New Easy Donation Link...

We have just added to the blog on the right hand side and easy link to donate now. If you click on either ministry account(for vehicle and ministry needs) or support account(for the additional monthly support we are trying to raise because of visas), it will automatically take you the SIM website where you can enter all the information in to donate immediately or set up montly donations. Please give us feedback if you have trouble with this or it does not work properly.

Home...

Well I apologize for taking so long to give an update. It has been very busy and I keep sitting down to do it and get distracted for some reason. We arrived back in the US on May 24th, but spent 3 days at SIM head quarters doing debriefing and then we spent another 5 days with my sister in South Carolina. We arrived back in Grand Rapids on June 2nd.

We have now moved into a house where we will be staying during our time here. One of our supporting churches is letting us use their parsonage. It is nice to have our own place and be able to put clothes away and not live out of a suitcase any longer. The kids have plenty of room to run around and play.

We have enjoyed spending time with family and friends and going to church. The kids are getting spoiled by grandparents, playing with cousins, making new friends, and they love their sunday school classes. So far everyone has transitioned really well. We are getting adjusted the light and late nights here. In Mozambique it is always dark by six and life shuts down. There is no such thing as a night life there. Karis still every night complains she has to go to bed so much earlier here, because even though she truely goes to bed quite a bit later here, it is still "morning time" here to her because of how light it is.

We have a busy summer planned and we found out while at SIM, we need to do some more support raising while we are here. Our residency visas for Mozambique went from $60 a person to $600 a person. So that is $3000 a year for our family just to live there. We need to raise $250 a month more support just to cover this cost. Also, we sold our vehicle before we left Mozambique and plan to buy a new one when we arrive in Maputo and then drive it back up to Lichinga. So we need to raise additional funds for a vehicle. Our goal is somewhere between $15,000-$18,000, since a 4x4 vehicle is required for the roads we need to drive on.

For our upcoming schedule, we will be speaking at a VBS at Northland Baptist Church, July 11-15. We will be speaking at Calvary Church of Muskegon July 23rd and 24th. We will keep you updated when we will be at other churches as the time gets closer and we get them on our calendar.

Here are some pictures of our time here so far. Sorry no pictures with the George family yet. We are going on our vacation with them next week and I will have plenty of pictures to add of them when we get back. These are mostly from our time in South Carolina visiting my sister.

This is Karis and Ethan, my sister's oldest (4yrs)

Kallen and Jamin, my brother's youngest(8 months)

Traeger, Kallen, and Brielle, my brother's oldest (2yrs)

Grandma and Kallen

Grandma and Karis

Papa and Traeger(in matching swimsuits)

We also were able to get together with my cousin Sarah, who lives in Charlotte, NC. It was great to get us all together again, with 9 children ages 6 and under.

Tim and Jason with Noah(Kristi's, middle one 2yrs) and Traeger.

Grandma reading to the kids.

A visit to the zoo in South Carolina

Wrapping up...

Well we leave tomorrow. It is hard to believe. We will fly into Maputo and spend the night and then leave Maputo Monday afternoon and arrive back in the States Tuesday at 6:14pm into Charlotte North Carolina. Yesterday, of course, Kallen and Traeger came down with colds. So please just pray that this trip goes smoothly and we all survive the 3 days of travel!

Before we go, we just wanted to give you an update of a few things that we have been doing the past month. We finished our parenting seminar, sort of. It was really a disaster over all. We only were able to do 2 out of the 4 weeks planned. The 2 we did do, however went well. We had to deal with a lot of sickness and we had a really difficult time arranging transport for everyone. We will try it again next year, after we get back. Tim finished his class on the doctrin of Salvation with the Anglican Church. We've said many goodbyes. We gave our cat to another family to care for while we are gone and the kids have shed many tears over the cat. Our dogs will stay here with Eden's who will be living here the 9 months we are gone.

Overall, I think we are ready to go. We've got everything packed up (almost) and we are looking forward to seeing everyone again.

Traeger teaching Vader a new trick. He is just a little bit too big for Traeger to control.

One of Karis' favorite friends here, Tessa. They had a goodbye sleepover last week.

Tim's class on Salvation. 16 people attended and everything went very well.

