Errands Errands Errands and a day of Rest!

Ron and Barb (the folks that head up Mercy Air) recruited us to help wipe down and shine up the Beech airplane before a trip up to Chimoio- they are staying at our farm for the night while we stay at their base!!! :) (and yes.. i did help too.. but someone has to take the pictures you know!!)

I think you missed a spot hun!!

Well, our time in South Africa is almost done. We leave Saturday morning for the LONG drive back up to the mission base. We have spent the last two weeks getting numerous errands done- picking up many different things. Trips down to South Africa almost allways include a long list of items needed on the farm- this trip we picked up 350 irrigation sprinklers, pvc elbow joints, and sheep vaccines just to name a few.

Just one of the items on the list of things to get done was a haircut for me- I went from hair way way past my shoulders to this!! AHHHH! Its so much cooler!! The bakkie attempting to make it to the fishing pond. (this "route" was labelled a 4x2 route, our 4x4 overheated and we had to stop and let it cool down. sheesh)

We also got a quote on a new truck for us- and will soon be making a video to help get out the word on our campaign to raise funds for a decidely more reliable vehicle! On this trip aside from minor repairs, and a check-up our truck has done ok, although it continues to overheat on hills and has recently taken up sporadically locking and unlocking the central lock doors every time we use the brakes- go figure!

Yes- this is a REAL roadsign- honest. And you thought hitting a moose was bad!!! (yet another reason why a good quality bakkie with "bull bar" is essential!!)

This past Monday night we headed to a farm about two hours from here- called Beth Shean (Hebrew for House of Rest). They have simple cottages to rent at really cheap prices- and they also have fly fishing, and (if you pay the trophy tag) plains game hunting. We went mostly to check the place out, and were delighted to find the place relaxing, peaceful, and exactly what we needed! We were only there for 24 hours, but we left feeling refreshed!

Rick loves to flyfish, so this place was great for him.. and I love to take good pics.. so this place was great for me too! Thank you all again for your prayers- we know that those prayers are what keep our Bakkie(pick-up) running safely on these long long trips on bad roads. We will apreciate those prayers this weekend as we drive the EN1 yet again!

God Bless,

Rick & Heather This little guy keeps invading our apartment here at Mercy Air- he's actually only about two inches long from nose to tip of tail!!

Finding Beauty

T- shirts decorated by DSBC's Kids Church Kids.

Heres a pic of a pic of the kids and their shirts, and the pretty fall shots my aunt sent.

Strange the things that make us miss home. I have been pretty good so far here in Africa- but today I received a parcel intended for some of our Orphan kids from on of our sponsoring churches, Dawson Settlement Baptist Church ( New Brunswick). My mom's family is from just down the road "a spell" and several relatives attend there. My aunt included some photos of the pretty fall leaves and trees from last fall. So many beautiful colors! I love fall- its my favorite season, and the sight of that beautiful display brought tears to my eyes. (Thank You Aunt Judy, I really liked them!) If it werent for the fact that I see so much beauty here in Africa as well, I would be tempted to get really homesick! Every day I see another beautiful landscape, person or place that I comment on- Im determined to say something about each one.. so I remember daily how lucky I am to be living my dream, serving God in Africa, and enjoying some amazing sights that many will never see (unless they check out our blogs regularly!!!) Here is just a few shots from last week.. beautiful faces!

Tito.... such a charmer.

Linette

Jorge, Gina, Me, Farai and Granny Vaida- excited about new school supplies.

Beautiful Baby Girl... awwww. Filipe! We are in South Africa at the moment, doing some scouting for the new truck we will soon be in the middle of raising funds for, picking up some supplies for ourselves and the mission and enjoying civilization once again. Being in SA means we have decent internet- so this blog post gets lots of photos!!!

The isuzu... practicing it's offroading.. on the highway.

One of the supplies we picked up was a new mop. Now that we have tile in our main room Lovemore needs a good mop to clean with. Last week when I got a really cheap mop from town (which im sure will last about 1/2 of one more cleaning) I asked him to first sweep and then mop. He looked at me.. then at the broom.. then at the mop.. confusion. "Senhora" he said- "what is that soft broom for? Am I to sweep twice?" (in portuguese of course) Sometimes I forget where we are... and yes.. even us missionaries forget to think things thru. How would Lovemore, a young man who lives in a stick hut, with a dirt floor have even two clues what to do with a mop???!!!!! He'd never even seen one! I explained how to get it wet, wring it out... wash.. rinse. Rick and I had a good laugh this week when I bought the new improved version with a squisher lever wringer thingy, twistable extendable handle and foam head- Rick figures I'll have to give a few lessons for sure!

the new mop (i figured i had to have some sort of picture to go with that long rather pointless story)

This is where the "good" highway ends.. and the "hideous" one starts!

A not so good section of the EN1- mozambique's version of the trans- canada!

It was a crazy trip down... but we made it- PTL! I took some pics of the road this time... for those of you who are wondering what we are talking about when we get all excited about each and every safe journey! And along the way we saw some of that amazing beauty I was talking about up near the beginning of this post.

Vilankulo "harbor"- dusk on a stormy day.

Typical Mozambiquean vehcile.. only got shocks on one side, way overloaded, with people on top yet. Its a miracle more people are not killed than already are.

Uhhh... can anyone see the highway???

Yeah right.. this is the sign telling us to slow down to sixty km/h- we hadnt gone over thirty in 45 minutes!

Again, thanks for your prayers- and special thanks to Dawson Settlement Baptist Church Jr. Church kids- those shirts made my day!!!( and Im sure they will make the day of several orphans as well!!) stay tuned for pics in the next few weeks! God Bless, Rick & Heather

Sunrise over the Indian Ocean- Vilankulo

Bringing Hope... and Maize Flour!

