Christmas Eve

We devoted today with visiting folks and distributing food, medicines, and supplies to some folks in need. In all, we visited with 10 different families. In this first picture, we are visiting with a very dear friend who is holding a card she received from our friend Pam in the States. Pam visited on a Men for Missions Prayer Team a couple of years ago and visited with "Mama" at that time and has stayed in touch ever since. Mama remembers Pam very well and always asked about her and was in tears to receive a card from her today. Ann had translated the card into Portuguese and the lady on the right assisted with translating the Portuguese to Tsonga. Language gets complicated here! Ann checked Mama's blood pressure and it was good; she fights high blood pressure like so many here.

The second photo shows several of us working on a new gate for one of our ECC coordinator's houses. Well, I can't exactly say I was working - more like watching and talking. Anyway, we needed to change the gate as Pastor Abel is using a small motorcycle to visit our church planting projects in the Maputo province and we needed to modify the gate so he could get the motorcycle in and out so it wouldn't "run away" (be stolen). The sliding gate was fabricated from metal as most construction here involves metal and concrete (termites can take down a wood structure in nothing flat!).

This man makes his living building gates and things out of metal and the way he gets to the job site is by his wheel barrel. He is quite skilled and does things on-site (custom built). We enjoyed meeting him today but I thought this next picture of him with his tools and wheel barrow was priceless and provided a great snapshot of Mozambique culture / life. He has a small welder, a grinding wheel, a drill, and a couple of hammers and that's it. He can do amazing things with metal with just those tools.

Like most people here, if you will engage them in conversation, they will immediately brighten up as a new relationship is generated in this very relational-driven culture. We need to finish the ramp - which is necessary because the lower ramp prevents water from entering the property and the church in heavy rains.

Note my shirt - one of our church members made this lovely Mozambican shirt for me as my Christmas present. It's quite comfortable and cool. Ann has a new top also in the top picture. Ann had bought the material and our friend Olga made the shirt and her top for a reasonable price. We try to use local businesses for our purchases whenever we can.

Christmas in Mozambique involves eating with family. There is some gift-giving as with most celebrations here but nothing like the excess we see in the West. The streets today were filled with people traveling to be with family, making getting around a little more challenging than normal. People understand it is a special day, but the meaning is lost in the commercialism here as well.

May you have a joyous Christmas tomorrow as we celebrate that special event like none-other in history, when God himself took on the form of a man, teaching us how to live, humbling himself in a way that is beyond comprehension, to offer himself as a sacrifice for sin, fulfilling the prophecies given down through the ages, and making a way for all men to approach the very throne of God with confidence; that those who believe in him (Christ), can know with certainty that they are sons and daughters of a God who wants to be engaged in the details of our lives. Wow....

Blessings,

Dave & Ann

"Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world." James 1:27

Picoco Well - day 3

The well at Picoc is capped and we are now awaiting another group to install the actual pump assembly after preparing the concrete base. In this picture, Pastor Nelio is standing where the concrete base will be added. The well drilling equipment was moved out as we wait for delivery of the actual pump assembly. With the way things work here in Mozambique, it is possible that we won't see the top part assembled until the new year. Things are rapidly closing down here with the Christmas holiday approaching.

This morning (Sunday) we worshipped at our Intaka church. They were celebrating the third-year anniversary of the registration of the denomination and had invited us. I (Dave) was invited to speak and enjoyed the opportunity to talk about how God had a plan from the very beginning of the Bible to send a redeemer for His people. It was a blessing to talk about the Christmas story, of our redeemer coming to earth, teaching us how to live and yet dieing a horrible death on the cross as a perfect sacrifice for the sins of all mankind. But this birth is only the beginning of the story, the power comes through Christ's ressurrection, where death is defeated and Christ stands as the sole intermediatry between fallen man and a holy God. What hope, what joy, what purpose to know that God has a plan for each of us, just as he had a plan for the redemption of all mankind, for those who would accept his free gift through belief in His son. What a story....what hope it brings and what transformed lives we can have through acceptance of this free gift; accessible through repentence and belief on the one whom God sent. And to 'seal the deal' God sends us his Spirit so we can confidently know in our hearts the reality of the story, that even as sinful men, we can confidently approach the very throne of God because we are now sons and daughters of the most high - wow!

The last picture is in the service where many of the congregation were expressing their appreciation for the church and the pastor and his wife for their service to the church this past year.

Afterwards, we had a meal under the cashew tree (it was too hot in the church). Ann did some health checks and we visited with Senhor Jamie, who is 93 and who found it too difficult to come to church this morning with the extreme heat. He is quite frail but loves God and it is always a joy to visit with him. Ann did some medical checks and we returned home late in the afternoon. A wonderful day, but Sunday's usually are...

