Isaac And Brittany .com

Some of you may have read my post in June about Minito the boy who the Lord directed me to. In the ensuing months I had to deal with the cultural and personal issues surrounding being friends with an 11 year old in Mozambique. First of all most of the children from the village love to come to the Iris base because the westerners play with them and sometimes give them things (shirts, chocolate, etc) Actually they have become proficient at minipulating the new visitor into giving them stuff. They sell the clothes often and buy cookies or whatever else they want. I learned that since I had shown special attention to Minito that there were extra expectaions. Minito would not settle with being treated the same as everyone else and would walk off in a huff if I gave somthing to someone else. Isaac became a vending machine. The other thing is that the majority of Mozambiquan parents dont show a lot of affection/attention to their children. 'Play' was lost during Portugese rule and oppression of the Makuah people. The children arent just there for stuff (although that is the initial reason) they stay and grow attached because of love. I had to learn to ignore the games/minipulations and just find ways to have fun, to joke, to play. I saw the fruit. Under the tent one day we were all worshiping and the Spirit of God came in power, everbody was just getting wrecked. Minito came in and was following me around. I decided to do an experiment. I thought 'Minito knows Jesus and so the Holy Spirit lives inside of him...Im gonna have him pray for people' As we went around praying for people (Id direct him to put his hands on someones shoulder for example) People started falling over and Minito became a praying machine. He was so excited that God was using him to touch people! Another time that was really touching was when I learned that he was not going to school when I confronted him he just began to cry. He cried and cried and after that he almost always went to school. We became really good friends. It showed me that even when people just want to use you, when you love them it overwhelms everything else. Minito walked to the airport(2 miles) the day we were leaving just to say goodby. This time we both cried and I knew that God had put us together to teach us both how to love.