Wednesday, July 3, 2013

And now for the usual smorgasborg of update photos

(Please Note... this was supposed to auto post a few weeks ago and I just noticed it didn't... oops. So here it is, even though its late! Im working on an updated one now that will have pics of us in the new house etc! :)  )

After the last post, which was heavy on my heart, I knew I needed to post something that showed the progress we have had lately! Weve been up to all the "usual" stuff... orphan program meetings, trips to town for supplies, delivering orphan food, time together as a family, working on the house, etc.


Last week Friday was the day before Mozambique's Children's Day, and so our orphan program for the day included lots of juice, popcorn and prizes for everyone who had memorized their Bible Verses. Most of the children have memorized at least 4 verses now (with the exception of a very few who live far away or only just joined the program recently), but I was really suprised when Paulo stood up and recited, word for word, with references, all but two of the TEN verses I had given them to memorize. This is surprising because due to his school schedule Paulo cant attend as many orphan program meetings as the other kids, so he had been diligently working on these at home on his own! He  had been taking time to teach his two younger brothers as well, including little Felicio who isnt even school yet! Needless to say I was pretty excited!
 Paulo reciting his verses.
Phillipians 4:13, just one of the verses the children are memorizing this year.
We took three days last week to go on a short holiday to celebrate Rick's Birthday at our friend's lodge, north of here. It was a wonderful time of refreshing for all of us, and was quite needed! We are so thankful for our friends who run the place, and our family back home who sent us "birthday money" so we could go!
One of the lodge staff, Holly, shows Tendai and her friends a baboon spider.

 Rick and I enjoyed a dinner under the stars, courtesy of our hosts!

 On our way home we drove by this: One of the Oxcarts purchased thru the Unique Christmas Gifts donations parked alongside the main highway, ready for action. This one belongs to Pastor Paulo, who recieved it just last month- Rick is pictured here, with two of Pastor Paulos sons.
 The fridge finally arrived and has been installed at the new house!
 Which means we are getting closer to moving in--- which makes Gladys very happy! (there will be a functioning washing machine at the new house!!!)
 The arrival of all these appliances has meant lots of play houses for Tendai!
 And apparently for Uncle Francois as well!
 Never too old or too big to enjoy a cardboard house!
 Working on our countertops.
 So lovely.
 Ill be really glad to move into our new house too (obviously), for many reasons, one of which is, we will hopefully be using a Gas Geyser to heat our water instead of a "donkey" system with a fire. Which should prevent the situation in the above picture from happening again. Our worker had made a fire ... apparently an abnormally big one, which caused the entire tank to boil and turn to steam. After having chunks of rust come flying out of the pipes I ran to get our neighbor Tony (Rick was up north so Tony graciously became my fix it guy for a week), and we proceeded to watch in somewhat awe as steam poured out for over 30 minutes. Seriously. The whole house got a steam cleaning. It might be dirty, but its sanitized dirt. :)
On monday this week we delivered orphan food. I took along the ipad and showed the kids videos we took of them on Friday. They quite enjoyed that!




Also saw some amazing sunsets and moonrises this past week. We are blessed to Live in such a wonderfully beautiful place.

Thanks again for keeping us in your prayers and also for your financial support. We know that we could not continue here, without the prayers and support of so many people at home. These past few weeks I have seen time and again, how many of you back home pray for us- it has been wonderful to recieve emails and letters, facebook notes etc, from people responding to a request for prayer on so many different items. We truly are blessed to have friends, family and supporters who surround us with prayer on a daily basis.

God Bless, Rick, Heather & Tendai Neufeld







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