I’d like to say a thing or two about marriage. Marriage is the great challenge of the lds mission in Quelimane—and largely all of Mozambique. We have literally scores of people in Quelimane who have been taught by the missionaries, have accepted the gospel, made changes in their lives in order to live by its precepts, have repented of their sins—except for this little problem. No one is legally married here—actually, “no one” is an exaggeration, but only a small one. I would guess that the number here is less than 10% of cohabitating people are married. In large measure, it is not a lack of commitment to each other and their numerous children, it is simply that the formal Mozambican process is painful and expensive—and not really required anywhere else—unless they happen to desire baptism in the LDS faith.
There was a time in local lds history that common law marriage was accepted as valid—but it became a slippery slope with little outward evidence to distinguish its practice from the that of serial philanderers. We now insist that people get married before baptism, which causes great delays and challenges.
The young missionaries are beginning to take Debbie and I with them to discuss marriage with their investigators—it is true that we have a little more experience with the institution than do they and can probably speak to it, its joys and challenges, better than they. Yesterday, we drove out to the mud hut of a family who we had earlier met at church. A very beautiful young mother (19 y/o) of two small children. In type-cast roles that will not surprise you, Manuel was not enthusiastic about the effort and cost of marriage but his wife Dina was more so (though a bit hesitant because she may suspect that Manuel is a jerk). To get to their home, which was in a tidy neighborhood of other mud houses, we had to cross a little pond created by the huge rainstorm earlier in the day (finally some heat-relief). I was able to leap to a midpoint log and make it across, but Debbie, whose middle name is Lynn rather than Nimble, could not. I was so impressed with the New Mozambican Sister Osborn—who simply lifted her skirt a little and waded on through, in order to make it to their home.
It was quite cute—they went to neighbors to borrow chairs so that we could sit. There was no light in the home—so seeing the facial expressions in conversation was very hard. But we had a delightful meeting with them. There is actually something pretty powerful in telling people of 35 years together (I believe that I have shared with many that 28 or so of them (including recent ones) were blissful. Debbie, though she doesn’t speak Portuguese well, always manages to keep up with the gist of what is being said and adds real insight and inspiration at appropriate places. As clearly the most inspired person in the room, she is often asked to pray by the people we visit—which she had done so far in English with me translating—I think that she has wearied of this now and has set her mind to learning to do this on her own.
The phones are often down. The internet is often down. The water is often down. But none of these loom as major trials.
This is the week of transfers and we have lost a couple of very good elders. I will go to the airport tonight at 11 or so to pick up a brand new one and a more experienced one. We had a farewell dinner at the house for all of them on Wednesday and Debbie made spaghetti with mystery south African meat—which turned out very well. Her effort at coconut banana bread was not quite so successful—it being our first attempt at baking in our new oven (which has no temperature markings on its knobs). We are slowly learning how to do things here. We have had some great dinners featuring chicken and potatoes—which seem to be two familiar things that we can count on. Those and tuna, string beans, onions, tomatoes, oranges and apples convince us that we will likely not starve. Mango season is almost upon us—for which I am quite happy.
We have a DHL office here in Quelimane—no postal delivery, but a DHL office. Our daughter Liz got a quote of about $500 to send a 12 lb package to us. Please talk to her if you have an inclination to send us oatmeal raisin cookies via DHL.
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