Awakened by gunfire at 4 a.m., Chief Luciano dropped to the floor of his mud-brick house in northern Mozambique. Through the bamboo doorway, he watched guerrilla rebels burst into a nearby home and shoot anything that moved. The wrinkled man grabbed his children and fled into the tall straw grass. Hours later he crept out of hiding to survey the damage. That evening Renamo rebels came back for a repeat performance. This time Luciano ran until daylight hit. Several weeks later, after hiding by day and walking by night, he crossed the border into Malawi seeking asylum. After waiting out the bloody conflict between the Marxist government (Frelimo) and rebel forces (Renamo) in a refugee camp, Luciano returned to his Muslim homeland, hoping to find relatives. Besides the tattered clothes on his back, he carried a tarp, a hoe and a bag of seeds.

He found the village destroyed. Luciano and other Yao refugees straggling home started over from scratch. They built temporary mud huts and now, three years later, produce enough maize, cassava and sugar cane for one or two meals a day. Sparse banana and papaya trees provide a bit of fruit. The United Nations dug a well. The chief hopes government aid will come.

But in its struggle to rebuild a country twice the size of California, the new government is unlikely to provide aid this far north for quite some time. Last July, however, Love Southern Africa sent six South Africans to lay a new foundation. Although the outreach team had no resources to build a new village, they brought a radical cornerstone‹Jesus Christ. This unshakeable foundation is a brand-new message for the Yao people. Of the 250,000 Mozambican Yao speakers, 90 percent follow the religion of their parents‹a combination of ancestor worship and Islam.

Islam entered at the turn of the century, when Arabs agreed not to enslave the Yao if they would capture and sell them slaves from other tribes. When Christians frowned on the slave trade, the Yao adopted the Arabs' religion.

Later, when the Marxist government took over, Frelimo expelled most missionaries and burned churches. "Today the Yao are Muslim because they don't know anything else," says Klasie van Heerden, outreach coordinator for Love Southern Africa 96 and a Campus Crusade for Christ staff member. "These people are living under a lie. How can they not, if we don¹t bring Jesus to them?"

Until recently, the Yao knew little about Jesus. The isolated handful of missionaries struggling to reach this unreached people group faced the challenges of civil war and illiteracy. Then in 1992, Willie Erasmus, director of LSA 96 and staff member with The JESUS Film Project, trekked almost 2,000 kilometers from Johannesburg, South Africa, over nearly impassable roads to direct translation of the JESUS film into Yao. The Rev. Braam Willemsen, a local missionary, helped Willie find enough literate Yao to serve as actors‹no easy task since only one in four read.

One year later Willie returned to show this dramatization based on the book of Luke. "One JESUS film showing in Yao," says Braam, "reached more people than my last seven years here." Each year since 1993, LSA has sent JESUS film teams to the Yao.

Formed in 1991, LSA seeks to catapult 10,000 South African missionaries to the unreached areas of the world, especially those in Africa south of the equator. "I feel South Africa has been saturated with the gospel," says Willie. "The end of apartheid and freedom to travel has helped South Africans wake up to a missionary mindset. The Afrikaner has a compassionate heart, and we are challenging people to go to those who haven't yet heard."

Most of the South Africans who headed to the province of Niassa in northern Mozambique last summer had little missions experience. High-school students and widows joined farmers and homemakers under the care of team leader Andrew Bezuidenhout. "The Niassa Province is the center of the Yao people," says Andrew, a 52-year-old seed production specialist. "We must continue to sow seeds to them until they are equipped to reach their own people."

Although it would have been quicker to fly to the Yao, Andrew knew that the trip prepared the group for the conditions ahead. The convoy of a truck, a Land Rover, and three Volkswagen vans–or combis, as the South Africans call them–traveled from Johannesburg through Zimbabwe and Malawi.

On one stretch of road, potholes the size of watermelons blocked the way, as did branches in the road–the Mozambican signal for "construction ahead." When the group arrived late to the Malawi border post, they slept in the vehicles and on the ground.

Eventually, red dust replaced the paved road. Softball-sized holes in the ground replaced toilets. Bridges constructed of loose logs made everyone squirm. Occasionally a missing log or two left a space big enough for a tire to fall through. Once a combi got stuck, and it took 30 minutes and eight men to rock it free.

The group came to a halt in Lichinga–the largest town in Niassa. Deadlocked due to a lack of fuel, they showed the JESUS film nightly. Three days later a train arrived carting petrol. The 29-member group divided into five teams and headed to remote villages.

Franz Böning, a 45-year-old community developer, led the team that ended up in Chief Luciano's village. Each day at sunset the team mounted speakers on aluminum poles and "Velcro-ed" a ripstop nylon screen to the poles, then hoisted the screen in an open area by a school. Within minutes children surrounded them like bees around a hive.

Kenneth Nel manned the Eiki 16mm projector and the four film reels. "I'm not a preacher or an intercessor," says the 53-year-old tool and die maker. "I'm a mechanical guy, and I've come 2,000 kilometers for God to show me that I can use this projector to reach people."

When Ken started the sound, men dropped their hoes, women strapped babies on their backs and everyone headed toward the voice. For most of them, this was the first time they had ever seen a film. And most certainly the first time they had ever seen Isa (Jesus in Yao). Night after night the villagers talked to each other throughout the film. The children echoed the names of the disciples after Jesus called them. Although the temperature dropped into the 30s on these starlit, wintry nights, few left early.

During the daytime, those Yao wanting to know more about Christ came to the South Africans' campsite with questions. Franz and Ken talked with Chief Luciano, through the help of a translator, for more than an hour. In his quest for answers, the chief even missed his prayer time at the mosque. But he left the discussion offended by the Cross.

The next day Luciano returned. "Why are Christians glad about the Cross?" said the chief with a furrowed face. "How could something so terrible be good?"

As the translator relayed the significance of the Cross, Luciano nodded his head. "You have opened the ears of the people," he said. "You are giving them knowledge of the way to God. It is better than giving one person a combi. That would break at some point. But to give us Jesus is the best thing you could do."

Outside help is essential for the Yao to rebuild. Since 1993, LSA has been laying a new foundation in their villages. More than 14 different organizations cooperate in reaching the Yao with the gospel. "Your bringing the film helps overcome the language problem," says Hillary Wynne, a social services coordinator since 1992. "The people need to hear it again and again. Your coming is like drops of water that will eventually break through and make a hole."

One breakthrough started in the village of Mucualo, when a Muslim teacher named Lecr watched the film several times. Lecr brought two others with him when he came to ask questions. The group soon swelled to 40 men surrounding Ken and Franz for an intense two-hour discussion. After a short break, Lecr returned, Koran in hand. Later that afternoon he found forgiveness in Christ for his sins.

As of yet, no indigenous Yao church exists for people like Lecr. Christian converts often retain Muslim practices or succumb to family pressure to return to the mosque. "There is a lack of trained workers," says Helen Van Koevering, with Danish Aid. "People are responding and there's no one to feed them."

It's too early to tell what shape the Yao Christian church and Chief Luciano's war-torn village will take. Rebuilding from scratch takes time. But LSA plans to continue bringing the chief Cornerstone to remote villages until the Yao are equipped to build this new foundation on their own. Though the civil war has ended, the spiritual battle still rages. LSA is fighting for the souls of the Yao people.