CMED Update

Mario, one of our Christian Micro-Enterprise Development (CMED) coordinators has been in Gurue since last August building that program in our churches around the Zambezia province. This wonderful young man has truly responded to God's call on his life as he teaches about God's plan for people's life and as he helps people understand Biblical concepts for handling money. Mario returned to Maputo to deal with personal issues and gave us an update today. We have missed our meetings with him, relying instead on phone-calls.

He told us about six churches he is working with and the challenges and successes he has had. He has two village savings and loan groups going now and is assisting a fellow in Gurue who has six of these groups going, two of which grew into churches. The two new groups have 25 people in one and 18 in the other.

He has had to work through schedule issues because the meetings have to work around planting and harvesting schedules in an agrarian culture. He has had to deal with misunderstandings on forms and unfounded expectations. Let me try to explain.

We have a form we use in our Into-African project where we record the number of people in each of our churches in the north by group. For example, how many men, how many women, how many orphans, how many widows. Well, the churches wanted to know that since we were recording widows and orphans, when was the money coming to build them houses and provide them food. When were the missionaries bringing car-fulls of money to help them? And since he was bringing a Village Savings and Loan program to them, how much were the missionaries putting into it so they could spend it? Sigh.....

Mario is an amazing fellow and he, with Juka, patiently worked through these issues. The turning point was when an old man in the group finally grasped the program and the church planting movement and said, 'you are offering us something much more valuable than money' and after this older man explained it in his way to the people, the rest of the people nodded in assent and the work continued. Our objective is not to build dependency but rather self-sufficiency that will continue in the absence of the car-full of money. (Man I'd like to have one of those!). The hand is always out here; the challenge is putting something in that hand with lasting and life-changing value.

Mario's objective is to have six successful groups that are self-sustaining before he returns in February / March. We are so proud of his dedication and the example he sets for others as he serves God through this program. The sad part is that this program is just about out of money. There is such potential but it is going the way of so many things in this time of economic crisis. Without an influx of funding from somewhere, we will be forced to shut it down on April 1. We need about $12 to 14,000 a year to keep this going, which basically pays salary and expenses for three people who are training in all of our churches along with training materials, savings boxes, and the like. Project 432560.

Maybe it is God's timing and it has run its course. But, somehow I don't think so. We continue to pray for the funding and for a missionary with a passion for working full-time on this program, expanding potentially into projects that would allow the program to self-sustain. Such tremendous potential and such wonderful men to work with.

"Consider the ant...consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer, or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest." Pro 6:6-8