Mozambique

Concentrated in the Tete Province of Mozambique there have been well over 100,000 decisions for Christ and good congregational growth in existing churches. Wheresoever has been the catalyst for starting more than 350 new churches across multiple denominations. God has honored us by allowing Wheresoever to witness first hand what He does and how He does it. Pastor and leader seminars are conducted to better train the indigenous leaders. A core ministry team and a large network of Wheresoever Councils have been established to multiply the evangelistic efforts and disciple those who choose to follow Jesus. This is all the result of the simple obedience of two people who years ago sensed the Holy Spirit's leading them to GO, even if just to "prayer walk" the land for Jesus.

Wheresoever has been deeply involved in ministry to Mozambique since 2004. Since then, this ministry has required (and still does) the great majority of Wheresoever ministry effort. The ministry to Mozambique overflows to Malawi and Swaziland. Activities in Southern Africa are coordinated by the Mozambique Core Team, as described in the Who We Are page. Wheresoever Ministries is registered in Mozambique under the name "Ide a Todo o Mundo" (Portuguese for "Go Into All the World"). The mission base in Mozambique consists mostly of full-time team members, all Mozambique citizens or Malawi missionaries to Mozambique who have agreed to relocate to Mozambique for as long as it takes for God to accomplish His purposes. Everyone on the Core Team is fully committed to the work of God and the vision that God has given us for this area of Mozambique. They are all willing to dedicate their lives to Jesus, with no financial gain (at present the ministry is only able to provide most of them with a subsistence allowance to help them eat, and not much else). The team locally based in Mozambique helps to:
- Launch outreaches and crusades.
- Hold inter-denominational services to help ignite local churches (currently 3/week).
- Teach at seminars and the Bible School that we hope to re-start.
- Mentor local pastors.
- Help to build up the local churches.
- Unite the local community in early morning prayer meetings.
- Hold youth and children's seminars.
- Host short term missionary ministry teams from the US and UK.

Outreaches & Crusades

Since we started going to the Tete Province of Mozambique in 2004, more than 80,000 people have embraced Jesus and accepted Him into their lives as their Lord and Saviour. The Holy Spirit keeps moving in more and more hearts, transforming lives, families, villages and towns. Most of the salvations have been as a result of outreaches and crusades by the Wheresoever Core Team, as well as preaching in prisons, funerals, weddings and on the streets. Great effort is being placed now in expanding this so that local pastors and evangelists are able to do this. We help with Bible education, mentoring, as well as by lending transportation, musical equipment and skilled people.

Outreaches normally include praise and worship with music and dancing; introduction of Jesus; presentation of the Word of God through teaching, preaching, drama, dance and flags; prayer for healing, deliverance, etc.; and providing direction for the next steps toward Jesus.

We estimate that many more thousands of persons will turn to Jesus over the next few years. Our goal is that this evangelistic effort will continue whether or not missionaries from the West are involved, until they have all heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We encourage partnerships with other ministries that seek to expand the Kingdom of God in this area of Mozambique.

Orphans

The orphan population in the Tete Province is huge and growing. There are multiple groups of orphans associated with Wheresoever in different districts. We visit them and give them food and small gifts when we can. We have helped some of them to be able to start attending school. In the rural regions, wherever possible, the children remain in their villages with extended family rather than be pulled out of the village and sent to orphanages. Our hope is to improve their physical and spiritual standard of living and a long-term goal is to add a classroom and clinic to each of the new churches planted.

Other aspects are teaching and training community leaders about the need and practical aspects of care for orphans, widows and the elderly. Help establish Care Points as central locations where provisions are distributed. Local churches in the target country as well as western countries are then encouraged to provide physical support to these families through donations of money, food and necessities. When possible, we partner with other similar hearted ministries.

