Amando

Friday morning, we had an interesting new visitor! Where we live there is a pre-school that takes students from all over the area. Early Friday morning, the director of the preschool was at our door to see the nurse. One of the students had fallen playing soccer with others and gashed his head above his eye. He was a cute fellow but was scared to death of us, even though I remember him waving bravely at us when we would pass by the school on our way in and out. Maybe he has heard the saying said here by mothers to their kids, "if you aren't good, the crazy white people will come and take you away." It's kind of like the saying we had in the states - "good night, don't let the bed bugs bite." Crazy things we say to our children!

Here I am getting off track again. So, we're trying to assure him that we mean no harm and we won't be taking him anywhere! So, Ann cleans the wound, applies anti-biotic ointment and the band-aid and all is well. This young fellow was so brave - it had to hurt to get all the dirt cleaned out of the gash. Ann sent them back with medicine, ointment, and bandages for the next few days. He waved at us quite a bit more bravely when we headed out for our meetings!

Blessings!

Dave & Ann

"And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." Matthew 25:40

Water Projects

I don't think we would ever be able to describe a 'normal' day here as each one is so different and generally so unpredictable. We try to schedule some relatively routine things as we both need some structure in our lives, but even those things seem to be elusive much of the time. One thing I really look forward to is Wednesdays when we work with our Khongolote pre-school leadership. We're getting a good handle on the finances of the pre-school and I hope we are making a little bit of a difference. It is also alot of fun to be with all the kids there. Today while I was working with Carlos, Ann and Kimberly sat under the trees with the ladies talking and making plans for the next church-wide women's meeting. We squeeze all this in during the kid's naptime and it is always fun to sneak a peek at all this stored energy as they sleep! When we leave, that energy is starting to be released!

On the way we stopped at our church at Sao Damasco and we were happy to see the water line finally going in. We have been planning for this for some time and now there is a water tap on the church property that can be used by church members and the community to get water. The church still has some details to work out on managing the water as there is a counter and there will be a bill. In the first photograph we are talking about the job, in the second we see the two water company fellows working on the counter, and in the last photo, you see the small group of children watching our every move. They got some balloons out of the deal.

This good water source will well serve the church and as we've said so many times - it is the fundamental thing needed for good health - clean water. At the end of the day we passed back by and the job was complete and the water in use. Thank you Lord!

Blessings!

Dave & Ann

"...while three-quarters of the Earth's surface is covered with water, less than one percent (0.37% to be exact) of that water is drinkable. Furthermore groundwater, where we place pumps for wells, only accounts for 0.28% of freshwater across the globe. " Global Water Cycle and Supplies - University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire web page

Women's Ministry

While in Mocuba, Ann was asked to teach at a women's meeting. These meetings are something Juka's wife started when they moved to Mocuba. She is sitting on the mat next to Ann, who was put in a chair because she was the teacher.

The topics, which had been pre-selected by Elina were community health topics. They (Ann and Elina) worked together and did training on HIV, Malaria, cholera, flu, and sexually transmitted diseases. Because they had a guest speaker, the men joined initially for the devotional time but were thrown out when they got to the sexually transmitted disease part. The topics were of great interest here as everyone knows someone impacted by these diseases.

The ladies meeting lasted about three hours and during this time, Juka, Antonio, and I were preparing a lunch meal for the ladies. It consisted of a local squash plant that had a very very hard skin. After removing the skin, quartering, and removing seeds, the squash was cut into small squares. We then boiled the squash in a little water and a fair amount of salt, and then pounded some peanuts up into a powder and mixed that in, along with two small packets of chicken flavoring. It was scooped out as a gruel and it was very tasty! We have seen this squash along the road for sale but hadn't tried it before - now we know the trick and I just loved it.

We all ate together and had a wonderful time of fellowship working together.

I really see the tremendous value of life in community here where everyone works together to accomplish something. Everyone brought a little today and everyone was satisfied. There was good bible teaching, good health teachings, ending with a good meal. Ann took alot of notes as well as she is picking up quite a bit of knowledge about local remedies for malaria, intestinal upset, parasites, and other things that truly work in the absence of doctors and pharmacies.

Antonio is doing a tremendous work in Mocuba, drawing the churches together in unity, encouraging both men and women to study God's word and encouraging the church as a family.