Because of the lack of transportation to get people to our parenting seminar, we hired a friend to drive for us. He is one of our guards and he does driving on the side for another friend of his. Well on our way to the seminar, he lost control of the car and got into an accident. Thankfully no one was really hurt, but the car was pretty damaged. We quickly discovered, that without tow trucks, it is really difficult to get a car back to the city for repairs. We stopped a big truck heading to Lichinga and asked if we could put the car on top. The guy agreed (for a very high price and of course being the only people with money we had to pay). It took us all afternoon to get this car on top of the truck. Complete "man-labor" to get it on top. So we didn't end up getting to do our seminar that week and we had to deal with getting our guard out of jail and lost a lot of money on top of it, so needless to say, we won't be hiring another car!

getting a little bit closer...

Finally...all loaded up...

Traeger's friend Merito. He is one of the sons of Michele's language helper, Beatriz.

Karis and Idris, Beatriz' other son.

Michele did a small teaching in Yao at our church last Sunday. Of course, she only read it, but still it was good pratice.

25 days and counting...

It is hard to believe that we will be heading home in just 25 days. We do feel like we are at a good point to leave, but we never realized how hard it would be to up and leave for 9 months. There are so many things to arrange for and think about. We do have a family who will be living in our house for the entire 9 months while we are gone and they are good friends of ours so we trust them. But we still have a lot of things to pack up and store away. We have had to make arrangements for running the guesthouse and library while Michele is gone. There are lots of goodbyes, as for the kids especially, 9 months is a long time. They have made some good friends they will need to say goodbye to and they will also have to say goodbye to our 2 dogs and cat. Karis has already cried because we can't take Obi our cat to Michigan with us. There will just be a lot of transitions for the kids going back to the States, so please pray for them.

This past month has been very busy for us and it will continue to be busy until we leave. We have a lot to update you on though.

Michele hosted a homeschool conference here at our house. We had 2 ladies from England and 1 from South Africa come to run the conference. They work for Anchor Education and they travel all over providing these homeschool conferences for people in areas where homeschooling resources and support are hard to come by. They also provided testing for the children, so parents could determine where they were at academically. We had 11 women, 1 man, and 30 children. The ladies offered testing for the children and ran a childrens program as well as 4 sessions a day for three days. It was very helpful and it was a great time to connect with other moms and build a support network. It was a busy time for us and we had 2 other families living in our house with us and we hosted the conference in the house, so we are still trying to catch up from that.


This is Kallen's friend Isabel. Kallen refers to her as "my Izzy". They are so cute together and walk around all day laughing and playing and holding hands. Isabel's mom attended the homeschool conference, so Kallen got lots of time to play with Izzy that week.

Here is the homeschool crew.

Tim finished his first class on Psalms with a group of women from the Anglican church. It went really well. He had about 22 women attend. There is still a problem with the language barrier, even though most of them spoke Portuguese and Tim did his teaching in it, there were still some women who didn't speak Portuguese or Yao. The women really did get a better grasp on the Psalms and how to apply them to their life. Song and dance are very important in their culture and in the end they came together and wrote a song about they had learned. It was very encouraging.

We also started our parenting seminar out in Lumbiza. The first week went well, but parenting is tough subject here. We will take pictures next week and update you more later on this class. We have 3 more weeks left before we leave. Just pray for health, because many people are having to miss because of sickness. Malaria and colds are really common this time of year. Pray that God will work in their hearts in the area of parenting and they will get a better grasp of God's plan for us and children.

For other issues of prayer in these last weeks, please pray for Tim as he now begins his second class with the Anglican church. This will be a mixed group of men and women and he will be teaching doctrine issues such as grace, mercy, salvation, heaven and hell.

Then pray that we would finish well with language. Tim has been preaching on sundays in Yao and is making huge strides in the language. Michele is moving along, but is moving slower than Tim. Just pray that we would finish well and then be able to keep up with it while we are home for 9 months, so we don't forget it!

Pangolin and Genets...

Most of you know, I love animals. God has given me some amazing opportunities to view wildlife here and actually interact with it. One of my friends here, Veronica, has taken in some baby Genets. Genets are nocturnal wild cats. They were in a tree that was cut down by a local and Veronica is raising them until they are old enough to hunt and find food on their own and then she will release them back into the wild at a conservation camp. I have been able to hold and play with these beautiful cats.
Then today, a man came to my house trying to sell me something, a Pangolin. I knew it was some kind of animal, but not what type of animal. He wanted me to buy it for about $6,500. I told him to bring it because I was curious what type of animal it was. After he left to go get it, I called Veronica, because she knows animals like this. She said that it was highly illegal to sell these animals. She said that when he brought the animal to my house, pretend I am interested and she would send guys from the department of argiculture to my house to confiscate the animal. So that is what I did. He brought the poor thing tied into 2 burlap sacks and then put into a duffle bag. The four guys from department of Agriculture took him and the Pangolin back to their office. Apparently, you receive a huge fine for this type of thing and if you can't pay it, you stay in jail until you pay it. However, this guy just got a stern warning not to do it again and was released. Most people could never afford to pay the fines, so they often just get away with it. But the Pangolin will be released at a conservation camp. The Pangolin is an amazing animal, like nothing I've ever seen before. He is covered with plate like scales and eats ants and termites with a long sticky tongue like an anteater. Here are some pictures of these animals.

