IZZY's Replacement.. no name yet!!!!

Hey everyone.. here is a few pics of the NEW TRUCK! Praise the Lord!!!! Rick is down in south africa right now getting the canopy and bush bar installed so it is ready to go for life in the bush! He will be back here at the farm on Saturday afternoon.. me and Tendai cant wait to go for a spin in the truck! Thank you so much to everyone who gave and prayed with us as we fundraised for this vehicle! It will be a huge blessing to us to have a reliable vehicle, and Izzy is certainly looking forward to some "retirement" work here on the farm!

VBS is over... phew!!!!!

VBS 2009 is over! We had a great time and had a LOT more kids attend this year consistently! Last year the second week had almost a 50% drop in attendance and this year we had almost no drop at all! It was awesome to see the kids having a great time and enjoying being children for a few weeks!

One of the school kids, Tutu, recieves a present from his sponsor family back in Canada- including a Olympic games t-shirt. I tried to explain what that was, but it seemed like a pretty foreign concept. Mozambique pretty much only has one athlete that has accomplished much on the world stage, a female runner, whose name I cannot remember at the moment. So the winter olympics are totally unheard of. Rick... Im not sure who has more fun on water fight days, Rick, or the kids???!!! Keren takes a few moments to listen to the chest of a little girl with a nasty cough! Glenn, making friends with little Isabel. Glenn left for home today, we sure appreciated him while he was here. The amount of work he did with out sponsorship database and data entry, was soooo apreciated. Not to mention all the help with VBS and VBS prep! Luckmore, one of the kids in our orphan sponsorship program, enjoyed decorating his fabric headband with the "God strong" message! Eunice, modeling her new Fanta earrings. We let the kids design their own once the ones for the fundraiser were done... some of the ones they came up with were gorgeous! Tendai and her buddy Melody, Eunice's daughter. They are almost the same size, but Tendai is six months older! Just chilling in my absolutly huge shepherds hat! (Domingo, our shepherd, makes these hats.. they are awesome! They shade your whole head and shoulders!) Tendai and I went to a Mommy and Kids meeting, with mothers and kids from the chimoio area. It was a lot of fun, and I met a ton of other mothers. These two little boys were literally fighting over who got to hold Tendai first. Once they each had a chance, I took her away to get ready to go and they burst into tears... aparently they were really keen on keeping that "baby doll" for a bit longer!

We are still waiting for the truck.. aparently the driver was on holidays or something so the truck has been in Maputo for a week now waiting for someone to bring it up to us! According to the latest report we should be able to pick it up on Thursday. Rick will be going to pick it up and then hopefully heading STRAIGHT down to south africa to get the Canopy and Bush Bar etc, installed, and get a bit of Christmas and Birthday shopping done for miss Tendai. I can hardly believe she is turning one in just over two weeks! Her birthday is December 1st, and I am going to have to organise a party of some sort to celebrate the event! We are still waiting on The social action workers to complete their review of our paperwork to see what will happen next. Please continue to pray with us that things will start to move a lot quicker!

As VBS ended we have a few days to regroup before Rick starts prepping for the classes he will be teaching at the Intensive seminars in early December. 

Thank you so much for your support and prayers. Blessings, Rick, Heather & Tendai

VBS 2009

Tendai has been enjoying VBS... ALOT!

Dancing with Daddy!

Her favourite part is the Puppets.... she absolutly loves them. giggles and gasps, and squeals and jumps...

Glenn and Keren doing their thing... they are totally rocking the puppets!

One of the girls making coke bottle cap earrings that will be sent back to Canada to use for a fundraiser for the school.

The cookie game... always a favorite.

We have invited all the kids in our orphan program to come to the school VBS this year.. this is Tito... having a BLAST. ( he is very serious about this game!)

Water balloons... they love this!

I love this hat and bean bag game... its hilarious to watch.

Little Isabel, you may remember her from last year... still stealing my heart!

Keren teaching some health classes to the kids... she did all the illustrations herself!

Glenn, hanging out with the kids.. and making some friends.

Little "david" in Kerens helmet and Ricks Camo Pants (aka.. the kings armor)

Making beaded neckaces... I would say more about VBS... but really- I think the smiles of all these kids really say it all!

IN other news... the new truck should be arriving this week. PTL! Also, we have given all the paperwork to the social workers here and are hoping to get the proccess going! Please keep praying as we continue with VBS, and so many other ministries here! 

Blessings! Rick, Heather & Tendai!

Rest...

We were absolutly blessed this past weekend to head down to Paindane Beach with Dwight and Lynn, as well as the current three short-termers we have here at the farm. It was such a blessing to fellowship with each other, enjoy God's beauty and get a few winks of rest in before VBS these next few weeks. We spent most of this week preparing for our two weeks of organized chaos with the kids at the school. The short term volunteers have been busy helping make lessons, posters, cut up fabric for crafts, cut out dozens of flannelgraph figures and generally making our lives a lot easier! Praise The Lord for volunteers! 