Bibles

Many times when we go into a new area, less than half of the pastors own Bibles. Some cannot read. Pastors/churches are sometimes hard to find in nearby villages, and when found they can be very unprepared. The Lord has blessed us and them by providing donors so that we can provide them with Bibles, mostly in their local language Chichewa, and some in Portuguese in the towns. We never seem to have enough Bibles to fulfill the need. However, in the districts we have targeted, most pastors now own Bibles, as well as many of the leaders.

Bible Training

We had started a Bible training program in local Chichewa language targeting local pastors, but especially new pastors or elders who find themselves leading new congregations, something that in many cases they never imagined they would do. Sadly we had to temporarily discontinue it because the team members that were teaching it needed to go get some training themselves. We are in the first steps of recruiting new volunteers to be able to restore the program, this time with a greater focus on the pastors in the bush. As more funds, resources and missionaries become available we will expand to cover the whole Province. The Bible training will include both remote work allowing students to live in their homes with perioic visits to their villages, and more concentrated time of teaching and direction at the Mission Base. We consider this key to the spiritual health of the multitudes turning to Christ.

The Bible training provided also included many practical aspects. Most of the students are active in the evangelistic efforts in their areas. Some of the the Bible students are even temporarily pastoring new churches, until the congregation becomes mature enough to supply their own leader(s).

Church Planting

Wherever we find a significant number of new Christians, we need to arrange either for a new church to be planted within walking distance, or at least for a pastor or evangelist to visit at least weekly. Our policy is to enthuse the local churches to expand their horizons, avoiding requests for us to start Wheresoever churches. We negotiate with the local pastors for them to start their own new church branches where needed. Then we work with them so that they are more able to produce mature new pastors or elders to lead these new congregations. We also help when we can with the repairing or building of structures to hold church services in. Since we started in Mozambique in 2004, more than 250 new churches have been started – a number much greater than anything we ever expected. THANK YOU JESUS!

In order to do this, we have started seven regional Wheresoever Councils. Each Council is made up of a number of the local pastors from denominations that we can trust (no polygamism, Jesus is God, etc.). Each Council is then responsible for discipling the new Christians, including providing the leaders to do it. We will be forming new Wheresoever Councils in new districts that we have not reached yet or are now just starting to reach into.

Seminars

We hold 3-day or 4-day seminars for pastors, evangelists and other leaders in many of the areas we go. The seminars are targeted both at pastors of churches so they can better disciple the new Christians, and at pastors and evangelists so that they can go out with their own evangelistic campaigns further spreading the love of Jesus over the land. The pastors and leaders are encouraged to bring their wives and husbands. These teachings have proved to be extremely useful in raising maturity levels in the Word of God. In the West we sometimes under-value these seminars since they are so readily available, but the people we target in these places are rarely visited by other

Another great benefit is that in every case, the seminar has formed a unity in the body of Christ that was unexpected. We constantly hear testimonies of how the different denominations are now for the first time working together to reach the lost.

Fresh Water

Our first fresh water project in 2008 was to provide a hospital with running water and repaired taps and sinks. For the previous four years, the hospital only had buckets of water from a well in the town. Since then we have also provided a number of hand dug wells in villages that had no clean water available. Each well capped with cement and with a hand pump. In addition, we have provided a number of tredle pumps for farm irrigation, and hope to be able to provide more as donations become available. There is a need to dig boreholes (machine-dug deep wells) in many areas of great need - including the first place in Mozambique that the Lord called us to - we pray and await additional funding to become available as these are much more expensive than the shallow wells.

Prison and Hospital Visits

Members of the Wheresoever Core Team periodically visit the local hospital and prison. Presentations to patients, prisoners and guards of the gospel message, gifts of food staples and necessities. Follow up visits to mentor inmates and guards. There is so much interest in the prison that we are considering starting an extension of the Bible training there.

Local Outreach

The location of the mission base allows the team to be constantly reaching out to the community. There is always a steady stream of people knocking at the door asking for prayer, at all times of the day or night. Counseling sessions are also common, both with people from the church that meets at the base, but often with people from other churches not willing to share their problems with their pastors. Small street crusades happen all the time, as Jesus' love is shared with their neighbors.