" All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet, "the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means, "God with us." Matt 1:22-23

Picoco Well - day 2

We spend the morning trying to arrange air tickets for a team coming here in January. As those things do here, that took the entire morning but we were successful although we have to go back tomorrow to pick up the tickets. We then confirmed that the materials for our Intaka well had been delivered, but they aren't going to install the pump until January 6. I'd been hoping for a well for Christmas - but at least the materials are in storage at our Khongolote church.

After some errands related to the upcoming conference, we headed back out to Picoco, arrive late in the afternoon to a totally different situation. Today's activities consisted of boring the hole out with a different drill bit and preparing the bore hole for the plastic tubing. What a mess - soupy muddy water running down a former foot path as the hole was opened up and cleaned out. The task today was to get the plastic pipe in the ground. They are estimating two more days with the equipment on site and then they will start the top part of the well. At first our increased cost was a bit of a shock to me, but after watching what is involved, I'm beginning to understand much better - it is an incredible amount of work using lots of specialized equipment. This well will be a little over $7000 when we are done because of the increased scope - about three times what we are spending at Intaka - it all depends on the terrain and the equipment you need.

If you look closely at the one picture that shows more of the scenery (and lots of green from our recent rain! PTL!), you can see a small round mud house with a thatch roof. This is the home of one of the church members and I need to ask her if she is from the north. Those kinds of houses are more characteristic of the houses in northern Mozambique than here in the southern part of the country. She is a sweet lady and did come visit with us a bit today. She is especially looking forward to having the well up and running and may be who we put in charge of the well relative to 'keeping an eye on it'.

As a side note - a reporter showed up today to learn more about this church and organization that would drill a well for the community. The local government officials are very pleased to have this being done for the community. Nelio was the front man for the interview so another opportunity for the church. We greated the group but didn't engage in much of the conversation - we ran out of language real quick with it being the end of the day.

On the way back, we bought three small banana trees to plant in our yard from a man on the side of the road out in the country. Paid about a dollar sixty for each of the three foot trees. They are the small banannas we like so well here and should be producing in a year. Things grow really fast here (and year-around) if they get water. So, we will see what comes of this little project.

Thanks for standing with us so faithfully!

Dave & Ann

PTL, we hit water!!

As you know, we have been trying for a long time to put in a well at our church at Picoco. We started with one group who couldn't dig deep enough because the ground was too hard - they said rock. Fortunately it was a very shallow layer that today's equipment busted right through, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

We finally located a person who was interested in doing a well for us. We met him in a parking lot and sat down for coffee at a little shop and talked. He had only been in the country from Portugal for about a month. He had this equipment and had done alot of wells in Portugal and spoke of all the trials and difficulties getting the equipment in through the port into Mozambique (I can only imagine - we had fits getting some text books in for our school). We like him quite well and asked him if we could pray together and he immediately said "oh, I can't, I'm Catholic." That answer surprised us as we have many dear Catholic friends who are most willing to pray with us and we assured him that it was ok and so we prayed for him, his new life in Moambique, his new business and our partnership together. We shook hands on the deal and he went off to work up a quote (after showing us his well rig). We are only his second well and he was disappointed to find out that our OMS was not Organizao Mundo Saude (World Health Organization) as he thought maybe he had struck a vein of gold. But no, a different OMS and certainly not a vein of gold. At the same time, we will certainly give him a good reference among our little network and we pray that God will bless his efforts because he so willingly worked with us.

A couple of days later, we met in the same parking lot and signed a contract and we paid the customary 70% upfront (does that surprise you?....very normal here) and then the rain came. After several days and our check clearing the bank, they started work. The drilling started this morning. We liked our new freind Jose Nunes very much but at the same time, you can't help but think, I'm meeting in a parking lot, doing a contract in a parked car, with a guy who has only been here a month; am I crazy? But we knew that the last two days had been a time of focused prayer by many people in the States, so we trusted that he was truly an answer to prayer and that has turned out to be the case. These things are never 'coincidence'!

We paid for 50 meters and I was praying for water by 40, so we could penetrate to 50 and not have additional cost. God was gracious to answer and we hit water at 40 meters. From the picture, there was no question when we hit water - the rig doesn't use water but rather compressed air to throw up and out the drilled-out material. When the water came, we cheered and clapped and praised God.

They installed 3 meter sections of pipe at a time, re-leveling the equipment each time. The one photo above shows some of the kids watching all the work. This was no small operation - a huge compressor, two big trucks, a special drill rig - by people who really knew what they were doing - it was a pleasure to watch it all and I just love this type of equipment and thoroughly examined all of it to see how it worked, etc. I loved the overall simplicity of it all and have learned to really appreciate that feature of Portguese-influenced engineering. Simplicity and practicality.