Of course, cutting strips of fabric doesnt make for terribly great pictures, and half the time we were in town running errands, so I dont have any of all that work- Next week we will have TONS of pics though!

Here are a few pics of our time at the beach- Praise the Lord for three days of relaxation and renewal!

Family picture ... this was the view from in front of our chalet. God certainly makes some amazing scenery! Tendai enjoying the beach- she finally got over her fear of the mini waves... for the most part! Keren (a short term volunteer) and I  spent hours just jumping in the waves... we are pretty easy to entertain aparently. Tendai... completely tuckered out after a day of playing!

We have several prayer requests for the next few weeks- 

1. We are running two weeks of Vacation Bible School at our primary school. We could have over a hundred kids, so please pray for safety for everyone, a good time of learning, and that everyone will have FUN!!!!!

2. This week we met with the director of the orphanage Tendai came from. She brought us every document and declaration she thought we could possibly need for the adoption process. We will be meeting with the social action workers on Monday (hopefully) to find out if there is ANYTHING else they are going to want. Please pray that all the documents will be in order and that we can get the process started in the next few weeks.

3. We also found out that there is a POSSIBILITY of getting travel documents that will allow us to travel around Mozambique, as well as to South Africa with Tendai, before the adoption goes thru. This would be a huge blessing to us, and we are really hoping that it will work out!

4. Our truck-   PRAISE THE LORD... if all goes well it will be in Beira by the end of this week. We cant wait until it gets here- rick now has to hip check the rear passenger doors on Izzy to get them open... oh the Joy.

Blessings... Rick, Heather and Tendai

Shipwrecked!!!

Lighthouse in Beira Mozambique, Im not sure it is still functioning, but aside from being a nice looking lighthouse, it makes for a really good teaching illustration. Because.... In front of it is a large ship... "wrecked". (Now.. to be honest we have heard this ship was brought here to act as a break to help preserve the coastline) However, having a huge shipwreck right in front of a lighthouse is rather "poetic" to my mind. I can think of tons of different sermon illustrations for something like this.. but one that comes to mind this week is how even though many pastors here in Mozambique have Christ (the light) in their lives, and they are assured of salvation and desiring to teach others, they feel like a floundering ship (the shipwreck). Many PASTORS here lack even BASIC bible knowledge, let alone the leaders who are leading childrens ministries and sunday school! Recently Rick was able to lead two seperate Childrens Ministry Training seminars up north, and was shocked to learn that these church leaders and pastors were struggling to illustrate salvation in an understandable way for children (that wasnt so shocking... many north american pastors struggle with that). The real shock came when he asked them to act out several Bible Stories... they gave him blank looks. Well... what Bible Stories do you know??? Ummm....Elijah.... Mathew.... something about Peter... oh and that guy Jonah.  I guess we take it for granted that people who have grown up in the church will know the story of David, Moses, Gideon, Daniel, The Parables of Jesus and oh so many more! Please pray for us as we train and work alongside these leaders- they have such a passion to learn, and teach everything they learn to the children! Pastor Elias facepainting with watercolor pencils.. a treat when the missionaries are in town. Many children in areas up north are malnurished (splotchy hair, distended tummys) Rick's chalkboard full of steps to succesful ministry. If you can see the pyramid there everything is based on GOD (Deus), followed by Relationship, Preperation, Involvement , and Program! Many of the pastors run a feeding program to feed vulnerable children in their towns one day a week. Here are the plates brought by the children.. waiting to be filled. A very hungry little one! Rick was also able to see some of the Zambezi River wildlife while at the seminars.. Here are some hippos (cute to look at... very nasty in real life) And a crocodile... not cute to look at... still nasty in real life. This past weekend we went to Beira to get some errands done, pick up a short term volunteer, visit accao social, and of course spent an afternoon at the beach. Tendai was not a huge fan of the waves... im not sure if it was cus she had just woken up??? She loved the big ones later on! Hanging out in the shipwreck in front of the lighthouse. I love this picture of her... she had to be this far from those little waves to be calm. Rick stood in the spray of the waves crashing into the shipwreck... she loved these waves.. go figure. I wasnt ready for this one... :)

Thanks again for your prayers- I must leave this post with a HUGE PRAISE REPORT!

WE ORDERED THE NEW TRUCK!!!!!!!! YEYEYEYEYEYEYEYYYYYY!!!!

Praise the Lord! Also, there has been some movement with Tendai's paperwork... and it looks like things will be moving along quickly now!

Blessings!

Rick , Heather and Tendai!