Chronological Bible Story Telling

Today we held our first training class on Chronological Bible Story Telling. We utilized a friend from South Africa for the training, who is known all over the African continent for this training. It works very well in oral tradition cultures, cultures with low literacy rates, and is generally just a great way to share the story of the Bible. So often we treat the Bible like a book of all these individual passages and stories instead of the overall story that is the Bible.

The instructor (shown here with one of our National Pastors) has many years of experience and runs a Bible school in South African and is also a construction engineer. He helped OMS-Mozambique with some construction and engineering challenges at our seminary and that is where we first met him, immediately 'hitting it off' because of some of the similar life experiences in our backgrounds. His training method was highly recommended to us by our OMS African Regional Director, was talked about at the OMS conference, and it is really something. The questions and interaction were good and all of us had our thinking challenged and expanded today as we learned how to present the bible in a story-telling way. Our instructor was not bashful in hitting some of our cultural issues head-on as compared to God's instruction and no-one's culture was spared for "all have fallen short....."!

We included a nice meal of rice with a chicken topping, some fruit, and water. That provided a great time of fellowship between the nearly 30 participants as we talked about the class and got used to each other.

We left excited and enthusiastic and are looking forward to tomorrow's session followed by practical application on Wednesday. Many of our new evangelists are in the class and they are excited to see this method as the promise of a redeemer starts early in Genesis after man is separated from God, and the entire bible points to that redeemer in the person of Jesus Christ. Many people here have heard the various Biblical stories at one time or the other but this story telling method ties them all together into "the story".

Each participant will receive a nice book to use in discipling others with this method. It was a great day and it is truly a priviledge to participate in this training. We also have enough materials to continue our own training on this method.

It was a wonderful day and a great reminder of who God is and the power of His word.

"I love to tell the story of unseen things above, of Jesus and his glory, of Jesus and his love....I love to tell the story, for some have never heard, the message of salvation from God's own holy Word."

"I love to tell the story! 'Twill be my theme in glory; To tell the old, old story of Jesus and His love"

Hymn by Katherine Hankey and William Fisher

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

Picoco

Today we drove out to Picoco to participate in this new church's first baptism service. We spoke about this new church plant much when we were back in the States as it had just started the very weekend before we left for our short trip back. I'm not sure I can express the absolutely overwhelming joy that this day has brought.

We left at daybreak to travel to Khongolote where we picked up Juka and Nelio to make the long trip to Picoco. We stopped on the way to check out the selected river, which was a tidal river from the sea, with a nice trail to the river although it was relatively low tide and the access to the water was through some pretty thick mud. We were happy with the location and then proceeded to the church. We passed another rather picturesque river on the way and I asked about that location as it looked cleaner and with easier access and was told - no, too many crocodiles. That's enough reason for me!

At Boane, we turned off the road, working our way through a market, and down a narrow road that eventually lead to the church. We had hired a small bus to help transport the church to the Baptism site and after a short service, we loaded up and headed back to the river. The picture above is at the river with the people being baptised. We spent time singing and praising God, and then proceeded with the Baptism. The singing as we had approached the area attracted many people, and much opportunity was provided for sharing and getting to know new people.

In one case, a lady who had been remarkably deep in prayer in the time leading up to the baptism, began to be quite agitated as she approached the water. When her feet hit the water, she began shrieking and crying out in a different voice. We continued to pray and I felt like I was re-living the book of Acts as we sensed demonic activity. The two pastors performing the baptism had seen this before and firmly prayed and the lady immediately calmed down and emerged a transformed lady, remarkable change, not only in demeanor but also in appearance. It was truly remarkable and a testimony to the reality of spiritual forces in this world. This lady's life was forever changed today and she emerged from the water a new person. It was remarkable and at the same time sobering as we witness the constant battle for the souls of men.

Afterwards, we returned to the church, although we did have to push the bus out of the deep sand at one point. The singing and dancing on the bus was full of joy as they celebrated the baptisms and people waved and waved as our singing bus went down the road. After the church service, in which Ann and I were both invited to speak, we celebrated with a meal together of fish and rice and just enjoyed a wonderful time of fellowship. We finally returned home just before dark - a wonderful day of joy and celebration; transformed lives.