I especially enjoyed spending time with some of the older men. They related to me because here I am old also (well my kids would probably say, 'Dad your old here too!'). They were giving me pointers all along the way although it was in Lowme and we did quite a bit of pointing, grunting, demonstrating, laughing, and smiling.

The process pretty much used most of the day, although afterwards we did spend some time in meetings with both Antonio and Juka, reviewing the health of the church multiplication work in Zambezia province.

I did hear a couple of the older men scolding Antonio later in the day about why they don't have men meetings like the ladies with the same good teachings the ladies get. That made me smile.

Little by little for the Kingdom.

"And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching." Hebrews 10:24-25

A New Baby

Our close friend Belarmino just had a baby boy. It is his wife's first child in over 19 years and they are so very excited. We had the priviledge of running them to the hospital and then again taking them home. His wife was way over-due and we had been told she delivered by C-section, but at the last minute, was able to deliver normally. The baby is beautiful and Belarmino is absolutely giddy about this new baby, named Belarmino Junior. They have suffered many miscarriages through the years including a couple since we've been here - God has truly blessed them with this child.

Some of our readers have visited here and know this wonderful couple. So, thought you'd enjoy the picture!

Blessings.

Dave & Ann

The well is working!

There are actually many things I could write about this last week. First, it has been a real blessing to have our fourth daughter, Allison, with us. She has spent time here before and just settled right in - no culture shock for her - and she has been a great help to us. Once again, she is helping move! Everytime we have seen her, it seems we are working on a move, in this case, moving Juka, our village church planting coordinator, north to the Mocuba area. There are alot of details to attend to before he leaves and Allison has been a great help. She also has been my right hand in roof repairs, car repairs, home repairs, computer repairs, you name it!

Getting around has been a bit of a challenge of late; heavy rains washed out several of the dirt track roads we normally use, and we've given Allison a real taste of using 4-wheel drive, just to get out of our house to the road! During the peak of the storm, while the electricity was out (normal here - add wind, lose electricity), lightening hit our house on one end, putting a big crack in the house from the eve to the ground, and blasting a small hole in the asbestos panel roof. So, water poured into the house and we scrambled around getting everything moved, being very thankful we were home at the time. We were sitting at the dinner table when it hit, and we thought a bomb had gone off. Fortunately, our computers were not plugged in because of the power fluctuations, and we received no other damage. When the rain stopped, Allison and I spent an afternoon on the roof repairing the panels and fixing other small problems. The fix is easy - there is a special paint you put down, then lay this fiberglass like material (probably asbestos!) over the painted area and the hole, and then paint over the patch material, and instant patch - works great. However, they only had red in stock, and so my 'gray' roof has all these red patches on it! Fine with me - the roof doesn't leak!

We went to our Intaka church Sunday as the well was finally finished and we were pleased to operate it and drink the water. The church is so pleased and many people in the community are using the water. A lady who lives next to the church watches over the pump, and it is locked to prevent vandalism when she is not around. We need to work a bit on a drain field and fixing a better area to stand while you pump, but we now have good clean water for the community and the church - that's a great thing. Many people made these wells possible and we thank you so very much for making a difference here in Mozambique. The one photo shows many of the kids in the church wearing Vacation Bible School t-shirts graciously provided by a church in the States who had a heart for this well project. The kids were especially excited to receive the t-shirts as they are new, not used, and of a quality not often seen here.

On the same day, we delivered a special filter to a family that uses an open well and is plagued by periodic episodes of diarrhea. Ann thinks it is the well water. So, we are experimenting to see how it impacts their health - drinking the specially filtered water. We are so thankful to all our friends in the States who have made this well and the filters possible as we work to improve lives here. Water is such a key, and with the rain and floods of late, the latrines are overflowing and the water in the communities is such a mess.

We are excited to see the growth of this small village church under Ricardo and Olga's leadership. It is making a difference in the community and Ricardo has a vision for the future that is most exciting. Our prayer is that we can begin to work towards replacing the simple reed structure, which is becoming quite worn, with a simple block structure over the next year. We see progress in every avenue at this church, with our micro-enterprise program, a small sewing center, a small farming area, and now the well. In addition, Ann has quite a community health outreach to this area and she always enjoys working with the ladies at this church. They are always glad to see her.

