I don’t think I have ever had so many second thoughts about leaving a place before. I was able to spend the last week at our field bases training my replacement and saying my goodbyes. I don’t think I can express in words how much I have grown to love the people here. I actually think that God hand picked the greatest Mozambiquan’s and brought them all to work with Samaritan's Purse.
It’s a tradition that at your last staff devotions in Guija you must share some sort of great parting wisdom to people before you leave them. Well I have realized that I am lacking in the great wisdom department so I shared with them what they have taught me over the last year. I thought that I would share that with the rest of you.
Love, humility and compassion are the three main things that I have learned in Mozambique. I am amazed at the way our staff love on each other. It seems like they are constantly helping each other. If someone is struggling to get their work done, no matter what program they work for someone always seems to pitch in to get it done. But that doesn’t seem to stop with just work duties. If someone needs help in their personal lives there always seems to be someone stepping up to the plate to offer a hand. They truly serve each other. I have seen numerous times how they will put their own agendas aside to help others that need it. I have seen them rejoice together with births, weddings, accomplishments and also grieve together as family members die, homes are destroyed and losses are experienced. To me this is the love that God desires so much for all of us to live out.
One of the challenges in working for an NGO is that our national staff are often managed by young, inexperienced staff like myself. Many of our staff have been working for us since 2001 and managers come and go as their contracts expire. A new manager means that things will be changing one again. I can only imagine what thoughts would easily go through their minds. Things like “I am old enough to be your father, why should I listen to you?” or “You don’t understand how things work here, just do it my way”. Yet I have never heard or felt any of this pride from them. They have respected those in authority and have had patience with our inexperience and lack of knowledge. Yet as I leave they continue to express how much they have learned from me! If only the rest of us could operate with that level of humility.
Day after day our staff go out into the communities and see the people of their country suffering. They work with people dying from AIDS, families with only enough food to feed their children one more meal, and children raising children because everyone else in their families have died. They have a few resources to feed the hungry, give medicine to the sick and construct houses for those in need, yet the need still seems so great. I know they suffer when they have to decrease the amount of food to distribute because there isn’t enough money. I also know that they often feel helpless and overwhelmed yet somehow they are given the strength to show compassion to the people that they meet. It can only be God who continues to keep their hearts soft and keeps pushing them forward as the situations pull them down. Then at the end of the day they go home to their families and realize their own needs and see the suffering in their own families. I pray that I will have that same compassion in the midst of my circumstances.
So I left those wonderful people behind after more than a few tears shed but yet a pocket full of beautiful gems that I can only hope to hold onto and share with those in Sudan. I will never forget the impact that these people have had on my life and I truly hope that I can work with them again. I don’t say this as a nice Christian cliché at the end of my posting but I really mean it. Please pray for them. Please pray that they are able to hold on to those gifts of love, humility and compassion so that they can change Mozambique for God’s glory.
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