Blood Bank

On New Year's Eve, we were invited to a neighbor's house for a late dinner and a time of prayer to bring in the new year. This was the same day that we had the battery problem, so after the battery was fixed, we stopped at the local supermarket to get some food to take to the dinner. We had two things working against us: it was the last day of the month (pay day here) and it was the day before a holiday. The store, one of two larger groceries in the city, was packed beyond packed. There was a line to enter the store, and the check-out lines went all the way to the end of each isle - so you couldn't get down any of the isles. Ann parked me in one of the lines and ran around the store gathering things and coming back to the cart. A great strategy as she finished by the time we hit the register - and out the door. It was wall to wall people and the pushing and shoving quite aggressive at times.

Right at the front of the store, outside with hundreds of people all around, was a local blood bank doing a drive. You almost tripped over the beds going out to the parking lot. Ann snapped a few pictures. It was good to see the blood drive, but my what a different paradigm from the one I participated in my old life - with the private little interview rooms, calm surroundings. I'll have to try it (give blood) in this environment sometime. In the past, I gave blood about four times a year, year after year, until they didn't want it anymore because I had visited Africa. I'm sure they can use it here! If you are a anxious blood donor - this wouldn't be the place!

But maybe not - I was bitten on my arm in four places by something while we were visiting in a home in Khongolote last week. I have these four big welts - we've tried all sorts of things, but they won't go away. Not mosquitos - something else - possibly a spider although friends think it might have been a certain kind of millipede. It looks horrible but doesn't hurt - no better - no worse - the only side affect is that I wake up some nights holding on to the ceiling or half-way up the wall (heh heh!). So - maybe they wouldn't take spider blood. ;-)

"He who has knowledge spares his words, And a man of understanding is of a calm spirit." Pr 17:27

Preparing for the Conference

As we get closer and closer to the time for our annual conference with our church planters, the calendar seems to move more quickly. We met with our country coordinator this week to finalilze more of the agenda and a subsequent trip to Mocuba with a visiting team from the US. But, we've had several days of intense rain, which is always intersting with mud and sand roads. These pictures are just for fun - we were traveling a road we know well and I was pretty certain I knew the depth of all the water in the dips in the road - but in this series of pictures, I was tricked (and this happened a couple of other times due to washing away of sand).

I carefully entered the water but with enough speed to carry through - and the next thing water is pouring over the top of the hood, splashing on the windshield - now that is deep! I missed the air intake by inches I'm sure. Now I know why people use snorkles on their vehicles! We made it to our destination fine but came back a different way - longer, but not so much water! The sad thing is that within three days, there will be quite a bit of mosquito activity because of all this water! There is very little good drainage here.

The rain also washed out a bridge on the single road running north/south in Mozambique, stranding many for a number of days. I understand the bridge is now open and traffic has resumed north and south - a part of the challenge for us driving north to the conference in a week or so from now. Pray for safety in our travel.

When we got up to go out yesterday, the car wouldn't start - dead battery. I was able to jump it off and take it to a nearby battery shop and get it replaced. I always thought the battery was marginal because the amp rating was lower than what the manual recommended - so we wore it out in about 15 months. Everything else checked out fine (alternator) and we replaced the battery with the proper amperage (my language was a lot better today than when I bought the last one 15 months ago so I could ask the right questions!) . However, the small shop didn't have any of the correct connector pieces and so there was much improvising with small pieces of sheet metal, drills, and the like. In the end - it is solidly in place with an interesting assortment of connections that work well but would cause a mechanic in the States to scratch his head and say "what in the world is this?" Next trip to South Africa, I'll pick up the right connector pieces.

Today, we headed to our weekly prayer meeting with our team, and the air conditioner is out of gas - not good for a trip that we have to make in less than a week to a very hot place! This will be the fourth trip to a shop for gas - it is lasting about six weeks but no one is able to find the leak. That will be a priority for Monday - traveling three days without air conditioning when it is over 100 degrees is a bit crazy, not to mention the safety issue of traveling with open windows in crowded places. Just part of the challenge!

We have a challenging agenda prepared for our conference; guest speakers are arranged; lodging is arranged; a few details remain. Our theme is two-fold - the urgency of the task where across this world one person dies every second without Christ; the second theme is emphasizing who we are in Christ. We to approach the Great Commission with urgency, but yet we must also make sure that we aren't getting ahead of God and doing things on our own strength. There is a wonderful verse that speaks to this and I'll quote it below.

We are wishing you a wonderful new year - the last one has certainly been "different" for lack of a better word but we can rest assured that God is in control - but we must make good choices. In this morning's reading, I noticed that God told Adam and Eve that they had the 'freedom to eat anything in the garden". That was the first statement (and this concept of "freedom" stands out much more in the Portuguese translation) - but the second one was "but don't eat from the tree of good and evil". That is how God works - we have freedom to make many choices and he will guide us on the good verses the bad choices, but in the end, it is us who must make the choices. We pray that this next year for you will be one full of good choices that please our God who loves us so.

Blessings for 2009

Dave & Ann

"Then Jonathan said to the young man who bore his armor, "Come, let us go over.....; it may be that the LORD will work for us. For nothing restrains the LORD from saving by many or by few." 1 Sam 14:6

"And the Lord God commanded the man, sayng, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; "but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." Gen 2:16

"Make good choices to live a life worthy of being reproduced through those that you teach and disciple!" Adaptation of a quote from Village Church Planting Manual training materials

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