Our well at Picoco - the contractor is back on the job to finish the work this week, for which we are very thankful. Sometimes I have to catch myself because the seemingly simpliest tasks take so very long. This well at Picoco has been a work of love for a very long time - the need there is huge but God has His timing. We are very close and I look forward to sharing the photos with you in a future report!

We have several new churches in a place called Malange in northern Mozambique. Malange is located in a very poor area and the churchesy recently put out a desperate call for assistance with some clothing. Our local Mozambican churches did a drive, and today we picked up about 10 bags of used clothes to send north with Juka - give by people who have little, to be used by people who have even less. I say 'send north with Juka' because he will be moving this week; I feel like my best friend is moving away and to add insult to injury, his daughter is like a grand daughter to me! But, he is answering God's call to oversee our church planting movement in northern Mozambique and we support him 110 percent. We hope to drive north again (after we get the car repaired from the last trip!) in March to visit. Juka will bring a great level of maturity and leadership to our work in northern Mozambique and I don't think this timing is a coincidence. He has been a joy to work with the last two years and I am excited to see what God is going to do through him and his lovely family.

Please continue to pray for our precious team mate - 2-year old Gabriel Thiessen who begins his chemo-therapy this week. Pray for his dear parents as they walk this path with him. Pray them back to Mozambique.

The well in Intaka has the following verses inscribed in the base. I thought they were appropriate for today's blog entry. I pray that this well will be a gathering place where people will hear the gospel; where lives will truly be transformed from the inside-out:

"Jesus answered and said to her, "Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, 14 "but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life." John 4:13-14

More on Wells; Some Sad News

This week, a three-man team arrived from OMS International to review our Every Community for Christ (ECC) work and talk with our ECC teams. It has been our joy to take them around and introduce them. Their first day here was interesting as the morning we were to go to the airport, the well-drilling people called and said 'we're passing through Maputo and need to see the locations where you want to drill water wells'. We're to go to the airport late morning for our team and wondering how we will do this. But God already had a plan and one of our national Pastors was in down and available to help us, taking the well-drillers to one location while we got the ECC folks at the airport. We later met up with them at Intaka and we have plans to drill two wells the week of the 22nd, one at Picoco and the other at Intaka. The Picoco one is a bit of a challenge because the soil is a bit rock and they took some sames to analyze at their lab to see if they think they can drill there. The rig they are using is simply a big auger and if there is much rock in the soil, you need a type of drill rig that both drills and hammers, which they don't have. So, we are praying that this is going to work out as to hire the special rig is much much more expensive.

The ECC folks who are here are OMS people who have direct responsibilities for oversight of ECC and we have enjoyed taking them around. Ann and I have reviewed all the details with them and will be discussing more with Juka and Xavier and the team tomorrow. That is also when we will receive a full report on Juka's recent trip north.

The ECC program uses a trainer, who gathers around him 12 to 15 people interested in learning more about the Bible and about planting churches. This begins a three-year discipleship program. Our goal is to have teams in all 10 provinces in Mozambique. When Juka went north, last time, he gathered all the trainers and their students and trained them on how to use the training material, and then turned them loose, thinking the trainers would work with their students. When he returned this time, many of the "church planters" (students) thought because they had been trained, they were also to gather 12 to 15 people around them and start training their students and planting churches and they did. So, what has happened in a few short months is that the trainer is now training 12 to 15 people, who are also on their own training another 12 to 15 more. Of course it isn't 100%, but the number of groups that are studying the Bible and church planting materials has grown beyond our wildest imagination. So, we will be talking more about his tomorrow. So instead of five guys with 12 to 15 people, we have potential for something like 5 times 12 times 12 kind of numbers - it is staggering - and only possible because it is God who is doing this and it is a kind of revival sweeping the land in the north. At the same time, it truly emphasizes the need for more of a teaching presence in the north to work with all these new believers and churches. The harvest is ripe but the workers are few.

We're working on improvements to the administration to get our arms better around the numbers of people involved in our ECC program, which would sound easy but in a land where the communication is all by cell phone, computers are rare, gathering the information can be a challenge. We're on it, however!

We went back out to Picoco this morning and one of our visiting Pastors brought the message, which is always appreciated here. We used our friend Timoteo as a translator and he did his normal great job. Afterwards, the church was dividing up some badly needed clothing that we had brought up to the church last week, clothing gathered from a Youth for Christ drive. The church had many new visitors and it is clearly growing. The Pastor has nearly 25 people he is disciplining right now using our church planting materials. Exciting times every day.

