“Grandma has scheduled a house cleansing ceremony to rid our house of curses, and she wants me to be involved,” Fernando confided to David and me. “But I do not want to have any part in it. I am a Christian now.” We could see the discomfort on his young face. So we sat him down and asked him to explain “house cleansing” to us.
Fernando is David’s Portuguese language tutor and has lived with his grandmother, auntie, and a few cousins — all animists — since his parents moved to another country a few years ago. This is the family that feeds him, cares for him, and protects him until he can afford to be on his own. They believe the spirit world influences their daily life. If things are not going well in the family unit — sickness, unemployment, disunity and more — they believe that the spirits are unhappy, and a “house cleansing” is necessary to appease the offended spirits. Also, whenever someone dies, a “house cleansing” is scheduled a year later to cleanse the home from the dead person’s spirit.
Fernando’s family pressures him to conform to their traditional cultural norms and is perplexed and frustrated that he does not want to join the ceremony to pacify the spirits. They do not want him to bring a curse upon their family. His grandma is unwilling to accept that he has been a Seventh-day Adventist for two years. So we do our best to encourage Fernando to look up Bible verses promising God’s protection and send him on his way with a prayer for angels to be by his side.
The next time we saw Fernando, we asked what had happened. He said, “When I got home, it was getting dark already. Grandma, auntie and a few strangers were nearing the completion of the “house cleanse” ritual. I went straight to my room, and they did not say anything to me. But one of my young cousins came and told me that the family had picked up my water bottle and had put something in it. He warned me not to drink it, so I followed his advice. I thank God for sparing me.”
Sadly, this story of family misunderstanding and coercion is common among the young people of Mozambique. We have two young men and two young women in our church who are ready to be baptized this next Sabbath, and they are facing family coercion, too. One of the young men went home from church this past Sabbath and announced to his family his excitement to follow Jesus. His mother got very angry and told him that he must leave her house if he follows through with baptism. We are uplifting this young man and the other three young people in our prayers. We hear that all four still plan to be baptized despite their family’s opposition!
