Story Time!!!

So, Tuesday I went with Janice (the SIM director here) to church to do crafts with the women. At least that's what we were supposed to do, but no one showed up. This is something I have discovered about life in Lichinga. You make plans, but don't plan on them actually happening. If they do happen, great, and don't expect them to happen on time. Plans change all the time and quite often you don't even do what you set out to do in the first place, as was the case on Tuesday.

What I really wanted to talk about though was something we noticed on the way to the church. We noticed that a bunch of the houses, and other buildings, had flour sprinkled around the perimeter. Janice wasn't sure what it was and said she had never seen that before. Twice she stopped the car and asked some people along the road why there was flour circling the houses. Both times they replied that they had no idea what it was for. When we got to the church Janice asked the pastor if he know why there was flour around the houses. He told her that it is to protect the house from the spirits. The people will pay the witch doctors up to 2,000 mets (which is quite a lot of money; 27 mets = 1 dollar) to put the four around their house. The reason the people we asked would not tell us what it was for was because it is thought that if you say what the flour is for, then the spirits will know it's only flour and it will no longer protect the house.

It was a huge cultural revelation for me and I was stuck by the fact that they would pay so much money to have a witch doctor put flour around the house. It's such a different world than we have in the US and the spirit realm is very real to them and terrifying. These people really need the love of Christ and the knowledge that God alone can save them from anything, even the spirits.

Yesterday I went horse-back riding :) It was absolutely wonderful, but made me miss my horse back home. It was great to get out of town and bit and see some of the surrounding countryside. It's beautiful. Above are some pictures that I took on the ride.