The last picture is hard to probably understand without a few words. As the material being exhumed from the dig changed, they put small piles of material to show the different levels. At the bottom were the two different layers of white sand, a rock layer, a different soil, a different soil, a red rock, then clay, three types. It was all interesting and I wished for a geologist to explain it all to me.

I the background of this same picture, you can see the outhouse for the church and the edge of the church on the left. Everything looks very green (for a change) because of the wonderful rains we've had the last week. I think anything could grow here if we just had consistent rain. There were gorgeous small fields of corn just off the road coming up into Picoco that I'm afraid will be all dried up in a few months but they look incredible right now - knee-high by the 19th of December (well, at least in the southern hemisphere!).

They will continue work tomorrow, but now we need to install the plastic bore hole piping, the inner well piping, cap the well, and then begin to work on the top part (hand pump).

We also brought up some window frames for the church and stoped to have some small metal security tabs welded on them and Pastor Nelio is overseeting installation of the frames. Youth for Christ purchased the frames and we're installing them - we're in a partnership with this particular work and are so pleased with how it is all going. God is good.

Tomorrow the other group is supposed to finish the other well at Intaka - we will check on that tomorrow.

Blessings,

Dave & Ann

"If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." John 7:37-38

Anniversary

Three years ago, the OMS founded denomination, Igreja Evangelica Palvra Viva (Evangelical Church of the Living Word) was registered with the Mozambican government. This weekend has been a time of celebration in all of the Palvra Viva churches as people remember that event and we were priviledged to participate at three different churches this weekend. In just a matter of three years, the church has grown from a handfull to over 85 churches. So, this morning church at Khongolote started at 0900 and was over about 1230, at which time a lunch was served. I have learned to love the Mozambican food and it is always a treat to participate in these special "fiestas" or parties of celebration. The photo was taken early in the service, and as is normally the case, once the music started, people started flowing into the building.

The service included a time of reviewing the history of the church and a time of testimony where people spoke about what the church has meant to their life. Mozambicans are always able to speak eloquently to a group - and seem to enjoy doing it. Each person would go to the front, singing as they went, leading the congregation in a song, and then would speak. The process would then repeat and it was encouraging to all to see truly what God has done in the lives of so many. This followed a full day yesterday of special teaching that went on all day at the church as people explored God's word and talked about this upcoming year. As we seek God's will for the direction of the church, an all-night prayer service is planned on Christmas Eve.

So how do you get through such a long service when it is so hot you are concerned about heat stroke? Well, you get up and go to the back of the church or the little porch and lay down on the cool cement for a few minutes and then go back and sit down. At one point, Ann made me get up and leave to cool off because I was so flushed and she said giving off so much heat - and it really helped although I didn't lay on the cement - probably should have! Lots of others were lying on the cement for a few minutes.

Last night, there was also a special service at our City Church that meets in the seminary, also celebration the three-year registration and 12-year history of the church here. We were told to be there at 5:00 and many came, but it didn't actually start until 6:45. But, that was still within the range of cultural acceptability because food was involved and many people did an awful lot of work to bring food to the seminary. After the service, everyone moved outside because of the heat and that is where everyone ate. It was exciting for us to see so many people at the seminary, so many visitors, and the interest of all of the neighbors in what was happening on this special Saturday evening. The service was followed by a big meal and we ate outside because of the tremendous heat - a wonderful time of celebration as well. So, it has been a weekend of praising God for the great things he has done here in Mozambique.

We continue to be challenged by the cultural baggage we bring to the work here. So much that we have taken for granted as being "right" or "how it should be done" is no longer quite so obvious as we understand and appreciate the culture more and more here. I have just started a book written by an African Christian Theologian that was loaned to me by a Mozambican friend working on his doctorate in theology. This combined with our new African Bible Commentary is helping us overcome some of the cultural bias we "bring to the table" just because of where we come from. I think I had to live here a while before I could even relate to such a book as we grapple to not be confined by the cultural box we brought with us! (For example, having very long church services that start quite late!). Clearly to be as effective as possible here, we must understand the culture well and be willing to set aside those 'truths' that are simply culture and not biblical mandates. We have to understand culture well to counsel those living together because of barriers to marriage, those who have accepted Christ but have more than one wife; and understand the tremendous family influences and pressures - but I'm rambling.