Veronica gave it some termites to eat.

The guy who tried to sell me the Pangolin said that if I took it back to the States, I could get about $20,000 for it. If any of you are interested in paying me that much for one of these, I'll see what I can do:)
When they are scared or sense danger, they curl up into a ball, completely covered by these plates.

Here is one of the Genets. They are only about 6 or 8 weeks old.

Their fur is so soft. They have the most amazing tail.

An unforgettable story (reader discretion advised)...

For our Chiyao language classes, we have been telling stories and recording them and then listening to them and translating them. I tell a simple story about my life or my childhood and then my language helper, Beatriz, tells one about her life. It has been very interesting. Well the other day we went to her house and her mom told us a story about her life during the Portuguese/Mozambique war, when they were fighting for independence. We recorded her story in Chiyao and then with the help of Beatriz translated it into Portuguese and now into English for you all to read. It is an incredibly tragic story that depicts life here during the time of war and all that the people faced during this time. This is her and her story:



During the time of the colonial war against the Portuguese, I had my first child, a boy. We ran away into the forest because of the war. When we lived in the forest, we built homes out of grass. The sides of the house, the roof, everything was made of grass. During the second year of the war, some lions appeared where we were living. Goats and other animals slept outside the houses and us people would sleep inside the houses. When one lion appeared, he hit my house where I and my child were sleeping. I tried to scream, but no one heard me. At this place, there were many people, but no one could hear me. That lion ripped my house and came inside until he was able to take my child. I left the house to call help, "come here and see, a lion came and took my son." When people came and saw me, they found me wounded badly and my whole body covered in blood. After, the people began to scream, and many more people appeared. When they arrived they didn't find the lion. He took my son and ate him. There in the forest, where we lived, was only his head. The people found the head and they brought it back to me to bury. The lion returned a second time to take the mother of the child (me), but he found the place full of people screaming, and he ran away. This happened during the time of the war. During this year, we left for Malawi because we were afraid of the war of guns and the war of lions. There in Malawi, I gave birth to 5 more children. I then returned to Mozambique and had 7 more children. After this, I lost my husband. This is when I began to live with my children.

Here are some of the scars from the lion that attacked her. She also has many scars on her legs that she showed us, but we didn't feel comfortable taking pictures of.

This is me, Beatriz, and her mom. I look like a giant compared to them. They are both so small. Beatriz is 5th or 6th in line of the children and her mom gave birth to 14 children in all.

Likoma Island...

We spent the past weekend on Likoma Island. It is actually an Island owned by Malawi, but is only 6 kilometers off the shore off Mozambique. We boated across and stayed one night on the Island. It was very beautiful and relaxing, and we had a nice time with friends.

We went with some friends of ours, Jan and Bonnie and their son, Joseph. They also have a daughter, Deborah. Jan is from the Netherlands and Bonnie is from the States.

Keith and Bronwyn. They are from South Africa, and have a daughter, Zoe.

This is Hugo and Esti and their son, Samuel. They are from South Africa as well.

This is where we stayed on the Island. It was beautiful from the outside, but the inside wasn't so great.

This is a view from the chalets.

After a rather large scorpion ran across my foot in the shower, we found this guy under the bed Karis was sleeping in. It is a centipede that has a nasty bite!

This is called a water scorpion, but is relatively harmless, but very scarey looking. We found him in our closet.

Relaxing on the beach!

We boated around the entire Island. It is about 18 square kilometers. The Island is pretty much empty, except for a few lodges and villages. This was one lodge that was beautiful.

Another Chalet.

This was the very tip of the Island, just a big bunch of rocks. It was interesting how diverse the landscape was for such a small Island.

We stopped to get some fuel for the boat and we were instantly surrounded (an unexpected stop at the zoo).

This little girl watched us the whole time, but wouldn't come near us.