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I was born in a village very far from the town. The good news is that my village was on His time and His street. I think that most of the time God is more intelligent than we are. He prepares the future of each and every one of us in advance. He prepares your future, even when you are very small -- working 10 or even 20 years in advance. That is what sometimes becomes very difficult to understand. So the Lord prepared my destiny in advance. Even when I was a defender of witchcraft and the witch doctor, God was actively preparing everything in advance. Now I am just walking in the ways He prepared for me a long time ago and I am enjoying the path that He has prepared.
I went to Bible College in South Africa in 1990. I first met Heidi Baker in 1995 when she came to speak in Eastern South Africa. I went up to talk to her after she finished speaking, and we talked for some time. But I did not get involved with her ministry right away.
I joined the full-time ministry in February 1997. I went back home to Mozambique and there was a call for me to go to work at a Mission that had a very big radio station. God had given me a gift for languages, and that is why they wanted me to work with them. I helped them translating books and whatever else they needed. We would start preaching on the radio at five in the morning and people would start calling in for their prayer requests. I liked that but the Lord told me this wasn't my calling and I would need to go back to South Africa.
I asked God how long I would be there and what was I going to do there, but I obeyed. The fruit of obedience brings revival, so I obeyed at that time and went. When I got there I was told there was another event for me and that was to make movies because I knew so many languages. So I helped these people translate many books and things. Then one day I woke up and the Lord told me this was not the right place for me, so I went and told the manager that I was going back to the mission.
The manager wanted to know why I wanted to go back to the mission because the missionaries are all very poor -- they are poorer than everybody. I told him that I would still go and he tried to convince me that they needed my gift of languages. He told me I was needed to translate these books and that I would sit in the office. It was a very good job, but I told him no. I refused his offer and went back to my room and was praying.
Then one day I had a vision and Heidi was standing there in my vision and she was calling to me, "Come, come Surpresa. Come, we need you here. Come. Come." And so, because obedience is the key to survival, the next day I went to Malputo. I didn't know where they were staying so I just drove around, trying to find them. I couldn't find them so I turned back. Then I had the same vision again and Heidi was calling to me again, "Come back, come back. Come here, Surpresa."
I went to one of the pastors who has a contact in Malputo and told him I needed to meet this lady that ministered in that church in South Africa. He told me she was in Malputo, but was having big problems because the government was trying to chase her out of the country. It was a horrible time for them because they had just received a 24-hour notice to leave the country. But I went there and met them. We went to a church, which was one of the churches we borrowed. Actually they opened it for us to bring the kids and stay for a while until we could get a place of our own. I started taking care of the orphan children while Rolland and Heidi were expelled from the country by the government.
Something very strange happened my first night there. It was so strange that I did not tell anyone about what happened. The only person who knew about it was my roommate that night. I was sharing a small trailer with a young Englishman. As I slept, I heard a phone ringing. I woke up rather quickly and thought I'd better answer the phone! But when I got awake, I found out there was no phone next to the bed. I remember thinking, "What was that!" And my friend woke up and said, "What is the matter, are you falling out of bed or what?" I told him "No," and went back to sleep. Five or ten minutes later, the phone started ringing again. I put my head under the pillow and that's how it went all night. The next day I sat down and started analyzing this incident. Then I realized that this phone ringing was about the Lord calling me to this place. Then I just put my mind at rest and I stayed there helping with the children from February 1993 until February 1997.
I started traveling with a group into the bushes in 1998. We went very deep down in places we could only get to by the water. The local pastors told us they would pick us up and we told them, no, we wanted to walk through this water together with them. And we would be walking in that water during the night, at 2:00 o'clock in the morning and in the bush the mosquitos are very bad. I shouldn't tell you that because it might make you frightened of mosquitos.
Anyway, I answered that phone call and have been answering it ever since. I am walking on the path that God has prepared for me. And we have seen a major revival -- a major, major revival!
A revival is not when you have many numbers of believers, but when you see many people getting hungrier, that is a true revival. When you schedule a conference and people walk three weeks, by foot, to get to the conference, that must be a revival. One day, I almost cried because we drove to this conference and we met a group of ladies. There was one very elderly lady and I found out she had been walking for three and a half weeks with a stick to that conference. Even though we didn't have space in the car, we had to pick her up. We were squeezed like sardines but it was no problem. We reached our destiny and we had the conference and the people who came to the conference swam in the lake like geese because they had been walking so long. They had walked just for three weeks at the conference and then afterwards they would have to walk three weeks to get back. Is this not a revival?
The food they brought only lasted the first week and the second week they didn't have any food to eat on the road. But they were so hungry for God that they just did not care whether or not they had food to eat. Yes, this is a revival -- a deep hunger for God in people's hearts.