• Enlarging Our Understanding
• Repairing a Relationship
• Living Letters From Christ
• One Body, One Church
• A Mozambican's Questions and Prayers

Mozambican VIM team members sing songs of praise upon their arrival at Ogden Lodge in Troy Conference. Photo by Brenda Arley.

"I'm not sure that you realize how deep your invitation reaches," said João Somane Machado, resident bishop of the Mozambique Annual Conference. It was May 25, 1998, and the bishop, with 10 other members of a Volunteers In Mission (VIM) team from Mozambique, had just arrived at JFK International Airport in New York.

Bishop Machado was addressing representatives of the Troy Annual Conference, which includes Vermont and northeastern New York. In 1996, Troy had invited the Mozambique Annual Conference to form a VIM team to visit Troy Conference and reinvigorate its people and churches for mission, faith development, and spiritual renewal.

"What you are doing with this invitation," Bishop Machado said, "is turning a page in the history of The United Methodist Church. Always missionaries have come to Africa. But never, until now, have missionaries from Africa been invited to North America."

Enlarging Our Understanding

Members of Troy Conference had made their first trip to Mozambique in 1990 at the initiative of Bishop Dale White, then resident bishop, and of Bonnie Totten Adkins of Africa Church Growth and Development. Since then, four VIM teams from Troy Conference had worked in Mozambique: two in 1993 and two in 1995. It was in 1995 that God called us to take a deeper look at mutuality in mission.

Not unlike the story of Jesus' encounter with the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15:21-28, where Jesus was moved to enlarge his understanding of his mission, our 1995 VIM teams envisioned a new concept of reciprocity. Guided by God's grace and moved by our encounter with the Mozambican people, we came away with the understanding that authentic mutuality in our missional relationship could happen only if a VIM team from Mozambique was invited to visit Troy Conference to help us not with physical but with spiritual rebuilding.

Repairing a Relationship

The mission volunteers from Troy Conference knew the blessings inherent in the VIM opportunity. What made that privilege possible was our access to financial resources. We grew deeply disturbed by the imbalance of privilege in our relationship with the United Methodist Church in Mozambique. This time, God was calling us not to reconstruct and repair mission buildings in Chicuque and Cambine but to reconstruct our relationship with our United Methodist brothers and sisters in Mozambique.

When you first arrive in Mozambique, you are welcomed with songs praising God for guests. You worship in churches overflowing with people. Congregations that lack buildings worship under cashew trees. "What accounts for the phenomenal church growth in Mozambique that we have heard about and now see?" asked one of our 1995 VIM team members. A former US missionary in Mozambique replied: "In America, you don't really need to depend on God, do you? People here depend on God for everything."

Living Letters From Christ

In 1995, we experienced the richness of spiritual gifts found in the United Methodist churches in Mozambique. In the face of daily uncertainty of all kinds, the people kept faith. They embraced the stranger with love and extended hospitality. In fact, they referred to us as living letters from Christ, bringing the message that they were loved and not forgotten by the world or the larger church. Once, upon our return to Chicuque after a brief trip, the district superintendent, Victor Mavalule, asked to count our toes. He told an African story about how parents counted the toes of their children upon their return home to see if they were safe and well. So moved were we by experiencing such spiritual gifts and love that we knew God was calling us to invite the Mozambique Conference to come over and help us.

Though the Volunteers In Mission program is based on people's paying their own way, that was not possible in this situation. So we challenged ourselves to raise the money to bring over a team from Africa. Our planning team was guided by its theme scripture, Hebrews 13:1-2. By 1998, with God's help, enough money had been raised to allow an 11-member team from Mozambique to itinerate in Troy Conference for three weeks.

One Body, One Church

This dynamic, spiritually gifted VIM team from Mozambique was present at Troy's 1998 annual conference session. During the meeting, Bishop Machado spoke of the plight of Mozambican children at risk of losing life and limb during outdoor play because they live in a country laced with landmines. He and the other team members told their country's story in a way no returning American VIM teams could do.

Later, the VIM team itinerated in more than a dozen local churches and visited various ministry sites. The team members met with individuals and churches to exchange experiences of faith in God through Jesus Christ. The message from the team was that we were one body, one United Methodist Church. In unity with one another, we would find our strength and wholeness.

By transcending barriers of culture, race, geographic distance, and economic inequity, we experienced true mutuality in our missional relationship. As Bishop Machado wrote after the experience: "Christian love was the bridge between our differences."

Brenda Arley was the Troy Conference Planning Team Coordinator for the visit of the Mozambican VIM team.

A Mozambican's Questions and Prayers

However, because I fully appreciate the value of VIM teams as "repairers of the breach," I invite all people to pray faithfully that God will lead us in the way of His Spirit during the next millennium, a way in which each of us will confirm that we are all children of the same Creator.

Humberto Guibunda was the Team Leader of the 1998 Volunteers In Mission team that visited Troy Conference from Mozambique.

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