Summer Update....

It has been way too long since we updated this blog. Our life has been busy as usual and between travelling and computer and Internet problems, I have not had time to post anything. So this will probably be a really long post.

Early June, we were in Muapula again for another STS training. This one was for a group of Bible students, studying in Maputo. They were in Muapula doing practical training and we held an STS training for them. It went really well. Our family also enjoyed a week on the farm there. We churned butter, helped tag and vaccinate all 183 sheep, we watched them slaughter and butcher a couple sheep, Jurnee fell in love with a 1 day old calf and spent her days at his side. It was really a nice week.

Then we had to make a trip to Malawi to add pages to my passport and do a few things at the embassy in Lilongwe. We also took a few days and relaxed in Zomba. It has been so busy around here, we needed to get away for a few days. The kids rode horses and we took some walks and toured the dam on top of the mountain. It was really nice to just be away with just our family.

Then the end of June, we went back to Malawi and picked up Tim's brother, and sister-in-law, and their 3 kids. It is our first family visit besides our parents, so we were so excited to spend some time with them. We visited a couple of game parks in Malawi and then returned to Lichinga, where we took them to church, did a couple village visits, went down to the lake, where they got a great African driving experience. We got stuck twice. The villagers had to literally pick up our car and move it to get us out. It took about 10 of them, but they did it. We have really enjoyed showing them our life here. Grant, their youngest, and Traeger are just 3 days apart and they celebrated their birthdays together. They are great buddies and Traeger is loving having his cousin here.

Tim will leave on Saturday to take them back to Malawi. We then have one week left until our Spiritual Life Conference. I am planning this conference again, and I have been shopping, planning, cooking and organizing this conference for 50 people. It is a lot of work, because we have it down at the lake and there is no electricity, only charcoal to cook on, everyone has to camp. We have to prepare for everyone to have filtered water and bring down everything including tents, bedding, dishes, cooking pots, utensils, food, etc... It is quite a task. Please pray that is goes well and all the details fall into place.

In August, Tim is teaching at the YWAM discipleship school. He is teaching on missions. Please pray that he will have time to study and prepare and that the week of teaching goes well. We have one couple we are mentoring and doing marriage counseling with, that are attending the school. They are doing great and really enjoying it. We are excited about what difference this can make in their spiritual lives as well as their marriage. They have had no Bible training previously and are leading a small church in Lumbiza. Pray for them and that God really works in their lives through this and they come out with a stronger marriage.

Tim also will be doing another marriage/parenting seminar in a village with the local Uniao Batista Church the middle of August. Please pray that this also will be a success and that the people's hearts will be open to hearing God's plan for marriage and families.

Then in September, we will be having the Yao conference. Plans seem to be moving along for that and we have had a couple days of meetings and prayer and we have had great attendance. Just please continue to pray that people will attend and that the details will come together and that it will be great tool for connecting the Yao believers and strengthening their faith.

One of the small groups during STS training in Muapula

 

Jurnee's favorite little friend. She has learned the word cow now and every animal she sees is "cow".

We would often find the girls at 6am in the sheep pen chasing around the baby sheep and holding them.



Kallen and her favorite.

 

 Karis and her favorite.

  We found this chameleon and notice his markings now. He is very agitated as Traeger is holding him.

This is the same chameleon after we put him back, completely comfortable now and completely green. They really are an amazing creature. Proof of an amazing Creator!

 

 

Zomba mountain.

 

 

Horse back riding on the mountain.

 

Thanks to Tim's parents we were able to spend a couple days with his brother and family at a safari lodge in Malawi. It was an incredible place. To get to it, we had to cross this rope bridge and then they picked us up in safari vehicles to take us to the lodge.

 Kallen and Karis' room.

Our view from the veranda.

Kallen says to me as we are getting ready for dinner. Mom there is an elephant at our room. I said, sure, okay(she often makes things up). She said. really there is an elephant, come and see. Sure enough, right outside their bedroom was this elephant chowing on the bushes. And the rooms don't are completely open to the outside. There is no windows or walls--just open to the river.

