With Villiersdorp in Mozambique (Pemba)

The team were organized through the DRC church in VIlliersdorp, with members of other churches also involved. Some were families and we left with four cars.

Driving to Mozambique

On the first day 19th of June, we managed to reach Senekal in the Freestate. We were spoilt by the church people there. Then we continued east to enter Swaziland from the south. On our way we heard that the bridge over the Save river were closed because of political turmoil. So we decided to go through Zimbabwe. We took the road to the north and reached Loskopdam the evening where we camped. One of the team members left us there with a bad back pain. From there we reached the border where we encountered a few challenges. Firstly the Migration people wanted the birth certificates of the children and we did not have all of them. Firstly they did not want us to cross and that was very emotional. We pleaded and continued to explain and then they allowed them. Then we had to stand in the row for 5 hours to get customs clearing.

Pasted after hard work

After that one of the cars were registered on the farms name and they did not have the correct documents. They had to turn around go through all the red tape to get back to RSA. The rest of us continued till Lion and Elephant in Zimbabwe and reached there at midnight. We stayed over there and waited for the other car. At 12 they joined us with great joy. Then we continued and reached the mission station at Morgenster where we stayed from the night. From there it went well, but slow because of the situation of the road, until reaching Pemba. There the one car were fined for not having a chevron on the back. We did not want to pay a bribe and had to be escorted by the police through town to go and pay the fine. I believe that that was a good testimony, because bribes are the common thing. The police thought that these church people are very strange. I got Malaria and had it bad for a few days. Through the outreach I had to recover.

We reached our destination with Johan Dames and started the next day with building the little school and building relationships especially by playing with the children of this Muslim community. The foundation built for the schoo, was not level and we first had to level it and then I again learned a lot about building through the experts in the team. The team managed to build very good relationships and left a very positive image of christianity in the community. On top of that they did the floor with the walls and the pillars of the school by working hand in hand with the local community in a very positive way. From both sides we worked very hard and the community expressed their gratitude throughout the whole process.

We had nice seafood to eat

I left the team a few days early to join the team from Pretoria in Mocuba.