On a much sadder note, we receive word that one of our National Adviser's wife died today from Malaria. Of our four advisers, he is probably the one we have seen the most of outside of quarterly meetings, having been to his house a number of times and having seen him in other settings as well. In fact, we feel quite close to him in a way that is hard to explain - a kind of heart to heart link that happens with some of the people in your life. In our meeting a few days ago he advised us that his wife was sick but she was taking medicine so you kind of assume that everything is well and she will recover - but Malaria is a serious disease and sometimes it doesn't go that way, as in this case. A bright, faithful, and vibrant lady taken to be with the Lord.....So we are grieving today and tomorrow we will visit with the family and are seeking advise from other friends on what our roll should be culturally. We are also very good friends with one of his sons and his wife, who helped us when we first arrived in Mozambique and who we have remained close to. Very tough and a wake up call - take precautions, spray the house regularly, use repellents. Malaria is a horrible, insidious, diabolical, and deadly disease that is the number one killer here.

"And seeing the multitudes, He went up on a mountain, and when He was seated His disciples came to Him. Then He opened His mouth and taught them, saying: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted...."" Mark 5:1-3

Wells

Great news today - the well drilling folks have given us dates - we will be drilling wells at Picoco and Intaka the weeks of September 22 - 24. We've been delayed for different reasons, such as equipment problems, and so we are getting closer. We are very excited to get these projects going and look forward to seeing what God will do through this project so generously supported by so many of our friends. Thank you! Sorry for the delay, but things just don't always move as fast as we would like here. Every day we have to take a deep breath and say 'we aren't in Kansas any more!' (for your Wizard of Oz fans) as things move differently - not better, or worse, just differently but almost always slowly.

One of our new church planters has run into some governmental bureaucracy problems. We gave him a letter documenting that he was one of our OMS folks and that we were registered with the government. The officials in this new province did not accept this standard letter that has always worked before and want certified copies of all our registration paperwork. We will be sending it up with the family member of one of our church folks who is visiting this weekend (which is a holiday weekend in Mozambique). So, pray for Jose Carlos as he is getting a little bit of push-back from the local officials as he initiates a bible study. This is a 'first' for us and we think it is probably just a particular local official but there will be more to come. Pray with us as this government things can sometimes be quite a challenge, as we found with the T-3 preschool.

The Irish team has come and gone and they built an amazing playground area, complete with a mural at our T-3 church as we continue to work towards re-opening our pre-school. Many from the church turned out to help the team prepare the area, move debris, paint the mural, and install the playground equipment. Even neighborhood people not associated with the church came to help because it was great fun for everyone. We praise God for this wonderful team (called the 'heart-beat team') who came prepared and simply implemented, doing drama, bible teaching, children's ministries, and playground construction. Thank you Lord.

Tonight the wind is just howling and the dust is everywhere - coming into the house through every crack in the doors, windows - I just pray our church people with reed homes can weather this terrible wind storm. One of our leaders came to the house tonight for a meeting with us and told us this was characteristic of wind before a big rain - so we will see. It is very hot some rain would truly be a blessing as it is so very dry. We just today finished repairing some holes in our roof, so a big rain will provide a good 'leak-check'. There has been so much wind and incredible amounts of dust and debris in the air - I checked the air filter on the car and it was way plugged and I hadn't changed it all that long ago. The new filter was about $75.00 USD - that will get your attention but we have to have them. This new one I bought is one I can supposedly wash off and re-use up to three times - what a clever idea! Many people install these snorkel assemblies that pull air from way high about the level of your roof to help reduce the dust intake - it is something I am thinking about because so much of our time is spent on dirt roads. It also helps when you are fording deep streams but if I'm in that deep - something isn't right, now is it! Like Ann would say - it is a car, not a boat!

Yesterday we made a quick run to Nelspruit, South Africa to check our mail drop and purchase some supplies we can't get here. I got a couple more tools as I build my inventory (and I use them often!) so we can keep things going. This has been made possible by a very generous gift from some Sunday Schools at our home church and what a blessing where you have to really use ingenuity sometimes to fix things - but I learned from my nuclear power days, you can fix most anything with tuck tape and plastic! Now, if I could just find that nuclear-grade tape...The border crossing was quite pleasant for the second time in a row as the two countries work to make the process a little more efficient. I always offer the Customs inspectors a coke, as we usually pick up a load of groceries while we are in South Africa. They always enjoy that and it provides an opportunity to talk with them - some of them are starting to remember us for this small act of kindness. It is a way to open a door.

