Girls ceremony and Village Visit

    In Mozambique all the youth go through a coming of age ceremony. Different tribes do the ceremony differently and kids go through the ceremony at different ages depending on gender and tribe. It is hard to find out what actually happens at these ceremonies but people at Iris have been learning all they can for years. They realized that not all that happens during a ceremony is good. The village elders that lead the ceremony take the child away for several days and are alone with them.

    The ceremony is very important. Girls cannot marry unless they go through the ceremony and if they can't marry they are basically outcasts. Iris wanted to be able to do a redemptive form of the ceremony for the girls on the base. They put a lot of work and time into learning about it, preparing to do one themselves. They did two ceremonies; one as a redemptive ceremony for the older girls who had already gone through a village ceremony, and one for the younger girls who had never had a chance to go through ceremony.

   They tried to make it as close to the village ceremony as they could in hopes that the village people will accept that the girls went through a proper ceremony. They took the girls away for a week and when they brought them back they dressed them up in beautiful new dresses and presented them at church as women. They sang and danced for us and we prayed for them. They finished by sharing heart touching powerful testimonies of how their lives were changed. 

     Particularly powerful was the sharing of how for the first time in their lives they felt like they were beautiful and could be loved for who they were.                                    

Village visit

One Saturday my housemate was invited to a young mans house and she could not go alone so I agreed to go with her. I had gone on several visits to different kids houses and really enjoyed the experience. As we prepared to go we realized that two other women and one of the guys wanted to come with us, and that we would be going to two houses not just one. Last minute changes were normal so we didn't mind and headed out around 9 am. Memona decided to come with us as well.

We got to the first house fairly quickly and sat down to meet the family. The young man we were visiting knew a little English, enough to introduce us to his family and show us around his house. We asked if his family went to church and were told that they did. We asked if we could pray for him and his family and he said yes. So we prayed for them and then took some photo's before saying we needed to leave. This is the only time photos were taken on this trip.

    We started out towards the other guys house but stopped to buy some mangoes. As some of us were waiting for those buying mangoes we saw a man who had a hurt eye so we went over to him and asked if we could pray for him. He said we could so we asked him to wait until our whole group was there and then we prayed for him. He wasn't healed but seemed touched that we would want to pray for him.

As we continued on we cut through the market which was fun but greatly slowed us down and we stopped again, this time to buy little bags of frozen yogurt. It was a super hot day and we did not have any water so the yogurt was amazing. We continued on and after a little bit we asked the guy how much farther it was to his house. He pointed at a distant hill and said he lived at the top of it. At first we wondered if he was joking then we considered just heading back, but decided we were at least half way there so we might as well keep going. We just kept moving and it actually didn't seem to take that long.

We had a good visit with his family and got to meet his mother and sister both of who are Muslim. We shared as much as we could with them and asked if we could pray for them. They seemed hesitant but agreed that we could pray for them. After praying we needed to head back.

We decided to keep heading away from the base towards where we thought one of the main roads would be located and got lucky. We found the road right away and one of the first trucks stopped and agreed to give us a ride. We made it back on base just before one and in time for lunch.