This living cross-culturally is quite challenging and it is our prayer that we can meld in just a little more every day, seeking those opportunities to share the gospel story that transforms lives of individuals, families, communities, and nations. Jesus gave us a mandate to reach all peoples because He died for all peoples, of every tribe and tongue, and he offers us eternal hope and the reality of God's presence in our lives every day - but that just might look a little different from one country to the next!

This last picture is one Ann took today at the church lunch. I have on my Mozambican shirt given to me by ladies in the church and if you look carefully, there is a small dog in my lap. The dog belongs to my friend Belarmino and I had so much fun with Milka (the little girl next to me) and the dog during the meal; we're dog people and miss our little one that is with our oldest daughter in Philly.

Thank you for standing with us - we're excited to see what God will do this next week - we are praying that these two wells can be finished and we may be able to run a water line in to our church at Sao Damasao! More to come!

Ann has decorated the house for Christmas with a few things we brought with us but it is a bit hard to imagine when it is 100 degrees outside!

Dave & Ann

"To be late means that your were able to make it" An old African proverb

Well Update

No snazzy picture today but we do have news.  This was a crazy crazy day - we met with one of our church-planter trainers today who is trying to resolve his marriage situation - he has a common-law wife and he is trying to complete the church wedding.  We have been counseling with them and encouraging them to resolve this promptly and they were very successful in getting the bride's family to not require a 'bride-price' which is a big problem here that prevents many people from getting married - so they just live together instead.  So the barrier is removed and they can get married in the church now - great!

Well, we thought so until our meeting today (they called us) when they presented us with a list of things they needed to get married - and wanted our help.  It amounted to $900 worth of food and supplies for the party after the wedding which is a tremendous cultural pressure here (sound familiar?).  The bride's family is pushing for this big party (which amounts to feeding about 300 people in exchange for a lot of presents).  Now in this culture, we should feel great honor that they would present this need to us personally, and we are learning to be gracious in these requests, but in a country where a typical wage is on the order of less than $100 / month, this is a little extravagant.  Without the family blessing, the marriage will probably not happen.  In addition, there was a request for help buying land for the house that is so very important (they are renting a nice house by Mozambican standards right now).    We had planned to contribute a little to the wedding (mainly the documents and things for the wedding itself) but of course not paying for the party!

Cultural and family pressures here are tremendous and put real barriers in front of couples, which probably contributes the the problem with promiscuity here and tremendous HIV problem.  Pray with us as we seek God's wisdom in how to counsel this young couple.   We really do seek to understand the culture better so we can operate within it in a Christian paradigm that is not full of all the western bias that is so deeply imbedded in us.  It takes such discernment and as we continue our daily "read through the bible in a year" devotion that we do year after year, we are seeing God's word in a entirely different light as we understand things better here.  But, oh, we have so much to learn.....

But, I started off this entry thinking about the well at Picoco!  We met with a Portuguese man today who one month ago shipped in some well drilling equipment from Portugal and is trying to start a well-drilling business here.   His name is Jose and we quite enjoyed meeting with him and inspecting his equipment.

In Mozambique, the World Health Organization has the initials "OMS" in portuguese so we are confused with these folks all the time.  It actually works to our advantage quite a bit and has unintentionally given us some 'free passes' to things because we said we were "with OMS" and various assumptions are made.  In this case, the man had gotten very very excited to think he would be quoting a well for the World Health Organization - he thought he'd jumped into the big time and when we gave him our card for OMS International - reaching the nations for Christ, he couldn't help his momentary disappointment. 

Anyway, he has given us a partial quote for the hole (about $4500) through the rock and is obtaining a second quote for the pump assembly.  So, we are encouraged that we are moving forward again and it is no coincidence because we know of several groups in America who have been specifically praying for this well for the last couple of days - and to find this guy trying to start up - it's not coincidence!  

We quite hit it off and talked for quite a while and he helped us with our Portuguese and we learned about some tragedy in his life and were able pray with him.  We see some great potential opportunities here and look forward to what the next couple of days will bring as we finalize our arrangement.    

So progress in response to the prayers of God's people.  Thank you Lord, thank you friends.

Dave & Ann

Ricardo's House

Ricardo and his wife Olga pastor the church at Intaka. They have done a wonderful job of growing and pastoring that small reed church and it is my prayer that someday we will be able to build a more substantial structure there. They have a wonderful vision for the church and what they want to see for the future - I get excited everytime I talk with Ricardo about it and sense his passion.

Ricardo and his family lived in a very small reed house that had all but fallen down. It was leaning over so far that you were never sure if you should enter it. He had saved money, accumulated some block, and with the help of a team visitor, was able to start on his house. We are happy to report that he is out of the reed for this rainy season and in a block house. He has plans someday to put another room out from this view but not now. Yes, that is a well in the front. The small structure to the front of the house is a small store-front where they operate a small sewing business. Ricardo can make a pair of trousers that you would think came from the finest department store in the States. They set an example that we believe so firmly in here - bivocational pastors. Lives changed, one step at a time.

