When David Livingstone crossed Africa from west to east, he hit the coast near to the present Quelimane. In my mind I imagined it was about 60 kms from Chimoio; it was 600.
On the way we crossed the Zambezi on a several kilometer long bridge.
Now, at last, I got to meet Ivan and Ilona (not their real names), about whom I had heard stories. Suffice to say that this alienated-from-each-other Muslim couple were led to Christ and reconciled to each other by Pastor Inocencio. They are now leading the large Igreja de Fonte de Vida (Church of the Fountain of Life) in Quelimane.
I asked Ivan, a fourth generation Muslim, what had most interested him as he approached Christianity for the first time. “Love,” he said. “I never heard about love before.”
I spent a day teaching about the life of Jesus in their church premises. This was the first of Inocencio’s church plants. It used to be in a cinema, but now meets in a communist workers’ complex with a fantastic auditorium and other facilities. It was good to teach the gospel under the hammer and sickle!
The next day they showed me the land they have purchased for a church; it was temporarily in use as a rice paddy.
