Micro-Enterprise

Today was full with meetings that started very early. First we met with Xavier and Daniel to set some direction forward for the seminary program; to set out some basic steps to continue toward Mike Thiessen's vision. Great meeting and we agreed to start meeting every week to talk about progress until God provides a new seminary director. We are totally unqualified to do this but God knows that and we have great confidence in these two Mozambican men to move the program forward; maybe not at the pace we would with a full-time director, but at least forward. Very encouraging meeting for all of us and we started out by simply laying it all our before God.

(Mario teaching CMED at Gurue)

Right after that we received a de-brief on Mario and Samuel's recent trip north to check on the micro-enterprise development work started in northern Mozambique. You might remember that Mario and Samuel traveled north with us last month and stayed after we returned to Maputo. We looked at pictures from their recent trip and were really encouraged by the good report. They have five separate village savings and loan groups working in and around the Gurue area. Only one is in a Palvra Viva church and the rest are golden opportunities. Two of these groups are extremely interested in someone leading a regular Bible study with them. We will get Juka working on that opportunity - could lead to some new church plants that in this case started with CMED. There certainly is no 'one method' of evangelism - an opportunity is an opportunity.

This photograph is of the group at Macarueue. Mario and Samuel trained two young men to train up and follow the groups in the Gurue area and they were very pleased by what they found on this trip. All the Village Savings and Loan (VSL) groups were healthy and generating their own capital to start small businesses. One of the groups is combining their savings to buy a small farm area to raise crops - microenterprise. Another group constructed a small church building to meet in as a result of God's moving in their lives through this program. Another group wants someone to come and lead them in a Bible study and another group is made up of a number of widows who have important government positions in the province and who are strong proponents of the program. Wow - only God can receive the credit for this.

In addition, Mario and Samuel put on a 4-day training seminar on Christian principles for handling money that was attended by over 25 people, including pastors from two other evangelical churches in the area. More VSL groups are expected to spin out of this seminar. The photo below is of the seminar attendees during class.

What is so exciting to us is seeing Mario and Samuel develop as leaders. They are comfortable in this position, not worried about 'protecting their chair', not trying to control things, but rather training and releasing and rejoicing in the progress and success of others. They have such tremendous potential as God develops this leadership gift we see in them. During this trip, they also opened the necessary doors for Mario to return to Mocuba later this year to start groups in the many churches that have been started in this area. The plan is to train someone to follow the new groups, to establish groups in the larger more mature churches, and utilize the newly trained person to follow the VSL groups, reporting back to Mario and Samuel, another application of 2 Tim. 2:2 (find reliable men and teach them to teach others...).

The other side of this is that we have a great vision to start real micro-enterprise projects so that the program here can become self-sustaining. But, we have two small problems. One would be the need for a full-time missionary willing to stand with Mario and Samuel (M&S) as they work out the details and initiate business initiatives. What a great opportunity! Second, our CMED program has a very tenuous funding source and frankly, we may run out of money in this fiscal year that we just started. We only pay for the wooden savings box, a calculator, some paper and pens to start a VSL group. We pay M&S a small salary for their efforts, which is a strength of the program so that the groups clearly see that M&S have no vested financial interest in the groups, along with a small amount of money for cell-phone credit and transportation. In addition, we pay a subsistence level salary for one helper in the north working on this program as well - and in some cases, provide a little rice and oil along the way for some of our volunteers. However, all of this takes a little bit of funding and that fund-raising thing is not one of my talents and an uncomfortable role for me at best. So we pray a lot and try to explain the opportunities (OMS CMED Project in Mozambique 302120)

Photo is Dave & Samuel in Mocuba.

Today was very encouraging to me. Two young men working hard to provide opportunities for people to have opportunities they would not normally have, and using the work as an evangelism opportunity. We continue to pray that God would raise up people with a passion for the work here - to come and stay. In the interim, we'll work on cloning technology as we'd like to work full-time on the CMED program, full time on the church planting program, full-time on the community health outreach, full-time on language learning, full-time on clean water initiatives, full-time on leadership development, full-time teaching Biblical principles, and full-time developing relationships with these Mozambicans that we love so much. Whew....now back to the full-time administrative work that goes along with it all.

"And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not." Isaiah 58:11