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!

YIPPEEEEEE!!!!

Hey all! We just recieved word of another large donation towards our Truck fund! God is sooo good! According to our calculations we now need less than 10,000$ to completely pay for the truck and all the fees- please keep praying- we are sooo close. Also, please pray that the customs officials will not surprise us with any extra costs and fees. We are so excited to be so close to being able to order and completely pay for the truck- poor Izzy (our current truck) has decided to only use the fan (and thus the airconditioning) when she feels like it, and we had to spend another several hundred dollars last week to replace a seal on the differential (whatever that is).

In other news, we are making earrings at VBS this year... hundreds of them. We had made a few pairs with the orphan kids this past spring and sent them home to be used as gifts for sponsors and prizes for the SAMM Banquet. One person who received a pair, is Kelly, who mobilized the students at her school last year to raise enough funds for  us to purchase over TWENTY desks for our school kids here! She loved her coke bottle cap earrings so much she asked if we thought we could mass produce them with the school kids and send them back to Canada to be sold as a fundraiser by the kids in her school. Sure.. no problem we said! Heres hoping we get all the items, beads and hooks we need to make several hundred pairs at least! We will be making the five "flavours" pictured above- below are a few close-ups of the sample pairs i made this past week. These are just a few pictures of some odd and pretty flowers i found this week. The top one is a plant that uses those long green fingers to attach itself to the bark of a tree- its kinda neat to look at, and I had never seen them flowering before. This is just a pretty bunch of flowers.. i love the red, pink, yellow and orange.. I think they are actually weeds, but I dont care... they are just so cute.

Thanks again for all you prayers. Rick , Tendai and I will be heading out this weekend to Beira for two nights. We will be picking up a short-termer from the airport and visiting the folks at Accao Social (social action- the folks in charge of adoptions), in Beira to see if we can get Tendai's paperwork moving forward. We know they are busy right now, as it is only two weeks till the national elections and pretty much every government employee has been campaigning for their party for the last month or so.

Please pray for:

Upcoming VBS- energy for the leaders, and that our planning and supply purchases will get done quickly.

Tendais Paperwork- that it will start to move quicker and that the hearts of the officials will be opened.

IZZY's Replacement- That the last bit of funding will come in! AND PRAISE THE LORD for so many giving and loving people who have seen our need, and responded with sacrificial giving!

For continued health and safety for all of us, and for safety as we travel in the next few weeks.

God Bless, Rick, Heather & Tendai

Home Alone.. well.. sorta

This past week and a bit, I have been home "alone" with Tendai and Magnum, while Rick is up  north leading Children's Ministry Training Seminars. Its been hard being here without him, and I know its been tough for him up there too. We just didnt feel we could take Tendai camping for 12 days in the hot season... its well over plus forty every day up there! 

ITs been warm here as well, but not quite THAT warm. It turned out that we ended up having several opportunities to fellowship with other missionaries this past week, and I was able to make some really neat connections which have been really encouraging! Including the discovery of a  mom's and tot's group that meets in Chimoio! I AM SO EXCITED!!! I also delivered the orphan food for October, this time with Mathew and Tomei with me as Jorge was busy in town with Dwight. Glenn, our short term volunteer was supposed to come but he was really sick (PTL he is all better now!). This little guy (in the blue shirt) is one of our orphan kids I dont get to see to often.. he is usually scared of us. But this time he just giggled and smiled and was a cute as could be! This is Eunice, our ladies ministry co-ordinator, sewing some items and working on the projects the ladies make to sell to support their families. On orphan food delivery day I was also able to deliver a Shona Bible to a community leader in Chitundo, he has been asking for months, and has recently done a lot to help out the mission, so we found one and gave it to Him- he was soooo excited. And thanks us each time he sees us now. Some countries have the ice cream man and his truck.. here we have the maize truck.. just come with a sack! LOL.. just kidding... mathew and tomei couldnt get the back gate open and had to pour the maize out the window! We were also able to deliver new shirts to all the orphan kids, donated by Glenn's mom. They were all BRAND NEW shirts which the kids just LOVED. (Thank's Glenn's Mom!) The kids all piled in to see Tendai in her car seat- not sure what was more fascinating.. the baby or the seat! Tendai just hanging with her Tio Tomei (everyone is a a tio or a tia here- uncle or aunt) Mibia holding Tendai- who wasnt really interested in being Held. Mibia loves to hold her, but Tendai isnt much of a cuddler. This little guy (Chebo) and his brother (in the background), are new to our orphan program. He is such a sweetie and allways greets us so nicely- but his brother on the other hand is absolutly terrified of us.  So here are a few pics just of Tendai for friends and family (and everyone else too!) Its been pretty hot lately, so Tendai has been enjoying just hanging out in a tub of water on the verandah... that is her " I love this"  look. Thank you so much for all your prayers for us, Rick will be driving home tomorrow and we are going to be so glad to have him back! We are dong well here, and our next big project will be the VBS at the mission's school for up to 200 kids in early November- its a lot of work, and a ton of fun, but please pray for us as it takes a lot of prep work, and we dont have to much time to get stuff ready. Also, we are heading to Beira next  weekend to pick up another short term volunteer, and stop by Accao Social to see if we can hurry things along in any way.

Please pray for: 

-upcoming VBS, energy for us and our helpers, good weather and that the kids will be encouraged and will learn about God who loves them.

-for us as we travel, and that Tendai's paperwork will be sorted out quickly

- for mozambique as a whole- in just over two weeks we will be having a national election here, and as in many countries, passionate people often but heads and cause conflict at times like this.

Thank you again for all your prayers, please dont hesitate to email us or leave a comment on the blog!

Blessings, Heather and Tendai (and Rick of course but hes not here at the moment!)