We had a long conversation with a young man today whom we care deeply about. Without going into the very long story, he had been offended by a decision we had to make last year that he did not agree with. The long and the short of it is that what offended him most was that we just didn't spend enough time in relationship with him during that time. It is so important in this culture to just spend time. As we drive back home at night, we see lots and lots of people moving about - and what they are doing is visiting the people they know as it is the networks that people build through relationships that keep things working here. Tremendous networks that people spend incredible amounts of time developing. That is a lot different than the Western "get it done, now" approach we know so well where the relationship is often the last thing that is considered. Our visit by a National leader tonight was just that - building relationships. We continue to learn as God teaches us every day. It is only through Him that we can do anything here - may He alone receive the glory.

Dave & Ann

"And if anyone hears My words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world." John 12:47

Sunday

Today we attended our T-3 church. It is relatively close to our new rental house in Machava and we can be there in about 10 or 15 minutes traveling the narrow back-roads that we've become so used to. We stopped on the way at a local market and bought some rice and sugar for a widow we planned to visit with after church, a dear lady we have known for quite some time now.

We have known the young man in the photo since he was a baby and he is growing nicely and so well mannered.
Momma (a term of respect here, emphasis on second syllable) has a son who is dieing that she is taking care of. We don't know what it is as these things are not talked about, but we are almost certain it is advanced aids. He is to the point he is unable to get up off his grass mat and is totally skin and bones. Momma is taking extremely good care of him and at this point there is little to do but keep him comfortable. I think it is the love of family that keeps him going. In the past, he used to work in South Africa and return to Maputo but as this horrible disease ravaged him more and more, he had no where to go but home. As we held his hands and spoke with him, we could only offer him encouragement, that God knows his name, and in this case, he also has the peace of knowing the very Creator. As we prayed with him, I so wished that God would allow him to 'take up his mat' but this was not to be. A gaunt face of a young man, burned into my consciousness, laying on a grass mat on a concrete floor in a little block house on the outskirts of Maputo. But by the grace of God go any one of us....

In an oral culture, such as Mozambique, memories are much more developed than in the Western culture where we can look up a name, check the phone book, etc. Today she asked specifically about some dear friends of ours that visited with her back in 2006 - by name. She wanted to hear all the details of their lives, their children, what they were doing and emphasized the importance that we relay her greetings, which we have done. The Mozambican's are a very gracious people and we must seem so crude to them with our "walking with purpose" and our task orientation. But Momma has looked into my heart and into Ann's heart and we have that heart connection that cannot be explain - a bond that we are truly family.

We are reading a book called "African Friends and Money Matters" by David Maranz that should be required reading for anyone coming to African to visit for an extended time or to live. This book really drives home the differences in culture and really helps explain how differently we look at things - the incredible bias we bring into the situation because of where ever we come from. The longer I am here, the more I see the layers of the onion I must shed to truly be as effective for God as I seek to be here. In this culture, it is the relationship that matters, the network you develop, and the understanding that the broad network is literally how many people simply survive day to day as everyone helps everyone else. It is a different way of thinking but I feel like I'm beginning to see it a little better - not in judgement, not to evaluate, but seemly to see how the system truly works and the tiny ripples that move out from the relationships as people help each other. It has much basis in the Bible.

I was encouraged that I was able to follow Pastor Daniels' sermon fairly well but he kept using a word (verb) over and over again that was unfamiliar to me. Afterwards, I talked with him trying to understand what the word meant. It wasn't in our dictionary and so we got out our Bibles and used them as our dictionaries - and it worked. I learned a new verb that isn't in our little dictionary and now I just need to use it about 10 times to cement it in my brain. While we were having that discussion, I didn't realize that Ann snapped a picture - so here is truth. The sermon was on the "call of God" and it was something Daniel and I have discussed many times.
A great day - actually my birthday today - and Ann used one of the boxes of cake mix we brought back with cream cheese frosting she brought from the states. Five candles as we didn't want to burn the house completely down and we didn't want to catch the few hairs I have left on my head on fire!

