There is no shortage of challenges to doing ministry in a country like Mozambique. There are so many things that we take for granted in the west…such as functioning courier services. It is one of those things that you don’t even realize you’re missing until you need it.
Earlier this year we were able to prepare nearly 600 audio Bibles for the first ever distribution of Scriptures to the Takwane people of central Mozambique. After all the challenges of recording –mastering, getting the blank audio Bibles to Mozambique and then loading the recordings onto the audio Bibles– one challenge still stood in the way: how do we get the audio Bibles to the remote area where the distribution will take place? In America we just pack them up, pay the courier online and wait for a pickup. Here the only thing we can do is drive. So we drove, into the unknown.
Never having visited that remote part of Mozambique and only having a rough map (which has proven itself unreliable more than once) we didn’t really know what to expect. We spent over 30 hours of driving over three days including 400 km of rough dirt to deliver the audio Bibles. Because of our commitments with other projects we couldn’t stay around for the distributions, so after delivering the audio Bibles we had to return the next day. When you sign on as a missionary you never know what roll you will be playing. Sometimes it is what you expect, but more often than not, you are doing the unexpected, but ever so needed. Some days you’re an audio engineer, some days a pastor, some days a delivery man, but all days are good. The audio Bibles arrived safely and the Takwane people are now hearing God’s Word for the very first time.