Sons of God's Generals: Unlocking the Power of Godly Inheritance (3 page)

People often ask me a question that in my mind has become infamous: “What was it
like?
” They are undoubtedly referring to my upbringing. What was it
like
to grow up in Africa, and not only that, but with parents who have great demands on their time and have become celebrities in the charismatic Christian world. People ask this question with sincerity and genuine interest, so I feel a small stab of guilt when my shoulders start hunching and I start mildly stuttering some kind of poor answer that includes things like, “There were good things… there were difficult things…I wouldn’t have traded the experience….” These kinds of responses offer little substance to those who ask, but I’ve always felt it was simply too broad of a question for me to handle properly. How do I sum up my childhood in a succinct and meaningful answer? What is it that people are most interested in? I used to joke that I should write a book entitled
What It Was
to hand out in response to people’s questions, instead of my awkward and vague, stammering replies. I never imagined I actually might do it. Interestingly enough, the opportunity presented itself to write this chapter, so here I’ll do my best to describe a bit of my experience and include a few of the highlights and struggles I encountered while navigating my own identity and journey with the Lord.

My focus will be our time spent as a family in Mozambique, a country in southeast Africa labeled the poorest nation in the world at the time we moved there. It had been ravaged by years of war, first one for independence from Portugal and then a brutal civil war. Mozambique has since been labeled the most peaceful country in Africa with one of the fastest-growing economies. That fact alone should encourage you that literally anything is possible. I was, however, already eight when we moved there, so here is a brief overview of our prior life in Asia, England, and our brief stay in the US.

I was born in Hong Kong, the fourth generation on my dad’s side to be born in Asia. The city name is all that’s listed on my passport because it was a British colony at the time, and therefore neither England nor China. My mom was swollen all over with toxemia during the pregnancy and was told I would be born damaged or dead, but miraculously I was born completely healthy. I’ve been told about the nine flights of stairs we took up to a cramped apartment in a somewhat sketchy building in one of the most crowded square miles on the planet. But my only vivid memories of those first several years in Hong Kong involve loving Chinese food in pre-school, practicing writing Chinese characters, and walking through packed and colorful streets watching giant puppets dance around.

Then for three years in England I attended a private British school, developed a British accent, and experienced my first real ministry memories. My parents started a church there and ran an outreach where I remember being bundled up at night, warmed by tinfoil-wrapped baked potatoes I would help pass out to weathered homeless men on the street. London is also home to my first memory of being extremely tired at the end of a night church service and either grabbing on to my parents and informing them it was time to go or falling asleep on the floor. Again, our family of four lived in a small apartment that was constantly filled with all types of people, including polished lawyers who worked with us and would become our first African missionaries, and also the poor who needed warmth and community.

Although my parents have since told me how poor we actually were during the earlier days of their ministry, I never noticed lack of any kind. I have very fond memories of England. Like a lot of my life, it was a filled with vastly different types of people and experiences ranging from frolicking with our rough collie in Hyde Park to going to a posh private school to the aforementioned chilly nights of street ministry to home groups where I caught lice more than once. When I think of our eclectic group of family friends who felt like my extended family, I realize early on I was exposed to both rich and poor, the polished and the rough around the edges, and therefore learned by my parents’ example to be no respecter of persons. My mother was raised in an upper middle class family in Laguna Beach and has become as comfortable and confident in remote bush villages as in five-star venues or hotels. I like to think some of that versatility has rubbed off on me. She also has an extraordinary ability to make people feel loved and honored regardless of status, and she is incredibly fun—traits I love and feel I’ve learned so much from.

Notoriety is something no one in my family has ever sought, so it’s rather hilarious that my parents’ names have become as well known as they are. I have vague memories of my parents discussing moving to Africa, and thinking to myself it sounded like a rather logical thing to do. After a brief year-long stay in a California mountain home, Mom had finished her PhD and we were ready to move again.

My brother Elisha and I flew to South Africa via Malaysia with our dog Nicky in tow, hopped in Mom’s truck, and spent the night with a family who served us warthog pie. Like most things at the time, eating warthog seemed different to say the least, but not overly strange. I just tried to not imagine Lion King’s Pumbaa. The next day we drove to the South African and Mozambican border, where in later years, while waiting for our car to be searched, my parents were offered cows for my hand in marriage on at least one occasion.

I vividly remember the day I crossed the Mozambican border for the first time. As soon as our wheels hit Mozambican soil, everything changed. Paved roads gave way to dirt ones filled with cratered potholes, and buildings gave way to open fields. We sang “Shine Jesus Shine” to pass the time, and our voices shook uncontrollably with each word while our truck flew over the bumps. Abandoned, rusting, shot-up vehicles littered the side of the road the entire way to the capital city of Maputo. They were remnants from a recent war conflict and reminders of the continued danger. My father not long before had miraculously escaped having his car shot through by bandits on his first trip down that same road. His car broke down at the border but after he managed to turn it around it began running perfectly. Meanwhile the car that drove in ahead of him was found ripped apart by bullet holes. Despite the car skeletons dotting the Mozambican landscape, I never once felt afraid. It simply never crossed my mind that I wouldn’t be safe, even when later down the road some experiences tested that theory.

I believe that when you follow a calling from God, even if you make some mistakes there’s provision for your kids. My parents tell stories today that sound justifiably intense, but I remember feeling a lot of peace in those moments. Honestly, I think the same sense of safety I felt crossing into the war-torn border of Mozambique sheltered me during the earlier years in some potentially dangerous situations. Our first children’s center was in Chihango, a plot of land outside Maputo. My parents were given the responsibility of caring for the street kids there who were essentially starving under so-called government care. In Chihango we often heard gunshots and witch doctor chants outside our house. I remember the chanting more than I do the gunfire. I grew up knowing the demonic was real because I saw it all the time. Watching the demonized get delivered was a fairly common occurrence. The chanting was eerie, especially because it was directed at our destruction, but I knew it wasn’t something to be afraid of. Our God was surely more powerful. That’s not to say we weren’t in a battle. Multiple kids woke up in the night feeling physically strangled and oppressed during that time. Today some of those same street kids cared for in Chihango are now empowered adults helping lead other Iris centers.

