THE STORY SO FAR
Between 1998 and 2003 we had visited Mozambique three times, we being Jeff and Helen Wakeman. On two of these occasions, we lived and worked with Pastor Anacleto Ferrao and his wife Carmelia at the Beach House in Beira. Originally the Beach House had been set up as a Christian Guest House, Retreat and Training Centre by Ron and Dorothy Davies, an English couple who ran a Christian literature charity called Global Literature Lifeline. In 2001 the charity decided that its emphasis in the future needed to be in a slightly different direction, so it could no longer warrant running a Guest House etc, in Beira. Rather than see it returned to the governments property letting department and its ministry discontinued, they offered the Beach House to Anacleto and Carmelia.

We where both working in education at the time, and had already planned to come to Beira during their summer vacation. We had been asked by some missionary friends there, if they felt they could help out at the Beach House in return for all the help Global Literature Lifeline had given them when they first came to Beira. Since both of us had done DIY and arranging and catering for Wedding Receptions amongst their hobbies, they accepted the challenge of helping out in a Guest House in bad need of a little TLC.

A few days before we flew out, we received the news that the Beach House had changed hands but our help would still be appreciated, so we decided we should go as promised. When we arrived in Beira, it was to find that Anacleto and Carmelia had only moved in a fortnight before from a tenth storey apartment with no lift and no running water. Neither of them had run a Guest House before, or been involved with catering or the hospitality industry, so were on a very steep learning curve and very pleased to have some help.

Although we had never met before, this meeting was definitely God ordained, because all four of us just felt a bond develop between us from the first day we met, and that bond has continued to grow and develop over the intervening years. Within about ten days of our arrival Anacleto had to fly to Kenya as part of his work with FHI (Food for the Hungry International) and Carmelia had to go down to Maputo for a family funeral, so we were asked to run the house while they were gone. Even though we knew very little about Beira, the Beach House or anything else in Africa, we thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and fell in love with the country and the people.

We returned again in 2003 for another seven weeks working with Anacleto and Carmelia, and this strengthened the relationship between us all and it also strengthened our love for Mozambique and its people. When we came to return home early in September, we found it very hard to say goodbye. We both had this strong feeling that this was our home now, and any return to England was going to be temporary. What we didn’t know, was just how temporary it was going to be.

When we arrived back in England, it was to find that our landlord wanted to talk to us about selling the cottage we rented from him. Although he was more than willing to give us first refusal, if we couldn’t raise the money to buy it then we would have to find somewhere else to live. In addition, when I (Jeff) returned to the college I taught at, it was to find that my normal one year contract as a part-time lecturer was only going to be for three months, until questions regarding student numbers and full-time staffing had been answered. So both began to consider the possibility that God wanted us somewhere else, and we started talking about the possibility of returning to Mozambique.

It was whilst we were talking about this possibility, that a friend said, ‘Why don’t you contact this BBC Programme - Get a New Life’? Our immediate reaction was, ‘that’s not how God works; you try and convince your friends and family to sponsor you or do a few fundraisers, you don’t get a TV company to pay your expenses’! After about the fifth person had mentioned the idea and named the same TV programme, we both came to the conclusion that God was trying to get something through to our peanut brains. So we downloaded the application form from the programmes web site, only to find it consisted of a long questionnaire and a requested that said; ‘if you want to be seriously considered for this programme, you will need to send us a short video about yourselves with this application.

It was at this point that the we decided to check that we were hearing God correctly, so we sent the questionnaire back with the shortest possible answers to most of the questions, and no video. We knew that if God was in it, then the TV company would pick it up and run with it, but if God wasn’t in it didn’t want to do the programme anyway. The company contacted us just before Christmas 2003, and asked if they could send a researcher down to talk with us. It wasn’t until after this interview that we discovered the researcher that had been sent to interview them was herself a Christian. A few days after the interview, we received a phone call to say we had passed into the next phase of the selection process, and could two more researchers for a further interview on the 23rd of January 2004?

Nobody told us how many phases there where to the selection process, so we just expected this to be an even more in-depth question and answer session. Even when the two researchers manipulated the seating arrangement so that we had their backs to the lounge window, we still didn’t suspect that we had been set up. As they were talking, Helen was suddenly aware of something moving across the daylight that was streaming in through the window, and before should could do more than exclaim there was a knock at the door. When we answered the door it was to find the shows two presenters outside with a full camera crew.

On giving a positive answer when asked if we still wanted to start a ‘new life’ in Mozambique, we were told they had three and a half weeks in which to pack everything and the company would fly them to Mozambique. Not only that, but they would pay all our expense for the first month and try to help us find accommodation and paid employment. This was a real blessing to us. Especially since God had been talking to us about going out on the same basis as the Apostle Paul and working to cover the majority of our own needs, rather than looking to the family or the church for sponsorship that would cover our expenses as well as the ministry’s.

Packing up over thirty years of married life in just three and a half weeks was not easy, especially when much of it is being filmed. Even in this, we saw God at work. During the early part of the filming we had been asked what were the things we would miss when we went to Mozambique, and had told the presenters that two things we would really miss were ‘snow’ and ‘ the deer that came into our garden occasionally. Right on cue God sent one night of snow, and a visit from the deer. Both happened when the crew were on hand to film it, and in the case of the deer they only stopped by to drop of some equipment but God’s timing was perfect. The deer shots even got into the final cut, when they edited their sixty hours of filming into a sixty minute show.

On February 15th 2004 we flew to Beira with the television crew, and both of us thoroughly enjoyed making the TV programme with them. The five days and two evenings a week you were contracted to be available for filming, was never a burden because the guys were just great to work with. Their supportive attitude and sensitivity made it easy even when we got mugged returning from a Sunday Evening Service. The only pity was, that they made it sound on the programme as though it was the mugging that stopped us from going out in the evening, whereas we had never gone out in the evening when we were in Beira except to walk home from the Sunday Evening Service through what we had always understood was a safe area. It just isn’t safe to go walking around in many city centres in the third world after dark, if you are a foreigner. People equate the colour of your skin with the size of your wallet normally, and we knew before we started that seeing us around town with a film crew would only make us more of a target. For all that, a mugging is still not a pleasant experience when it includes the use of a very large chef’s knife to reinforce the threat.

Our month in Beira passed quickly, and even though the TV company found us a beautiful flat overlooking the Indian Ocean and tried very hard to help us find work, we were not able to do everything in that month that was necessary for us to stay. Even though this meant we had to come back to England, we had succeeded in finding a way by which we could return to Mozambique to live. We could register a company there, and this would allow us to obtain residency permits and earn a living. Praise God, the money we had left out of our expenses allowance from the television company was exactly what it cost us for the first phase of the registration process.

Returning to England was difficult to do, and if there had been some way we could have staid in Mozambique we would have, but returning was also a blessing. While we were back in England, we registered the Educational Charity called Words of Wisdom (UK) with the object of providing help to the over 16 age group. We did this because we had learnt from our various visits to Beira, that once you were 16+ most of the big charities considered you were capable of helping yourself. So this had created a situation where there where many young to middle aged people who wanted to work, but didn’t have the skills necessary to either start on the career ladder or climb it above a certain point. Through Words of Wisdom (UK), we wanted to help them by offering the right training at the right price (we have learnt that if something has no cost it has no value, and in education this results in low attendance and high drop out rates). At the same time we also registered Words of Wisdom Lda in Mozambique, to act as the delivery arm of Words of Wisdom (UK), as well as provide us with a way of covering most of our own living expenses.

So on the 15th of May 2004 we returned to Mozambique to stay!!!