ROBBED!

We have been in the northern city of Nampula for the last few days. We kept busy, doing training sessions, giving talks in church, putting on a marriage seminar, interviewing good people, interviewing not so good people, giving pep talks and generally staying pretty busy.

We were awakened at six am this morning by a call informing us that our house in quelimane had been broken into, our guard beaten, bound and gagged, our bedroom turned upside down and itmes of value taken. After a little more church work in the morning we finally got on the road home,and found the scene much as had even described--though our guard was no longer suspended by his feet from a tree in the back yard. A computer, all of the church money (about $8000 USD) and our own safety net stash (of about $4000) were taken along with an odd assortment of other things: flash drives, hair clippers, duffle bag, dark chocolate, and make up. But leaving passports, credit cards, a movie camera, gps unit, other camera and many fine white shirts and ties--go figure. They were armed with knives and a crowbar according to our guard(who sits in jail tonight under suspicion for complicity). They entered by scaling an adjacent glass-encrusted wall and removing a wall mounted air conditioner and squeezing through the hole. We debate whether to be grateful that we were out of town and thus missed a possible violent confrontation--or regret that our absence created the motive for the robbers. We are leaning to the grateful side--I'm not actually anxious to try out the machete I purchased for emergencies.

We have never had a home invasion before (unless you count the birth of our children). I have read and heard of the emotional trauma that such can create and now am experiencing that surprisingly broad range of emotions myself. We feel violated, wary, suspicious, insecure, angry (actually furious), and grateful. I presume this will subside in time. I have an early morning meeting with the police tomorrow, though we expect little there. I really don't believe that our little guard/gardener is a perpatrator here--and really should endeavor to get him out of the jail tomorrow. We have locked ourselves in as well as we can tonight and have begun making a long list of security issues and changes around here.  I called our mission president in Maputo to tell him of the event.  In his usual compasionate way, he remarked that to be a real mozambican missionary, one must be robbed and have malaria--and "congratulations on being halfway there".