As Eric would sit and listen to stories from different missionaries about the poverty and war in the places they called home, he would hear stories about hundreds of innocent people dying each day in mass murders and babies being dumped in garbage cans because they could not be taken care of due to poverty.
In these places these missionaries would have their wives, children and granchildren in the midst of this chaos and would daily rely on the hand of their Father to cover, protect and provide everything for them.
As he listened to these testimonies of going into villages and witch-doctors and radicals coming against them in both physical and spiritual ways, and despite the looks of danger and outrage they would take their families in and love on people, they would pray for the sick and needy and see deliverance take place, as this would happen the love and power of the Father would shine through in these dark places and people would be healed and set free, people and villages would turn their hearts to a loving Savior that cared for them now and lives would be changed forever.
The question he would ask himself is, " could I go into these places and put my life at risk for the sake of the Gospel?" Most importanly "Could I take my family , my two small children into these places?". The answer ultimately was yes.
To completely surrender and lay down our lives for the Kingdom did not seem like too much of a sacrifice.
Meanwhile as Holy Spirit was changing Erics heart and transforming it to prepare him for what was to come Holy Spirit was also working in my (Tawnya) heart as well.
I began to get upset with normal Christianity and the redundancy of my life. I felt almost robotic and had a burning desire for something more, something tangible and my compassion for the poor was growing.
I started to read a book that I found randomly on ibooks called Always Enough by Rolland and Heidi Baker. In this book it talks about the beginning of their ministry in Mozambique and the devastation that they were facing in the early 2000s due to severe flooding.
A disaster of this magnitude in an already shaky economy that had hardly recovered from a civil war a few years earlier took a country into complete shambles, the flooding was so horrific that relief teams could not even get into the remote villages before supplies were gone. Most of these villages had to abandon their huts and flee to higher ground, having not seen an outsider for months because no one would travel for days in waist deep water to reach them. The Bakers who are the founders of Iris Ministries took a small handful of volunteers into these places with food, medicine and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
In the city they would pick up orphaned children daily that were thrown out like trash for numerous reasons, to name a few ; their families could not provide for them, their parents had died, either both or just one and the child was abused physically and sexually, forced into prostitution and begging at the common age of 5, Young children with big bloated bellies due to disease and malnourishment
They would take them home possibly for the childs first time and give them a hot bath and new clothes, feed them, sit with them and cuddle for hours.
In a few short years of being in Mozambique the Bakers had several hundred children they were caring for including their own two. They had planted hundreds of churches in the villages they ministered to.
As I would read this book my heart would be wrecked with compassion and love for a country I had never seen. When I finished the book my heart was heavy for Mozambique and Gods un-reached forgotten people.
This compelled us to lay our lives down, and surrender all we had to follow the tug on our hearts for they sake of the gospel.
We attended Harvest School of Missions in Pemba Mozambique October to December 2013. Upon completion and graduation we are serving as long term missionaries under Iris Ministries in the Central- Sofala Province of Mozambique, in a town called Dondo.
We are excited to be used as His hands, His feet and His mouth to people who so desperately need love and kindness.
Thank you for sharing in our dreams,
In these places these missionaries would have their wives, children and granchildren in the midst of this chaos and would daily rely on the hand of their Father to cover, protect and provide everything for them.
As he listened to these testimonies of going into villages and witch-doctors and radicals coming against them in both physical and spiritual ways, and despite the looks of danger and outrage they would take their families in and love on people, they would pray for the sick and needy and see deliverance take place, as this would happen the love and power of the Father would shine through in these dark places and people would be healed and set free, people and villages would turn their hearts to a loving Savior that cared for them now and lives would be changed forever.
The question he would ask himself is, " could I go into these places and put my life at risk for the sake of the Gospel?" Most importanly "Could I take my family , my two small children into these places?". The answer ultimately was yes.
To completely surrender and lay down our lives for the Kingdom did not seem like too much of a sacrifice.
Meanwhile as Holy Spirit was changing Erics heart and transforming it to prepare him for what was to come Holy Spirit was also working in my (Tawnya) heart as well.
I began to get upset with normal Christianity and the redundancy of my life. I felt almost robotic and had a burning desire for something more, something tangible and my compassion for the poor was growing.
I started to read a book that I found randomly on ibooks called Always Enough by Rolland and Heidi Baker. In this book it talks about the beginning of their ministry in Mozambique and the devastation that they were facing in the early 2000s due to severe flooding.
A disaster of this magnitude in an already shaky economy that had hardly recovered from a civil war a few years earlier took a country into complete shambles, the flooding was so horrific that relief teams could not even get into the remote villages before supplies were gone. Most of these villages had to abandon their huts and flee to higher ground, having not seen an outsider for months because no one would travel for days in waist deep water to reach them. The Bakers who are the founders of Iris Ministries took a small handful of volunteers into these places with food, medicine and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
In the city they would pick up orphaned children daily that were thrown out like trash for numerous reasons, to name a few ; their families could not provide for them, their parents had died, either both or just one and the child was abused physically and sexually, forced into prostitution and begging at the common age of 5, Young children with big bloated bellies due to disease and malnourishment
They would take them home possibly for the childs first time and give them a hot bath and new clothes, feed them, sit with them and cuddle for hours.
In a few short years of being in Mozambique the Bakers had several hundred children they were caring for including their own two. They had planted hundreds of churches in the villages they ministered to.
As I would read this book my heart would be wrecked with compassion and love for a country I had never seen. When I finished the book my heart was heavy for Mozambique and Gods un-reached forgotten people.
This compelled us to lay our lives down, and surrender all we had to follow the tug on our hearts for they sake of the gospel.
We attended Harvest School of Missions in Pemba Mozambique October to December 2013. Upon completion and graduation we are serving as long term missionaries under Iris Ministries in the Central- Sofala Province of Mozambique, in a town called Dondo.
We are excited to be used as His hands, His feet and His mouth to people who so desperately need love and kindness.
Thank you for sharing in our dreams,