The second photo is of these dear friends of ours with their two precious boys.

The well parts are finally in and we expect to finish the well at Intaka in the next couple of weeks!

Dave & Ann

Differences & Change

The other evening I was watching the evening news to work on my Portuguese and there was this story about a man falling out of the back of a truck and being killed on the highway. Now it was a quick story and not much reaction to it. The next day Ann snapped this picture - that is how someone falls out of a truck onto the highway. The police are very strict - you must wear your seatbelt inside the car, but if you are in the back - no worries, you are CARGO! People pay a small amount to ride in the vehicle like this and the above is a very normal thing here.

We've had a series of meetings to discuss our upcoming ECC conference in Nampula this coming January. Every year, we try to get all our church planter-trainers together to share stories, encourage one-another, do some training, and spend time in bible study and prayer. We decided to do the conference in northern Mozambique some time ago as about 1/2 of the people are in the north and 1/2 in the south - so alternating the site seemed to make sense. That was BEFORE we did the crueling 3-day drive ourselves! So, we are preparing to go back in mid-January and are doing the preparations now; getting lesson plans together; making arrangements; gathering supplies. This second photo is at our planning meeting as we put together the agenda for the conference.

We have a guest speaker coming who does Chronological Bible Story telling all over Africa. In addition, later in the week, we have people from OMS Men for Missions International coming to check out the work in the north. So after the conference, we plan to make a trip down to Mocuba with the OMS folks for a couple of days and then return to Nampula. It will be HOT then - our summer and we're headed towards the equator! I hope our air conditioner keeps working on this trip (if stopped working on the last one!).

Tomorrow will be quite a day - we have another ECC planning meeting in the morning to finalize the details for our upcoming conference, assemble the information for the monthly report we owe OMS, and talk about next year's strategy. I just sent in the budget request for our ECC Church Multiplication Strategy as we work towards next year in this interesting economic time. We are feeling the impact of the crisis and taking steps to further cut back and simplify. We proposed a year of stability so we could focus on strengthening our trainers, establishing distance learning centers that are tied to our Maputo seminary, and strengthening the rapidly increasing number of churches. One of the lines we heard in the recent ECC conference we attended in South Africa is "the resources are in the harvest". What that means is that as people's lives are changed by the gospel, that is where the people come from that are the leaders of tomorrow, the church pastors of tomorrow, the business leaders of tomorrow, the seminary students of tomorrow. The harvest is so white.....

We also have one of our quarterly meetings tomorrow with our board of Mozambican advisors. All of us on our Field Leadership Team will be summarizing the last year here and bringing a few items to their attention but it should be a fairly light meeting for a change and will end with a time of fellowship and celebration as we thank them for their service this past year.

A final small story tonight. Shortly after we arrived in Mozambique, the government began installing new traffic lights all throughout the city. At the more major intersections, the lights included a green turn arrow. Well, no one explained to anyone what they were for, so in the beginning the green turn arrow would come on, people would stare at it, but no one would go. After a while, enough of us familiar with the arrow would go, and people slowly began to get the hang of it. So, for quite some time, traffic has flowed a little bit better in those intersections with the lights - less 'playing chicken' which is quite common on the roads here.

Well, we've progressed to something new now. If you have a leading green, now people read that as a green (everybody goes). So, if you get the green arrow - you'd better be moving before it changes to green and shoot through immediately. EXCEPT, you still have to wait after the green comes on for the six cars that run the red light. So, we are almost back to where we started - intersections where the cars are all jammed in, no one can move, the police walk around with their whistles blowing frantically but not doing anything - but eventually, it seems to sort out and the traffic starts moving again. Order in the chaos.....

It has been a blessed year here - so many things have happened in spite of our bumbling. God always finds a way to accomplish his purposes using flawed vessels like you and like me. One thing I keep learning is that it is less about what I want to do, or what I think, or implementing the plan I think is the right plan, but to simply trust that God will accomplish His purposes. Is 'trying too hard' kind of like kicking against the Goads? It can very well be just that...as we learn more about resting in Him - to do the 'right things - right'.

It's His plan and His work - we are all very priviledged to have a small role in it. He can accomplish His tasks with or without us and I don't know about you, but I'd rather be on the "with" team than the "without" team!

"And he [Saul] said,' Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest; it is hard for thee to kick against the goads." (a goad is a sharp stick on a cart used to drive oxen). Acts 9:5