Blessings to you.

Dave & Ann

"And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’" Matt 25:60

Completed OMEGA Training

This last Friday, we completed the OMEGA church planting training program with our new group of potential church planters. This photo shows the class with the two instructors (Juka and Xavier) and the two ladies who helped prepare the lunch-time meals. From this group, we are sending out three young men on September 1 to begin new church planting work in Gaza, Inhambane, and the Maputo province. We distributed their training manuals and we honored them at the Khongolote church service, which is the sending church for these first three young men. It is exciting to see the impact this church has had on the work here in Mozambique. Many of the new churches can trace their roots back to this church at Khongolote, which was founded out of the massive floods of 2000 when large numbers of people from all over the country were re-settled in Khongolote.

After church, we went back up to Intaka to checked on several of the dental patients from the other day as follow-up and saw those who we'd been unable to see previously. Afterwards, Dentist Fran did two more tooth extractions at a house in Khongolote. So many people are suffering so badly here because of poor dental care. Today's extraction was on a 25 year old who had four molars completely decayed with huge holes and massive infections, and she was just living with it with great pain, headaches, and general malaise. It is very possible that her entire health situation will improve as a result of this work and we praise God for this opportunity to make a difference. This week we plan to spend time with the Khongolote pre-school as teaching the kids good dental care is a much better strategy so they can avoid these kinds of problems that Fran has seen so much of these last weeks. Fran and her husband have been such a blessing to this field and to the people of Mozambique. Mike is a computer wiz and has got the CAM school computers working well, not to mention our own here at the house. He's a bit quiet but doesn't miss a thing and he has been very helpful to me personally as he is a clear thinker and ponders things - and when he speaks it is always most useful and insightful.

Tomorrow we begin our training classes on Bible story telling, which will involve drama and is designed to help spread the gospel in areas where literacy levels are poor and in a manner that draws interest. We have over 30 people from a number of our churches signed up for this training and we look forward to seeing what will result. More to come on this!

"And as you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’" Mt 10:7

Community Health Day

This has been a long but amazing day. We have an amazing short-term (3 week) missionary couple with us from the UK and one of them (Fran) is a dentist. Today, we ran two dental clinics where Fran and Ann did basic community health teaching and Fran did alot of dental exams and quite a bit of tooth pulling. We finally had to stop out in one village area as we were exhausted and the sun was going down (no electricity) and there were still people lined up to see her. The needs are tremendous but the workers few....

In the morning while they were doing the dental clinic in T-3, I spent time in class with our new group of church planters (picture above). They have been in class this week at T-3 learning about church planting. Today they were each doing a practical on how to teach a class and do inductive Bible Study. We discussed many things and I have a couple of classes to reach in the morning. Three of them start with our ECC program on September 1, moving into Gaza province, Inhambane province, and one in Maputo province. The remaining four will start with ECC on January 1, covering Machava, Massinga in Inhambane, Nampula, and Maputo. The training is quite extensive and we will be following up closely with them over the coming months. We really look forward to seeing what God will do with the lovely young men (and woman) as they take the Gospel out to their country.

The dental clinic was a group effort. A daughter of a missionary friends of ours helped us with translation and recording of dental information while Ann assisted the dentist. I held babies and entertained kids so their parents could be examined, talked with those waiting, and did alot of praying. We prayed with each patient before each examination and during each procedure, where procedures were required. Fran did an amazing job and her love for the Mozambican people was readily apparent and she was extremely well received. Fran taught one of our Pastors (Ricardo) how to teach about proper brushing and he took over that assignment and we all had great fun with the big teeth and brush that you see on the bench. We handed out lots of tooth brushes, tooth paste, and other dental supplies to help out.

Because of the extreme demand, we will do another clinic this weekend, but that will be about all. Fran will have pretty much exhausted her supplies by then and she brought quite a bit. It has been a great first experience at doing some clinic work. We will also work with our one operating pre-school next week as one of the best things Fran is doing is teaching good basic tooth care - brushing twice a day, for example. The expectation here is that your teeth go bad and you get them pulled. The expectation that if you take care of them, they can last a life-time, is something new to challenge people with.

Thank you for standing with us as we work together to reach the nations for Christ.

"But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?" 1 John 3:17