This summer we got ourselves some interns here at the orphanage. “Summer?”, you ask. Yes, because it’s the southern hemisphere in Mozambique (don’t make me draw a map again) and school break is Nov-Jan. “Interns?” you ask. Yes, because we sure needed the extra hands on deck they were halfway through Bible School and looking to do something kind of Jesus-y for the summer.
Daniel grew up in the orphanage here and we sent him down to Bible School last year after he finished 10th grade. He’s probably 21 years old, give or take, and of all the kids here he’s probably the second hardest worker when it comes to helping out with chores and asking for more responsibility. He returned this summer not to stay with us but to come and intern for us. He and the other two guys all lived a couple clicks away at Victor’s Dad’s Church because it has guest housing. This was no little adjustment for Daniel, who wasn’t commuting from home to work, but was more like going to work and home. He always arrived hours before the other two and was busy helping out with chores and his tasks for the day.
Silmone is a kid from our church and his mom is one of the two women that cook for us on the weekdays. He is definitely the most passionate and emphatic public speaker of the bunch and a very hard worker just like Daniel. He’s a little more on the side of “If this isn’t completed in two minutes Europe is going to explode” kind of hard worker, whereas Daniel just gets it done without complaining. I asked Silmone to grab my wallet after I left it in the car. You’d have thought we got pushed to DEFCON 1 because he was so serious and urgent to get back to the car and fetch my wallet before the Ruskies nuked us.
Vincent is from Malawi and we had no idea who he was until Victor and Christina went down to pick up Daniel for Summer Break. Turns out that, to make a long story short, Vincent is from Malawi, orphaned, and putting himself through Bible School. When Daniel and Silmone met him they were so taken by his story and how arrived there that God moved them to start supporting him and help pay his way out of the money we were sending them to go to school. Because learned Portuguese from spending a few years living in Mozambique, and otherwise speaks “English”. I put it in quotes because I have an easier time understanding him in Portuguese because of all the differences between his and my English.
We had these guys do a little bit of everything for us. We gave them bits of pieces of administrative work so they could see that around here its not all fun and games.
We also got them helping with a lot of my responsibilities, meaning I got to just sit back and relax and wait for them to bring me coffee and go pick up my lunch order. Just kidding. But they were working in the kitchen, serving every meal, leading devotionals at night, going out and buying our food for each month, turning in paperwork and reports, and so on.
Among the other things they got to do was to preach and teach every Sunday in church. Before the service, on would teach Sunday school for the kids, and the second would teach the adult class, and the third would get to preach. They’d rotate every week. We’d figured on giving them as much practice as they wanted as this is all what they are going to be doing hopefully in the future.
Each kid that enters the Bible School has an interview to both consider their character, so the instructors can begin to get to know the kids, and so they can see what remedial reading they need to do to get their basic level of theology up to par so they aren’t raising their hand in class the second week and asking who this Jesus guy is the instructor keeps mentioning. Daniel and Silmone were two of the small handful that passed the theology benchmark and were told their knowledge is up to par. That’s a good reflection on us and Victor and his preaching/teaching. Unfortunately, it didn’t mean that there wasn’t a few theological bumps along the way.
One Sunday in Church Daniel preached about how how our church is deep in sin because we don’t have restrooms or enough benches for everyone to sit in. The point he wanted to make was that not tithing is a sin and that’s why our church is without these things. He probably just got excited and confused in the rush of things. Silmone condemned our church and chastised us for not washing each other’s feet, something that Jesus commanded of us. Unfortunately for Silmone, his sermon prep stopped just before reading the verse where Jesus actually explains what he was doing. And the biggest “What?” of all came when Vincent started teaching Sunday school one week by saying “In this week I’m going to teach about the three circles of hell.” This resulted in about 40 hands shooting up in the air in confusion.
I refrained from asking, “What in hell are you talking about?” partly because it seemed too easy, partly because it was way too crass for church, and partly because I really wanted to know what the three circles of hell were. I still don’t know…
As we talked about it, all these gaffes resulted from them just being too excited and too in the moment to fully realize what they were talking about. Except for the circles of hell. I think that resulted from Vincent walking in to catch the last five minutes of a lecture at Bible school, it sounding really interesting, and then running with it because it just seemed too interesting to pass up.
Except for a few small goofs here and there, the three of them were a tremendous help to us here and all the kids loved having them around for a few weeks. Hopefully they’ll be able to have as great an impact where they end up working/serving after they finish Bible School.
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