Fully Living...

The past few months have been full. Busy, but full of joy, and we feel blessed and grateful to be fully living here in Mozambique! In July we had our annual SIM spiritual life conference. Tim and I were in charge of planning the whole thing and we decided to do it on the lake. We had a team from Blythefield come to speak and lead worship. It was a great week. My parents came and my dad was the speaker for the week. His theme was "True North", talking about where we go in the midst of life's frusterations. Do we go south and grasp to worldly things or do we go north to God and find our significance and security in Him? We also had the Radaz family come to lead worship. They were so good. Worship is something we miss greatly here, so it was such a great exprience to have such talented people to lead us in worship in English! My mom and Jennifer Radaz helped out in the kitchen and preparing food, which was quite a task when you are preparing food for 30 people and all the cooking is done over charcoal. Here are some pictures from the conference.

The Radaz boys leading us in worship.

The lake.

The "kitchen"

My mom and Jennifer also gave all the ladies a pedicure!

The finished product.

We also had Beth Layton here as an intern for three months, she ran a kids program for us at the conference. Our kids really grew attached to her over the 3 months she was here.

Traeger and his friends waiting to play a game.

Our family in front of a huge baobab tree.

The Radaz family. We really enjoyed these guys. In the two weeks we had with them, we just really grew to love each of them. They were so great and we are so thankful for their willingness to serve us here.

Daddy and Jurnee swinging on the beach.

I just love it when you capture pure JOY!

My parents stayed for another 2 weeks after the conference and it was so nice to have them here and have them involved in our life here. It was also good for our SIM team to get to know them. My dad completed a list of more than 30 jobs around the house and my mom helped me redo all the flower beds and gardens in our compound. It was so great to get so much accomplished. The kids loved having grandma and grandpa around and they loved the 8 suitcases of goodies they brought for them. Yes, 8 bags of stuff. It really felt like Christmas and everyones birthday all at the same time. Jurnee turned 6 months old while they were here and they loved getting to know her and her growing personality. Here are some pictures.

Jurnee enjoyed grandma and grandpa

Jurnee loves animals, just not getting kissed by them.

Jurnee and grandpa

 Grandpa seemed to have the touch when it came to naptime.

All smiles!



We also were able to take part in 2 baptisms this past month. In all we participated in the baptism of 10 new believers. At this one, Travis Radaz, was baptised along with 4 other local Mozambicans.

This is another picture of pure joy!

The group of believers gathering before the baptism for worship.

My dad even got to participate along with Tim in this baptism of 5 local Mozambican believers. It was a great experience and priviledge for him.

Sunset at the the lake with a woman carrying firewood on her head.

On the way to drop my parents off at the airport in Malawi, we stayed a night at Liwonde game park. We saw TONS of elephants. We went on a boat ride down the Shire River and it felt like we were in a National Geographic magazine!

We also saw tons of crocs and hippos everywhere.



We saw two herds of Cape Buffalo.

Kudu



Warthog

Sable Antelope

A pod of hippos with elephants in the background.

baby elephant

We ran into this guy just driving through the park and we really were this close to him. We just rounded a corner and there he was.

I also wanted to give an update on up coming ministry opportunity we have in the next few months. We will be busy. Tim will be doing a lot of travelling so please pray for safety and that I will be able to have patience being home alone with the kids much of the time. Also pray for soft hearts for the recipients of the teaching, that God would work in their lives and reveal Himself to them. Here is the schedule:

Aug. 16-19: Marriage seminar in Itepela, a village about an hour and a half from Lichinga. (Tim is currently there right now doing this.)

August 24-26: Tim will be doing a teaching at a church in Metangula, a village along the lake.

September 3-6: We will be doing a Simply The Story training for the church leaders here in Portuguese.

Sept. 15, 22, 29: We will be doing a parenting seminar on three consecutive saturdays in Mapuje, a village about an hour from Lichinga.

October 1-12: Tim will be going to Pemba, a city on the coast of Mozambique, to teach a two week Bible course on Old and New Testament Survey for a Bible School there.

Then the end of October we will all be travelling to Kenya for about 3 weeks to visit an Oral Bible School and see what it would take to get one started here. Tim will also be doing some training and teaching at local churches while we are there.



Story Telling....

Well Tim has been practicing his story telling using the Simply the Story method as well as his Chiyao. We went to a church in a village just a little ways out of the city and he told the story of creation to the people there. He did very well, but didn't receive a lot of response on the observation and application parts. We are still trying to figure out how to best tailor this part to fit the Yao culture and what will really reach them where they are at. Here are some pictures and a little video of Tim telling the story in Chiyao.

Weekend in the bush...

This past weekend we spent some time in the bush of Mozambique with the Paetzold family. The Paetzolds are SIM collegues and friends of ours from South Africa. We had a great time exploring God's amazing creation. We didn't see as much wildlife as we were hoping, but the grasses are so high this time of year, it is hard to see. We were supposed to be really roughing it, but we ended up staying in "luxury" at a hunting camp. Here are some pictures. 

