Mucasse, Andrea M.

About 1921 Pastor Andrea M. Mucasse was working at a gold mine near Brakpan on the East Rand twenty-five miles from Johannesburg. He was converted while learning to read and write in evening classes conducted by Missionary Rev. Irvin E. Dayhoff, of the Hephzibah Faith Mission of Tabor, Iowa, U.S.A. Mucasse was in the first class to be baptized in 1924. He wanted to work for the Lord and attended the International Holiness Mission Bible College at Rehoboth, just north of Johannesburg. There he was led into the experience of entire sanctification. He spent weekends assisting in pastoring and evangelizing at Brakpan. During vacation time in 1928 he spent two months ministering in the Northern Transvaal at the Thabeng Mission. The Dayhoffs visited his home in Gazaland, Mozambique and a goat was killed for a feast to welcome them. Mucasse’s wife, Mrs. Ruth Jakwasi (Gagale) Mucasse (1900) was a new Christian at that time. [1]

In 1929 Mucasse spent his vacation among some non-Christian friends at a mine compound near Johannesburg with the thought of winning as many as possible to the light of the gospel. He encountered such a storm of opposition that the compound Induna (headman) forbad him to preach any longer. But God worked and he gathered sixteen young men and started a night school. [2]

He completed Bible College at the end of 1929 and had proved to be a good Bible student and an excellent personal worker. In 1930 he returned to his home in Mozambique and started a church at Malamba in Macie District where the gospel was unknown. [3] In the early 1930s Irvin Dayhoff visited him on two occasions travelling on mule back and on foot. On one of these journeys he was thrown off the mule out in the bush and broke his collar bone.

In 1952 Andrea Mucasse was one of the leaders on the East Rand mines when the International Holiness Mission fused with the Church of the Nazarene. Pastor and Mrs. Mucasse named their son Elias. [4]

Paul S. Dayhoff

Notes:

1. Irvine E. Dayhoff, African Missionary (Brakpan, Transvaal, South Africa: Hephzibah Faith Mission, August 1928), 3; African Missionary (September 1929), l.

2. Irvine E. Dayhoff, African Missionary (September 1929), 4.

3. Irvine E. Dayhoff, African Missionary (March 1930), 4.

4. Irvine E. Dayhoff, Missionary Triumphs (1949), 16-17.

This article is reproduced, with permission, from Living Stones In Africa: Pioneers of the Church of the Nazarene, revised edition, copyright © 1999, by Paul S. Dayhoff. All rights reserved.