Marta, what’s the first thing you want to do when you get to heaven?”
Marta had obviously thought about my question long before I asked it! Rather than look at me and answer, Marta looked up, far beyond the top of a tall cashew tree, as if watching the clouds scudding by in the Mozambican sky. Then she smiled, leaned forward, and began speaking intensely in her language, Changana.
Marta was sitting on a brightly colored capulana cloth, working with other village women to shell the current crop of peanuts. It was quite the party, each woman telling wild family tales, everyone laughing happily at the well-known punch lines. I had been invited to join the women because my wife, Brenda, had called me over to hear Marta retell one of her favorite stories.
The Dream
Many years ago, so the story goes, Marta, the village curandeira, had fallen in love with Jesus and become the village evangelista.
It had begun with a dream, one of the many dreams Marta would experience as she worked with the spirits as a witch doctor to find the right potions and cures for her neighbors’ troubles. Her cures worked, and the people paid her well. The spirits had provided her with a good life, so good that she had even started saving money to purchase a truck. Owning a pickup truck would make her the most important person in the village! It was foolish, she knew, especially since there wasn’t even a road to her village. Just a wide cow path.
Then came the dream.
“Marta, Marta.” A loud voice called her name and commanded her to step outside her hut. She slipped out from under the covers, opened the door a thin crack, and peeked out. There, right in front of her hut, standing beside her personal firepit, was a brand-new white, four-door, four-wheel-drive Toyota pickup truck!
Marta ran to the truck, touched it to be sure it was real, then walked all around it, petting the bright-white paint, looking at the lights, bumpers, windscreen, and logos. Tentatively, as if afraid this might not be true, she reached for the driver’s door handle. It opened, and there were keys dangling from the ignition switch!
In a moment she was seated and feeling the powerful engine of her new truck. She drove around the village, trying not to awaken her neighbors. Then she pulled back on the wheel and began driving up, up, up, above the cashew trees, above the mangoes, through the clouds, through the stars, right to the stone walls of a giant heavenly city. Far above her tiny village of Mucapane, Mozambique.
She looked out the window, maybe to see if anyone was watching her. When she looked through the windscreen again, she was speeding toward the gate of a terrible stone city that was hanging among the stars in the sky!
Marta turned the wheel and drove to the city’s main gate, but it was closed. She got out of her pickup and pounded on the door for entry, but everything stayed silent. She screamed loud enough so that everyone inside would be able to hear her voice, but the gate stayed closed to the curandeira from Mucapane.
The Truth About the City
Then she woke up, shouting and sweating in her own hut.
Marta lay still for a long time. She was accustomed to the spirits giving her odd and crazy dreams, but this had been different. This time the dream seemed filled with hope! She knew she had to find a way to get back up to the heavenly city, but she had no idea how to get there and open the door. So Marta, the curandeira who was used to helping others find answers, started asking everyone for help. No one knew anything about a giant stone city in the sky!
Then one afternoon someone mentioned that a farmer in Machumbutane might know the truth about the city in the sky. That was enough for Marta, and the “spirit healer,” the village curandeira, put some food in a basket and began walking the dirt path toward the distant huts of Machumbutane. “If only I can find the key to the city,” she muttered to herself as she walked.
What she found was a group of searchers studying the Christian Bible, praying to a man named Jesus, worshipping on Saturday, and planning to join the Savior in His giant heavenly city.
She listened, studied with her new friends, and fell in love with Jesus.
Back Home
Back home the dream returned. This time she was ready when the voice called her name.
“Marta! Marta!”
She ran outside, jumped into the white Toyota pickup, and sped straight up above the cashews and mangoes back to the Great Stone City in the sky!
Tonight the gate was open, but blocked by a powerful giant with “huge shoulders, crossed arms, and a very bad frown.” His words were clear.
“You must leave the old life as a curandeira, destroy all your curandeira tools, and teach your neighbors about Jesus and His heavenly city.
Marta turned the truck around, pressed the accelerator down, and drove straight home to Mucapane. She rushed into her hut, gathered all of her “curandeira stuff,” and hauled it out to the firepit. She stirred up her fire and threw the amulets, charms, bones, and her favorite idols into the flames. She even burned the money she had been saving for a truck.
It’s bad money, Marta thought, and I don’t need a truck to get to heaven anyway.
Everyone in the village heard the commotion and stood amazed around the fire. That morning Marta started a Jesus congregation in Mucapane, Mozambique. They met beside her firepit, beneath the village’s tallest cashew tree, studying a few Bible pages together and planning for heaven.
“Marta, what’s the first thing you want to do when you get to heaven?”
“Let me tell you what I want to do when I get home to heaven,” Marta’s face crinkled with a joyous smile as she looked up from shelling the village peanuts. “I want to take a long walk with Jesus. I want to hold His hand. I want to listen to His voice. I want to look into His eyes. I want to say thank You for loving this curandeira into an evangelista!”
When Marta finished her story, the peanut-shellers filled Mucapane with boisterous Hosannas!