Tomorrow we start a new training class for a group of potential trainers and church planters. We will be using our T-3 church because it is more centrally located for this particular group than our seminary. We are very excited at the potential that could result from this new group.

We have been blessed by having a young couple from England staying with us the last several days. They have truly been a joy and we have become very fond of them - it was almost instantaneous and we have really enjoyed seeing how God is opening their eyes in new ways as they work with us. Their love for the people of Mozambique is evident in their every action and the people readily respond to that love. Tomorrow they will begin working at our Christian School, helping get it ready for the next school year.

"...And the eunuch said, "See, here is water. What hinders me from being baptized?" Then Philip said, "If you believe with all your heart, you may." And he answered and said, "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." So he commanded the chariot to stand still. And both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and he baptized him. Now when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught Philip away, so that the eunuch saw him no more; and he went on his way rejoicing." Acts 8: 36 - 39

Back on Line

We're happy to report that we are finally back on line and can resume working on our blog!! We've been back about a month now and I owe quite a bit of update.

First, the move into a new house was completed quickly and with our daughter Lynsey here to help us, we put the house into order and are finally able to find most things. The bad news is that most of our furniture was broken in some fashion during the move, but we've even managed to repair most of that as well - is a part of how you move here - toss the stuff on a big truck and then drive on really bumpy roads! However, it has taken a very long time to get Internet service installed here and we have a different set up that uses some sort of wireless antenna/transmitter to a distant router, so we have one computer working but our wireless router seems to conflict with this new set up. We have a short-term visitor here that is very good with computers so I'm hoping we can get this minor inconvenience fixed soon.

The re-entry into the work and culture here was much more difficult than we ever expected - and in fact we were quite surprised by it. I could write a book about it at this point - all the emotion that we went through as we re-engaged into life here. But that has all passed and we're starting to get into more of a routine again and are quite encouraged at everything that is going on. We are glad to be here and it really feels like home.

Tomorrow we have a special baptism service at the church in Picoco, that was started shortly before we left for the states. We will be using a river and the day starts very early tomorrow so this entry needs to be a bit short. We have a young couple from England visiting with us and they have been a real blessing and encouragement to us. They are seeking God's direction for their lives and we are absolutely thrilled to have them here helping us and the field with the work although I am thinking about losing their passports so they have to stay a little longer! The young lady is a dentist and we have some clinics scheduled and have had some small sessions in our churches already. It's a great medical outreach and we are blessed to have her here. The young man is a math teacher and he was quite impressed with our missionary children school and is looking foward to helping out with the start-up of the school this next week.

Today we had our routine meeting with the church leadership (picture above) and it was nice to spend time with them again and get caught up on the various things in progress. After the meeting, we drove out to Khongolote and met with our ECC coordinator. A new training session begins next week with a new group of potential ECC trainers and we are looking forward to seeing how this develops. Also, we have some OMS friends coming over from South Africa next week to help us start a Bible story telling ministry within our churches where the Bible is taught through drama. We have 30 people signed up.

We have been blessed by vacation bible schools and supporters in the United States who have raised funds for water wells in our churches and we are making the arrangements now to start drilling wells. We really look forward to sharing pictures and stories about the impact of these wells in the communities. Thank you so very much!

Our new home is about 16 kilometers out of the city. It is close to our work in T-3 and Khongolote and not that far if we need to go into the city. The house is smaller and one-story, which we like but we still have room for people who may come to visit and see the work. It is "in the country" in a sense and much quieter in the evenings. We think we are going to really enjoy this new location.

I'll start trying to be a bit more regular now that we have Internet service and we appreciate your patience with us. It has been surprising what an inconvenience not having the Internet has been!

The ECC work in the north continues to grow rapidly and I am in awe at how God is moving across Mozambique. Like Ann says, our's is the easy job, just go and tell, God has the big job of moving the hearts of men. I will need to write more about our ECC challenges and programs in future blogs! We are preparing for a team from Ireland who plan to do some ministry with our ECC country coordinator in the northern part of Mozambique.

Thank you for standing with us so faithfully!