We could watch the hippos from our veranda.

 Our bathroom.

 Nyala antelope

 

All the kids at Mkulumadzi lodge.

 

 Jurnee's favorite toy, a giant millipede.

 Jurnee enjoying bath time.

 Another elephant we saw on our game drive.

 A beautiful African evening.

Enjoying the pool looking over the river.

It was our first time seeing a savannah monitor lizard. He was huge.

 A herd of elephant crossing the road right in front of us.

 

Also our first time seeing a python.

 Traeger and Grant celebrating their 9th birthdays together.

 They just have so much fun together.

Enjoying the lake.

All the cousins, Megan, Jurnee, Grant, Traeger, Leah, Kallen, and Karis.

 

All that is wrong and all that is right....

One thing we are learning while living in Mozambique is how to cope with losses. For the Mozambicans it is just a way of life. Nothing is certain, with life expectancy at 40 years of age, they don't expect to live long and they experience death of loved ones on a regular basis. Our house helper, Clara, asked me today if she could have tomorrow off because her niece had suddenly died last night. She came to work today and worked all day, I had no idea. Then right before she left, she told me and asked if it was okay if she took the next day off to help out her sister. I know if my niece died, I would be a basket case, but here, they have to learn to cope  with that type of loss or they would not be able to live. We have to tell our workers that they can only have extended time off when immediate family dies, because otherwise, they would be gone weekly for funerals and family sickness.
This past week, we experienced loss. Our dog, Vader, died while we were in Muapula doing the Simply the Story training. We received a message that he had suddenly died. When we left on Tuesday he was fine, but on Friday, apparently he died. When you agree to take on a pet here, you have to be ready for the reality of it. There are no vets. There are no humane ways to put an animal down if it is suffering. There are no vaccinations for your animals, so you take a real risk by bringing them into your home and loving them. A missionary's life is filled with goodbyes. So our kids have had to say goodbye many times. Goodbye to friends and family in the States, goodbye to friends here as they go back home on furlough, or are moving to a new location. Saying goodbye is nothing new to them, but this is the first time the kids have really experienced losing something to death and they are realizing the reality of it. In reality, we really have been blessed and losses for us here, don't normally come in the form of death. We also lost our cell phone and computer cord this week. These are the everyday things, that when they break or simply cease to function, are not easy to replace. We have to deal with how are we going to replace them, how long can we function without them if we have to have them shipped in from the States, will we be able to afford to replace them. Nothing is easy to replace here. They are just material possessions, but with our link to home being via the computer, when you lose a computer, you lose your connection to home. It is possible to exist without it, people did it for years and years before they were available, but for us, we have to learn to cope without them. It is constantly a learning process. So, we are trying to remind ourselves and teach our kids, what is really important in life. Things come and go, and every living thing, including us, will have to die, but what will never leave and what will never change is our God. "We long for the day when all that is wrong, will be made right." And we will never again have to say goodbye.

On another note the storying seminar in Muapula went really well. There were 24 people who participated. Everyone worked hard during the week to grasp the teaching and during the seminar everyone had an opportunity to present stories as we broke into small groups. The missionaries that live and work in Muapula, Frits and Nickey, are committed to storying and have been advocates of storying as well as such an encouragement to us as we try to teach and extend the reach of this storying method.
It is always amazing to see people stand up and tell a story from the Bible in their own language. And then for them to discover the truths that lie within that story - wow!!! We are blessed! The only downside is that eventually time runs out and the seminar ends, but the upside is they get to work on the storying with their family, friends, and neighbors.
We will be doing another seminar there the beginning of June for some Bible students. Tim will also be doing another marriage/parenting seminar in a village called Nimpepe the middle of this month with a local church. Please pray for us as we are extremely busy with admin and then trying to keep up with the teaching and training as well.

 

This is Raimundo. He told one of the stories he learned in the seminar at church on Sunday. It is always so exciting to listen as they quote entire stories directly from the Bible.

Birthdays...

