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