I can say that the life Bilhah and I live henceforth is not our own. We are now living a borrowed life. What? How?

Here is how – from the 6th to the 12th of January, Bilhah and I had been to the Mozambican Northern City of Nampula – the City we were targeting to move into to catalyse a Disciple Making Movement ministry. We had gone there to do prayer walks and intercessions, to find possible accommodation and to introduce ourselves to missionary friends before our final move. We had left our son – Victor Daniel in the care of Nigerian friends back in Chimoio.

On the 13th of January, we started our journey back to Chimoio. When we were 300km into the 1100km journey, we learnt that the big downpour of rain the previous two days had broken a small bridge and another bigger one ahead of us (after Nampevo and before Mucuba).

The driver stopped in a major town – Alto Molocue to consult, returned to us, and confirmed it wiser to return to Nampula. 20 minutes later, the bus company/owner called the driver and told him not to bring us to Nampula because he will not be able to refund us; instead he should take us to the big bridge and leave us to get help somehow! We continued, getting off the bus, walked across the smaller broken bridge and took another bus owned by the same company towards the bigger bridge. But at the entrance to Mucuba where the big bridge was broken, there was no apparent way across. We were forced to sleep there for two days expecting help to come from wherever… of course, we were praying and trusting the Lord for deliverance.

The third morning, to our relief, we learnt that the government has sent two boats to take people across.We packed our bags and headed to the river. There must have been at least 400 people that needed to cross. One boat completely refused to work, leaving us with only one. We formed a long queue and the boatstarted the unenviable work of carrying 8-10 people ata time. The first four trips were successful and it came time for the fifth. Bilhah was going to be on the fifth trip but when she stating that we were together and needed to cross likewise, we were told to await the next trip.

Eleven or so people fitted themselves into the boat, disregarding the suggested number of eight. Midway across the water, the boat capsized. The captain managed to turn it around again but subsequently the engine stopped working and the boat was left at the mercy of the pummeling current. Like a joke, while we were all shouting, screaming … jumping… and not able to do a thing to help, the boat and its 11 passengers were washed off by the current. Five days after, we got varying reports; one report said that 7 of the 11 passengers died while another said that there were no survivors at all.  This was our deliverance. If there was space for two instead of one, we would have been on that boat. If we had forced our way, we would have been on that boat but the Lord rescued us.

We feel deep pains for those who died because we actually passed the previous night with some of them. But we rejoice that the Lord delivered us from certain death … showing us that our job is not yet done. We changed direction to get home and on the way, we met even more broken bridges making the alternative route take another five days with a lot of expenses and suffering. We cannot but thank God that we are still alive. Rejoice, praise God with us.

Mission To Save The Lost…

Why did we have to go to Nampula in the first instance? For the last four years, we have trained over a thousand people for Church Planting throughout the nation of Mozambique. Most recently, we have concentrated our training efforts on the northern parts of the country … but we are not seeing the Church Planting multiplication we had hoped to see. As we seek the Lord’s face what we are hearing is:

‘Modelling… Mentoring… ’. We need to model to the people what we train and expect them to do. We need to mentor the people on the job. These, we are not able to do from our central Mozambican city of Chimoio. We therefore came to the conclusion of setting up a second CAPRO base in Nampula –Northern capital – with the goal of modelling church planting movements and training and mentoring as many individuals, churches, mission groups as would be interested.  Northern Mozambique still has over 20 unreached people groups with Christianity percentages varying from 0.02% to 10%. There are whole tribes where 100 believers cannot be found and the voice we are hearing in our spirits is: ‘go model and catalyse Church Planting Movements’. We are here to give hope to the hopeless. We are here on a rescue mission for the lost nations. We are trusting God to use us to make a difference in the destiny of many.  The plan is to begin small, in our house and then continue to expand as the Lord opens doors and directs us. We hope to both accomplish and train other to accomplish.  It is an uncharted course. It is a rescue mission and we solicit your renewed commitment to this new venture. We desire to raise a Prayer Alert Team just for this and we would be glad if you sign up irrespective of previous commitment to us. We believe God that through you and us the Lord will restore hope to the dying.

Update: On Saturday 21st of March we moved into the city of Nampula leaving Chimoio base in the hands of disciples. While yet to find suitable accommodation,we decided to take a break and go holidaying with ourboys in Kenya. We’ll return to Mozambique by the end of April to continue where we left off.

Praise & Prayer Points:

1. Praise the Lord for rescuing us from death, for keeping us alive to continue serving Him and bringing in the harvest of lost souls. We are living witnesses of God’s faithfulness.
2. Pray the Lord to continue to give us wisdom and insights on how to go about this new mission.

Ademola Olatunji