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 From September 30 to October 14, our team of eight (Pat Suer, Jay Preston, Bryan Arold, Chris Orcutt, Kristina Ryan, Marita Nelson, Day Kilness, and Ellen Chalifoux) went to Mozambique to help Woodland Hills missionaries Gus and Alice Henrici by putting a roof on their new house.
The trip there was an adventure all by itself. We had four flights-and then a seven-hour drive to our destination, Lichinga, Mozambique. Our first flight was delayed, and we had only 10 minutes before our next flight left. We barely made it! Our last flight from Nairobi, Kenya, to Lilongwe, Malawi, was delayed five hours. When we finally arrived at 5:30 pm, it was too late to drive to the Malawi-Mozambique border, which closed at 6. But the airline paid for a night at a nice hotel, and we all enjoyed a good night’s sleep for the first time in several days.
We left early the next morning, hoping to get to Lichinga by 3 pm. Gus and Keith, another member of the Lichinga team, each drove a truck with four passengers. But after two hours, Gus’s truck broke down. You can’t just call a tow truck in rural Africa, so Gus tied a tow rope from Keith’s truck to his, and we headed for Blantyre, Malawi. There we could drop off Gus’s truck for repair, and another member of the team had a truck in storage that we could use. We traveled at about 60 miles an hour on a two-lane highway, passing many pedestrians and people on bicycles-towing Gus’s truck (with passengers) behind us! The tow rope broke or came loose several times, and Gus’s truck rear-ended Keith’s twice. It was a struggle for nervous passengers to keep their mouths shut!
But we dropped off Gus’s truck, picked up a replacement, and made it to the border in time to get our papers processed and cross just before it closed. From there it was a three-hour drive on unpaved, rutted roads to Lichinga-another bumpy, adventurous leg of the journey!
After leaving Minneapolis at 3:30 pm Friday, the team finally arrived in Lichinga at 9 pm Monday. We were amazed that in spite of all the delays and problems, we arrived in good spirits. We knew that couldn’t have happened without God!
As we began to lay out the roof trusses and put them together on Tuesday and Wednesday, we thought the biggest challenges were behind us. Little did we know the journey had just begun.
 On Thursday, after we had been in Africa five days, two of our team members came down with malaria. Chris’s case responded well to treatment, but Kristina’s did not. She had a very high fever-105.9! The medicine seemed to work for a few hours, but then the fever and chills would come back. After two days of this cycle, a doctor was called, and Kristina was put on a quinine drip on Saturday. We were shocked to realize how serious things had gotten, and we prayed desperately, knowing there was nothing more we could do. It was up to God to make the treatment work.
We talked about flying Kristina to South Africa, where she could get better treatment, if she didn’t improve very soon. After two doses of the quinine, on Sunday morning she seemed a lot better. It was such a relief-but then her fever returned. What an emotional day! Again we decided that if she didn’t improve by the next morning, she would have to be taken to South Africa. She had a rough night, but by Monday morning Kristina had improved significantly, and that night she ate dinner with the team for the first time in many days. We were very grateful to God, and to all those who prayed for Kristina.
Kristina says she wasn’t disappointed in the trip after being sick for much of it-she had a great experience, even though it was different from everyone else’s and not what she expected. She felt God’s peace and unconditional love like never before as members of the team and the missionaries cared for her.
In the meantime, we continued with the construction. Thursday and Friday we had attached the support plates to the trusses and put up the top plates. On Saturday while we were putting the roof trusses up, the board supporting the trusses came loose from two of them, and they fell toward each other, with Bryan in between. He fell from the roof toward the concrete floor. Thank God, he landed on a plastic barrel. The barrel absorbed most of the impact, and Bryan bounced off of it, hit a metal doorframe, and landed on a pile of bricks. Again, it was a very scary time! After he landed on his back, it seemed like he had broken it or at least cracked some ribs. We wondered about what kind of medical treatment we’d be able to get for him in Lichinga. But though his ribs were bruised and he was scraped up pretty badly, he was ok. In fact, he got back up on the roof an hour later! Again, we saw God at work protecting us.
 By the end of the day Saturday, all the trusses were up. Monday and Tuesday we put support pieces across the trusses, where the metal sheeting would be attached. The sheeting itself didn’t arrive until after we had left-the truck that carried it had broken down along the way. Still, we accomplished a lot.
More than that, God accomplished a lot in us. He showed us that He’s in control, and taught us to rely on Him and trust Him in those times when we know there’s nothing more that we can do. He taught us about the power of prayer-that when people pray amazing things happen. We learned that Africa’s not so far away and the people there are just like us. Their suffering no longer seems so far removed that we can ignore it.
We gained a new perspective on our lives, an awareness of all the distractions that keep us from focusing and depending on God. During our time in Africa, everything we did seemed so significant. We were dealing with life and death, and what we were doing really mattered. It gave us a desire to do more significant things with our time and our lives once we got home.
God also gave us a real taste of what it’s like for Gus and Alice as missionaries in Africa. They deal with the threat of malaria and other diseases day after day, with few medical resources. Water has to be purified before drinking, and mosquito netting is a necessity. Gas isn’t always available in Lichinga, there’s a limited variety of food, and they have to drive hundreds of miles to get meat that’s safe. All the houses have bars on the windows. There’s red clay dust everywhere, all the time. And as they share God’s love with the people, the missionaries fight a continual spiritual battle.
I went on a short-term mission trip to Africa for an adventure. I got much more than I expected-I grew closer to God, learned a lot, made unforgettable new friends, and had two of the most meaningful weeks of my life.
For more information and photos from this trip click here www.raisingtheroof.blogspot.com
For more information on short-term mission trips, click here.
For more information on Woodland Hills missionaries Gus and Alice Henrici, click here.
article by Ellen Chalifoux
e-mail her at ellenc@usfamily.net |
