Development of Seventh-day Adventist Work
SDA teachings entered Mozambique in 1931 when two
African students from the Malamulo Mission School returned to their homes in Portuguese East Africa. Both engaged in active lay evangelism and soon reported 555 people in the Bible classes they were conducting. O. U. Giddings and Max Webster made a visit to Mozambique to investigate the interest, and in 1933 Webster was sent to the Zambesi district in Mozambique to establish a mission.
He chose a site in the district of Lugela, 187 miles (300 kilometers) from the port of Quelimane, and an equal distance from the frontier of Malawi. In 1935, with permission from the governor-general, he established a mission, naming it Munguluni (which means “light”). While clearing land and erecting a mission house, a chapel, a school, and workshops, Webster preached with the help of a national worker, Horacio Luia, who knew both Portuguese and the local dialect. In 1937 the first camp meeting was held, to which 1,500 Africans came.
They were timid and suspicious but listened. However, when Webster tried to take photographs, they fled into the bush. In 1939 the first converts were baptized. Carlos Gouveia, sent by the Portuguese Union in 1939, was the first teacher of the first Seventh-day Adventist school in Mozambique.
Permission to operate the school was obtained in November 1940. Also for a number of years, Mrs. Webster operated a large dispensary.
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In 1941 Ernest P. Mansell was appointed to replace Webster, but he and his family were interned by the Japanese in the Philippines. After the war Mansell returned to the United States and later (1947) replaced Webster, who then returned to South Africa, after 13 years of pioneering work.
Until 1950 Mozambique was part of the Southern African Division, but in that year it became part of the Southern European Division. In 1953 the territory, known as the Portuguese East African Mission, became a detached mission in the Southern European Division, with headquarters in Lourenço Marques.
In 1955 it was joined to the Angola Union to form the Portuguese African Union Mission, and in 1957 returned to its former detached status. In 1972 it was organized as a union mission. From Munguluni the mission work penetrated hitherto unentered sections, each with its own language. Thus new centers sprang up: Milange, 1954; Taquane, 1958; Mocuba, 1958; Marrucia, 1959; Mirriua, 1960; and Mecanhelas, 1963.
A new dispensary at Munguluni was opened Sept. 17, 1958, and another in Marrucia, September 1963. With funds supplied by a Thirteenth Sabbath Offering overflow in 1960, two more houses were built at Munguluni, and water and electricity were installed.
New work was begun in Beira by an office clerk, Daniel Harawa, who became an SDA in 1951 as a result of taking a Bible correspondence course. From a company formed in Beira, two others developed—one in Chemba, in the north near the Zambesi, and the other in Mabote in the south.
The Seventh-day Adventist church in Loureno Marques stemmed from a family from Mauritius named Lamarque, who had come in 1918 and had kept the Sabbath in their home. They were later joined by a family named Inocentes, who had come from Lisbon in 1935, in whose home Webster had stayed because they were SDAs. The families had received publications from the Cape.
With the establishment in Loureno Marques in 1953 of the headquarters of the Mozambique Mission, the group meeting in the Lamarque family revived, and in October 1954 S. J. Graa settled in Lourenço Marques to work primarily among the Europeans. The next year a church of 22 members was organized. A rented house was adapted for a meeting hall and mission office.
A church building, purchased by a Thirteenth Sabbath Offering overflow in 1960, was dedicated in 1963. P. B. Ribeiro became mission director in 1963. In April 1970 A. C. Lopes became the president. One year later he left and the treasurer, Joao dos Santos, was named acting president until Henrique Berg, the first Brazilian missionary to Mozambique, arrived in May 1972.
On Aug. 8, 1972, action was taken with division representation for the Mozambique Mission to be organized as a union mission, effective Jan. 1, 1973.
With the arrival of colporteur Lucio Soares in 1944 in Loureno Marques the publishing work began. A radio correspondence school was organized in 1951, and reported 2,146 applications during 1973.
After years of strife, the Adventist Church in Mozambique now operates freely without major problems incurred by war.
During the most intense time of war about 10,000 SDAs migrated to Malawi for safety. In 1994 they were returning and being reintegrated into the country. The goal was to reach a membership of 100,000 by the union’s sixtieth anniversary in 1995.
Institutions
Mozambique Adventist Seminary; Mozambique Publishing House.
