Hi Friends, 

Entering into Angola one is struck again at what a bustling city this place really is.  Also, how great the improvements appear to be since we first arrived in 1999. 

Now, the roads are choked with cars – a regular journey of 5 kilometers takes 2 hours or more – and the cars are not all old beat up ones there are some really nice ones on the road as well – big suv type 4X4’s which used to be the province of just the oil companies and NGO’s are now being driven around by ordinary Angolans who look to be gaining in prosperity.  It still is somewhat annoying to note when we look out our windows as we crawl along the road that women carrying two children and a heavy load on their head are passing us on foot and arriving at their destinations before us.  The roads are generally still in bad shape – and getting worse – there are some road crews which are trying to mend the roads as fast as they can but the rain and heavy traffic tear them up faster than they can patch them.  I am still awaiting the next really large rain to wash a large section of our main road into town away as erosion under it appears extremely dangerous. 

Informal markets continue to spring up occasionally and the police continue to respond to them with tried and true Angolan methods.  The government also is persistent in attempting to move people out of certain areas and so they break down their houses and encourage the people to move on somewhere else.  We had a small house church which Antonio was leading every week until last November, but then the family’s house was torn down and the family moved down south about 100 kilometers along with their neighbors and we have lost contact with them.  Others continue to live in fear of losing their houses and being moved to who knows where.  So, they make their own preparations and get ready for the worst.   

Nightly, we still hear gunshots, shouts, and cries up and down the neighborhood as conflicts large and small break out in the homes of our neighbors or between small gangs of young people.  The police rarely come down our streets at night and it is just left to the residents to try and keep order as best they are able – most of us give a great sigh of relief when morning comes each day.  It seems a stark contrast – and indeed is – to the large bright and new buildings rising in the center of the city complete with all the modern amenities ready for the latest business to arrive and occupy its offices – people who will never travel to Grafanil or Stalagem to see the cramped and crowded conditions in which most of Luanda survives.  In the meantime – people who prayed for the war to end now live forgotten and by-passed by the dividends of peace – struggling day by day to find their daily bread.  In the midst of which Leslie teaches children weekly whose thin bodies, constant coughing and orange tinted hair show the cost of a meager diet.   

Yet these are the people who are advancing the gospel in the bairros and throughout the communities folk like Sophia who began sharing her testimony boldly with her neighbors in her area and has started seven home-groups since last May full of people listening to the words of the Lord Jesus, “Come unto me all of you who are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”  These are looking to him and are striving to build communities of grace in the midst of these streets of violence while just down the road the city of worldly prosperity where the economy is growing at one of the fastest rates in all the world is passing them by and leaving them to fend for themselves amongst the mud, garbage and disease of another rainy season. 

Remember Them, remember us in your prayers this week.

 

Scot McHaney

Luanda, Angola