Another potentially frightening experience involved a car wreck in the rain after a trip through Kruger National Park. Our truck rolled in the air three times and landed upside down in a ditch. In shock, I started yelling, “I can’t feel my legs!” It might have been the scariest thing my mom has ever heard, but once a suitcase was lifted off me I was able to stand up and calm down. My brother was lying down, bleeding from head to toe from shards of shattered glass. He’s one of the least dramatic people I know in panicky situations and has a bone-dry sense of humor, so he was still cracking one-liners, calm as ever. Staff from a local mission saw us and stopped. They took us in and miraculously managed to salvage our completely totaled truck. We dubbed it Lazarus, a name that stuck through the following years of rough use. That mission in White River, South Africa, has remained connected to Iris to this day. Two years later I removed a shard of glass from my knee, leaving behind my only scar. My dad was speaking at our Chinese home church in California at the time of the accident, and when he shared what happened people literally came up to the altar and threw their car keys on the offering plate. It was that kind of humbling gesture that always reminded us we had a global family cheering us on.

Certain experiences have made me believe perhaps the Lord honors courage and faith whether or not wisdom is involved. Perhaps surprisingly, the only time I’ve been personally threatened with a weapon was while riding on a
chapa
, a Mozambican bus that typically crams on as many people as humanly possible. I was taking a ride to the city with a female missionary, a few elderly female visitors, and a couple of our Mozambican youth. A group of ominous-looking men at the front of the bus suddenly rushed to the back where we were sitting and effectively blocked our exit. A few of them simultaneously pulled out knives in front of us while some others pulled out screwdrivers and other tools. I suppose advanced weaponry wasn’t readily available. One reached around inside my jacket demanding a phone, one grabbed the elderly woman’s necklace next to me, and one demanded the missionary’s purse, which contained not an inconsequential amount of money for Iris.

Funnily enough, despite our proximity to the knives, no one gave in easily. The missionary, frightened but stubborn, grabbed her purse and said, “No.” I grew annoyed and said repeatedly I had no phone on me. And then came the best moment of the day—the white-haired woman on my left started gnawing on the man’s hand that was wrapped around her necklace with her teeth while saying, “In the name of Jesus, no!” Now this is not behavior I would recommend to visitors. When we asked her about it afterward, she proudly announced that if her necklace were to go it would be sold as a donation to missions and not otherwise. I’ve witnessed on several occasions a sense of injustice rising up in people who are being physically threatened and clearly overpowered. I think sometimes fighting for justice simply looks like love and sometimes it looks like courage to go through a bit of a battle. Clearly you need to listen to the voice of God in the moment, but regardless of whether we showed faith or stupidity, seconds later we slowed down and the gang of men raced to the front and jumped off the moving bus. We gratefully continued on our way.

It was while still in Chihango that I experienced an undeniably African moment. I was walking alone near our house on a red dirt road that snaked through fields of long yellow grass when a small boy who was also alone walked up to me and took my hand without saying a word. He was probably only three, and scabies covered his head. He silently walked with me all the way back to my house. It was the first moment I remember having my heart connect with an African child and feeling like that was it. I was done for. Africa would always be a part of my life. His name was Valentino and his father had brought him to us. His mom had been beaten to death by bandits while Valentino was with her, and his dad didn’t know how to care for him on his own. Later his brother Davidinho came to live with us as well, and was miraculously healed after we watched him almost die on a hospital bed from cerebral malaria. I was instantly in love with them. The last time I spoke with Valentino years ago, he had grown into an incredibly kind and intelligent young man who loved the Lord.

Eventually the government had enough of our blatant Christianity and forced us out of our first center, so we packed up and left in the middle of the night. But in my mind it was just a rather spontaneous trip to our house in the city. When you live that lifestyle, going with the flow is just kind of a necessity. In the following weeks many of the kids from our center had nowhere to go, so we filled our courtyard and house with beds. My mom often shares about the first time we saw food multiplied, and it was during this hectic period of time that it happened. It seems to be a proven principle that the more desperate you are and the more your life requires God to show up, the more He does. All I knew was a woman came over to bring us a cooked meal and not only did my family eat, all of our kids ate also. I don’t even think the miraculous part of it dawned on me until later.

It was in this desperate season that God again provided a miracle in the form of land for another children’s center in Machava. The land had no electricity or running water, one had to be cautious of land mines, and both adults and kids, including me, would constantly get sand worms in their feet. A Brazilian missionary couple named Jesse and Raquel Braga came out to run that center, and their daughter Sarah became one of my best friends in the world. Eighteen years later, after almost being washed away in the 2000 floods, which her family and the Iris kids walked out of chest deep, the Bragas are still there, and Machava is one of Iris’s most organized, well-kept, beautiful centers. It is also a worm- and malaria-free zone. We’ve witnessed so much of God’s goodness there and still we are constantly in a fight. Only a few weeks ago a gang of twenty men broke into the Bragas’ home, fired shots in the air, and stole everything of value while they miraculously hid. Other missionaries and college visitors were shoved against walls with guns pointed at them. This gang has had a reputation for extreme violence and despite the obvious trauma this caused, the fact no one was shot or seriously hurt is an utter miracle. I can safely say the brave men and women who live their lives on the mission field are in great need of constant prayer and encouragement.