 Here is everyone enjoying coffee in the morning on the steps of the main lodge at the camp. Yes, even the kids are all drinking coffee, dilluted with a lot of milk of course.

 The view from the main camp.

This is a herd of Sable antelope we saw on one of our drives. They are a beautiful animal. Unfortunately though these were the only animals we saw, besides rabbits and monkeys.

 The kids hanging out in front of the lodge, enjoying the view.

 Crossing the river on one of our drives. The boys got to ride on back of the Land Rover and loved it.

 Here is Traeger at one of the smaller camps we drove to. It is called Maganga, which means rocks in Chiyao, for obvious reasons.

Here we are heading out for a bush walk.

 Tim and Alfred grilling up our meat.

 We went on a river walk and saw tons of elephant footprints like this one. We also saw buffalo tracks, lion tracks, and even croc tracks. There were signs of animals everywhere, but somehow we missed them all.

 Here are the boys on the river walk.

Tim thought he would see if the elephant dung really tastes as good as it smells.

The boys loved their bush drive.

Here is the lodge from the Maganga camp. The view was absolutely incredible.

Simply The Story...

Well we just finished with our Simply The Story training conference. It went really well. We had 15 people attend and everyone really seemed to enjoy it and think it would be a useful ministry tool. We are really excited to hear feedback as people begin to use it in their ministries. The first day is all instruction and examples of storying and then the next two days everyone is broken up into groups and each person prepares and presents a story. It gives everyone a safe place to try this method of Bible teaching, where they can get feedback. We also confirmed dates for the first week in September to another training in Portuguese for the local pastors and leaders here. Bramuel and Jacob were the leaders and they arrived from Kenya to do the conference. Bramuel will be returning in September to run the next one as well. Thanks to everyone who was praying for this.

This is Bramuel instructing one of the small groups as they prepare to present a story.

Here is the whole group with leaders, in front row on the right.

Victor presenting his story.

Ariel presenting her story.

May Update...

Thought it was about time for an update on things here. This month Tim spoke at a ladies conference with the local baptist church here. He spoke on the Bible and the family and had a great response. He has also been working on getting things together for the Simply The Story training we are doing May 29, 30, and 31. We have a team coming from Kenya to do the training. Tim will be driving to Lilongwe, Malawi and picking them up on Sunday, the 27th of May. We have about 16 people coming to the conference right now, but think we will still have quite a few more, and 6 of them are pastors from Malawi. This conference will be held in English, we thought mainly for the missionaries in the area, but got a great response from people in Malawi where the official language is English. With these pastors coming, we wanted to make it as affordable as possible for them. They will need to pay for visas to get into Mozambique, lodging, and other expenses while here and they don't have the money to cover those costs. We were trying to figure out best how to help them. Recently, good friends of ours held a garage sale and have donated all proceeds to our ministry here in Mozambique. We just found out today that they raised $600 and that will be more than enough to cover the costs we need to for the conference. We plan on doing another one in Portuguese in August/September for the local pastors and church leaders here in the area, and the funds that we have left we will use to help the people here attend. We are so thankful to all of you who helped put that together and especially to the Loveless' who arranged everything. Through you an exponential amount of people will be reached in Malawi and Mozambique.

While we were in the States, we received 3 boxes of donated eye glasses to give out to the people here. It is almost impossible to get glasses here and many people have vision problems. We have informed the eye doctor here in Lichinga that we have glasses for those that need them. When he sees people, he gives them a script with their prescription number and then they come to us and we give them the eye glasses. They must have a script to receive them. We have already seen quite a few people and even all the doctors in the hospital have come by for a pair.

We are also awaiting an intern, Beth from our home church, who will be with us for 3 months. We are getting things ready for her arrival and preparing.

Here are the kids trying on some of the glasses.

This is one of our first recipients of the glasses, Abubaka. He is a pastor in Meponda (the village on the lake).

The glasses come in all shapes and sizes. Here are some of our favs.

I've never had a thumb sucker before, but Jurnee loves her thumb. She has been sleeping through the night, so I think maybe its not such a bad thing.

And she is full of smiles.

This is on Mother's day. Our director, Janice had some of us mothers over for dinner and here are all the kids. God has blessed our kids with plenty of friends.

Getting back to life in Moz...

Well I would say we are finally feeling like we are settled into life here again. Waking up at 5:30am to the roosters and sun. Dirt, dirt, and more dirt. Ants and lizards everywhere. Beautiful sunsets on our back porch. Absolutely perfect weather that is cool in the mornings and evenings and warms right up in the day. Dark faced kids swarming our light ones and touching their hair. Squatty potties and all they entail. Bananas straight from the tree. Barefoot children whose feet are already stained orange. Smiling faces as friends realize we've really come back. Funerals and burying graves in the rain (with your church clothes on). Avacados galore anytime we want. Flat tires. Requests for money and food. Roasting corn over the fire. Suger cane snacks. Yep already feeling at home!