Well it has been awhile since I updated this blog. The past couple of months have been filled with birthday celebrations. We celebrated Jurnee's 1st birthday on the 2nd of February. We celebrated Karis' 7th birthday on the 15th. We attended Kallen's friend Samuel's 3rd birthday party. And our director, Janice Peters, turned 60 and we had a huge party here for her. Our house has been filled with guests the past month. We have fed over 50 people in our home the past month and a half. We have another busy week coming up with more visitors coming into town to stay at the guesthouse, but after that it should be quiet around here for a couple weeks.

As many of you know, Janice has resigned as director or SIM Mozambique, and so Tim is taking over new responsibilities administratively. The actual director, will be our colleague, Alfred Paetzold, but Tim will be the administrator. As we will be the only ones in town, he will assume all responsibilities financially and anything having to do with the government like visas and paperwork for the organization. I have also taken over as the SIM project coordinator to go along with my role with running the guesthouse. It is going to be challenging, but we look forward to what God will teach us through these new roles. Please pray as we balance ministry, the home, and these new roles.

Ministry wise, we have a couple of new prayer requests. Tim will be helping lead a STS training in Muapula mid April. We have friends who are working there and have a school and church, where they want their teachers and leaders trained in storying. We are looking forward to that. Also, Tim, along with a few others, is planning a Yao conference for August. We are looking to gather all the Yao believers in the area for a conference. We are wanting the Yao believers to be able to connect with other Yao believers to see that there are other believers out there that have had to go against their families and culture for the sake of Christ. We will also be doing a week of intensive training on everything from marriage and parenting to how to reach out to their fellow Yao people. We are excited about the possibility and we have a couple of true Yao believers that are helping to head this all up, so it isn't just a "white" run conference.

Here are a few pictures of our birthday celebrations...

 

Janice turns 60!

 

 

 

 

Karis turns 7!.

 



 

Our friends from South Africa brought hamsters and they gave Karis 2 of them. We bought a bird cage in Malawi as that was the only cage we could find in the entire city. She loves them and named them Star and Snow.

 

 

Jurnee turns 1!

 



Jurnee got her face painted as a mouse at Samuel's birthday party.

 

She has the funniest faces ever!

 

Holidays In Mozambique...

I trust everyone received our newsletter in the mail last month. If you did not, please send us an email and let us know and we can make sure you are on our mailing list. Sorry this is a bit late, but I Just thought I would let everyone know how we spent the holidays. We really had a nice Christmas and New Years. It was nice having Tim's parents here and celebrating with family. Even though the weather is hot this time of year, we try to keep as many traditions as possible that we would normally do in the States. Our tree is fake, but we light pine sented candles to make it smell real. We make fake snow and play lots of Christmas music. This year we read an Advent book, called, Jotham's Journey. You start reading it 4 weeks before Christmas and everyday there is a chapter for you to read. The kids loved it and the story is so interesting all of us adults couldn't wait for the next night to hear what happened next. It was a good way for us to keep our family focused on the meaning of Christmas. New Years we spent down at the lake. So we spend Christmas, trying to ignore the hot weather and pretend it is cold, praying for storms to make it feel cooler. Then on New Years we embrace the warm weather and take full advantage of it. This has been our new tradition, going down to the lake and spending a couple days swimming. We love this tradition. This year,  the hippo was back, so we were able to enjoy watching him cross right in front of the beach on his way back to the river and we went crocodile hunting(not shooting, just sighting) at night and Traeger and Karis went tubing for the first time and loved it! Here are some pictures of our holidays.

 

 

 

Baking Christmas cookies and frosting them.

 

Singing Christmas carols with grandma.

 

 



 

Sleeping under the tree on Christmas Eve.

 

Jurnee's first Christmas.

 

 

 

 

The girls all wearing their new jeggings Grandma got them.

 

New Years at the lake. Our friends, the Cranes, have a boat and took the kids tubing. Karis and Kallen getting a boat ride.

 

Traeger and Tim on the big tube.

 

 

 

 

Each of the kids made a Christmas scene with the fake snow we made. This one is Traeger's.



Karis did a nativity scene.

 



 

And Kallen did snow men and colored her snow green for the fun of it.