Easter in Maputo

Our first Easter in Maputo, Mozambique, (1986) we went with a Mennonite family and an Anglican couple to the park that overlooks the Indian Ocean. We sat out of sight beneath an arbor of vines, reading the Biblical story, singing quietly and praying for each other until the sun rose over the water. By the next year the Mennonite family had left the country, victim of the stress of living with civil war in the poorest country on earth. But a few other English speakers had arrived.

I remember coming to the park in the pre-dawn gray of the morning, pretending with our two little girls that we were the women, arriving early at the tomb to grieve, wary of the soldiers and worried that we might not be able to move the stone and sprinkle the spices we had brought for the body of Jesus. We tried to imagine what it would be like to not yet know that Jesus had conquered death forever.

By 1990, our last year in Mozambique, the community of English-speaking missionaries and aid workers had grown and formed an international church. Although we attended a local Shangan service, the girls went to the English Sunday school, and the church always included us in their monthly potluck meals.

In the spring of 1990 Mozambique was just emerging from Marxist-Leninist rule. Our gathering was still illegal. Pieter Botha, a godly South African pioneer missionary, now in heaven, went to the Ministry of Religious Affairs to ask permission for us to celebrate the resurrection in the park. “Don’t ask,” was the answer. “Better to apologize after if necessary.”

This time there were close to a hundred and fifty people seated on a broad staircase, gazing out to sea. The children performed a drama. We sang and praised God openly for what he did for us in Jesus Christ. As we arrived, a soldier approached from the military base only a few hundred yards to the south.

“What are you doing here?” he asked gruffly.

“Don’t you know?” Pieter Botha replied. “Today is the day the Lord rose from the dead.”

The soldier looked confused. “Oh…. Oh.” And he backed away.

After the service, the church gathered as usual for Easter breakfast at our house. We had the largest yard, much of it paved and shaded by a huge mango tree and an arbor of passion fruit. That year we had a gifted cellist and an accomplished violinist in Maputo. They played all the way through breakfast, reluctant to stop even to eat. I have talked with the cellist recently, and that Easter morning is still one of her most precious memories as it is mine.

Mozambique was the most difficult thing God has ever asked me to do. My novel, The Wooden Ox, had to be written from the point-of-view of a child because my own adult view would have been too depressing. But every year when Easter comes, there is a warm feeling in my heart for the fellowship we knew, for the dependence on God that we clung to in order to survive, for the certainty that we were exactly where God wanted us to be. I don’t know if there will be Christians in that park tomorrow morning to greet the sun with songs of the resurrection. I do know that Christ is risen and that has made all the difference in my life.