozambique it probably made her a little impatient. For me it was my first experience with OM so it was good for me to learn stuff. They taught about all different kinds of things, basic relationship with God and understanding God as your father and having a revelation of His love for you so you can go out and share that love with other people. There was also a course where we had to travel to another city in South Africa and do a class on child evangelism and then we went out into the community and put into practice what we had learned. There was another part where we learned how to minister to Hindu people and Muslim people and to respect them and love them and learn from them and to be able to share our faith with them. We got to go out into their communities and visit a Mosque and a Hindu Temple and be able to see how they live out their faith. We also had to go to a refugee camp on the border of South Africa and Mozambique and they put us in a team of people and dropped us off in this little village in the middle of the sticks for a week with only tents and a little bit of food and we had to figure out what we were going to do, what kind of ministry to do, we had to organize ourselves and find and connect with a local church and figure out how to get all of our supplies. The purpose of that training was to see if we could do a cross-cultural when you are out of your comfort zone. So that was good.
How did you achieve that main objective in Mozambique?
John: I think that one of our objectives, because OM works in teams, was to be a part of a team to go into the ministries that they had already started. We also had some other things that we wanted to start too, like I wanted to work on a farm that had been given to this local church and they wanted to develop that and try and make it into something that could support the church.
Rogeria: We did evangelism also, like other teams would come for a week and we would go to the village and do a special program for evangelists. We also had pastoral school where we would train the local pastors, and they needed a lot of training because they would mix a lot of Christianity with Animism. We also did social work where we would go with teams to build people’s houses or give out food and clothing. John: Because Mozambique is such a poor country OM couldn’t just go in to preach the Gospel and hope that lots of people would come to Jesus. We had to be prepared to fulfill their physical needs and be able to do practical things like education and medical work.
What was the greatest joy you experienced while in Mozambique?
John: I think just getting to know the people and understanding their culture. We had both always been intrigued with Africa and we had a real love for African people and God had put on our heart’s Mozambique in particular so that was just a joy to be able to start to understand their culture and to see the joy that they had in living their lives even though they were just dirt poor and lived in conditions that were horrible, like we can’t even understands.
Rogeria: As I said before, I was scared about going but it was great to see when I got there how God gave me the strength I needed and enabled me to be there. It was very hard to be there but God gave me all that I needed to get through it.
What was the greatest hardship you experienced while in Mozambique?
John and Rogeria: Many!
John: Well, in general, while one of the greatest joys was getting to understand and know the people one of the hardest things being there was understanding the people and getting to know them because we thought that because we could speak Portuguese we would be able to communicate with people and understand them and you could be speaking the same language as somebody else and totally not be connecting at all. I think as time went on we realized how little we understand about what was important to them spiritually, how they functioned spiritually and just their spiritual background.
Rogeria: It was hard also because we had a young man who came to us who was a Muslim who got saved and because he was being persecuted they sent him to Mozambique to hide and for us to protect him. He went crazy there and it was hard because you would wake up and you would never know what was going to happen that day. You would be traveling with him and he would say he was going to jump from the car; it was very hard, it was spiritual warfare.
John: Later, there were people we found out later that were against the work we were doing there in Mozambique. They actually prayed to demonic forces against us that there would be death and loss of people’s minds, and it happened. There was a woman who died before we got there and another guy who lost his mind and had to drop the mission trip. It was hard to see that and understand what was happening.
Can you tell me the major religion and the language spoken there?
John:
Well Portuguese is the official language but not necessarily the main language that most people speak because people out in the rural areas that didn’t have a chance to go to school where they would have studied Portuguese speak their native language, and there are probably 20 or 30 different native languages in Mozambique. In the area that we lived in, Southern Mozambique, they spoke Shangaan. I think about 10 percent of the country is Muslim; in most of the Northern part of the country it was Islamic. Then I think about maybe 50 percent of the country is classified as Christian; although not that many people have an understanding on that. And as we mentioned earlier they mix Christianity with Animism. I think Animism was the biggest belief system in Mozambique although it is not a religion. But almost everybody there was involved in some sort of spirit or ancestral worship; even the Muslim people would mix that in their religion as well.
CHRISTINE'S INTERVIEW
ALISON'S INTERVIEW
KAYLA'S INTERVIEW
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