The dirt road to Sena- not to bad for the most part- but there are allways the herds of goats to contend with! We even ran into herds of goats on the EN1 on our way back- the EN1 is similar in concept ( not in quality) to the trans- canada! Other animals we swerved for included a four foot long monitor lizard and a group of baboons. Much to Ricks dissapointment he didnt see any of the Impalas all the signs promised we would see crossing the road.

Once again, Rick and I were blessed to be the "agents of hope" by delivering food to some pastor monitors this week. We travelled up north to the villages of Sena and Chemba, along the Zambezi river and met with 16 of our monitors. The gifts of maize flour we were able to deliver were made possible by generous donations from many in Canada. We now have maize in our storage room to hopefully cover our work for food program needs for the next two "hungry months" as well. God is Good.

It truly was humbling and eye-opening to visit with these pastors and hear their stories. The first group we met with in Sena, had been waiting for our arrival since the morning, and had not eaten all day. I took a lot of pictures, and perhaps its better to just explain each photo to tell the story.

Many of the monitors had to travel long distances on bicycles to recieve the food aid- some as far as 45 Kilometres, including travelling over a several km long pedestrian bridge over the Zambezi River.

Two of the monitors securing 50 kg sacks of maize flour to their bikes. each monitor received 3 sacks, or enough to feed their families for roughly two months.

After spending the night in the "hotel" in Sena (it had no running water :) ) we followed the missions four ton truck down the "road" to Chemba. Again- we were blessed to find that several days of dry weather had made the 45 km's of dirt road drivable- if there had been rain, the truck never would have made it!

This really is a road sign right outside of Chemba town. It is located next to the path where folks go down to wash clothes and bathe- hippo and crocodile attacks are a regular occurance.

The monitors in Chemba arrived late in the morning- after paddling for more than four hours across the Zambezi River in a canoe similar to this one.

I love these pictures- Here the monitors are listening as Pastor Ricardo explains that only those who work recieve payment- and because they have faithfully served God, He has provided a miracle of food donations to help them in their time of need.

Here (about two seconds later) the pastors listen as Ricardo explains that they will be recieving food. You can see some of them are starting to understand ....

Here Pastor Ricardo explains they will be receiving three sacks EACH. (see his hand in the corner??) I think the smiles say it all- after this point I switched to my video camera because they started clapping, hooting and saying Obrigado (thank you) over and over again. I thought Pastor Piri (white shirt, right hand side) was going to cry!

On the drive home we got to see an amazing storm roll across the sky, and I managed to get some really neat pictures.

All in all it was a great trip, and we were glad for the opportunity to meet and fellowship with the pastors. The rest of this week is just flying by as we attend the opening ceremonies for our primary school as well as the escolinha (preschool). Saturday we will be attending ASAM's annual general meeting and then on Sunday we head down to South Africa one last time before Dwight and Lynn leave for a quick furlough in early March. Please pray for safe travel down the EN1- which I promise to take pictures of this trip! We have a lot of errands to get done, as well as checking out possibilities for a new vehicle. After a quick two weeks we will be heading back up here- just in time to start preparing for Dwight and Lynn's departure- ahhhhhh! Im sure we will be fine! God Bless, Rick and Heather

Sunday in Honde

Rick and Joao giving much needed Maize flour to Pastor Paulo

This Sunday, Rick and I had the privilege (because Dwight was sick in Bed with Malaria)(hes getting better now!) of driving up to Honde, a community about an hour from here, and delivering much needed maize flour to one of our Training school moniters, Pastor Paulo.

Pastor Paulo's son helps Rick with an illustration.

Thanks to generous donations from many back home, we have been able to purchase maize flour to help during the hungry months. Aside from our work for food program, there was money donated specifically to purchase flour for our training school moniters, who are often working two jobs, as well as pastoring local churches so they can continue with their studies and provide for their families.

the drummer.. just a young boy- but look at those muscles!!

Benevolent (Pastor Paulo's son) dances up a storm.

Delivering the flour to Pastor Paulo and his family was a great experience, and we were able to enjoy a time of fellowship with them afterwards. Pastor Paulo's church has experienced some difficulties recently, and combined with this being the rainy/planting season, only his family and his parents and siblings arrived for the service that day. We had a great time of singing and dancing with them- and Rick spoke a word of encouragement to a very weary congregation.

Rick bring a message of encouragement to the small congregation- you can see the half finished church in the background The ladies dancing- even the littlest one was getting right into it!

To make our trip even better- the road between here and Honde (which is being "repaired") is usually a nightmare to drive- but this time, thanks to several days of sunshine, the temporary road was almost mud free, making it much easier to drive! We thank God for these little blessings!

An amazing rain storm rolling in. It was sunny where we were, but just across the valley you could only see half the mountian as the heavy rains came! "Main Street" in Honde

We are no longer alone here at the farm, Dwight and Lynn have arrived safe and sound, as have Francois and Alta. Its good to have everyone back here again. These next two weeks will be busy ones for us, as we are all preparing budgets, & reports, organizing food delivery, and continuing with the numerous projects here at the farm. As I write this, our cottage is fairly shaking from the pounding, scraping and sweeping as the workers prepare our floor for the tile to go in! This is big news for us- it is next to impossible to keep anything clean here, as our floor is rough concrete and cleaning it is very difficult. Even sweeping seems to just make it more dusty as the floor disintegrates. I am looking forward to having a clean-able floor- especially since Rick says we can get a "guard puppy" once we have a decent floor.

Tiles waiting to be installed.

We are also gearing up for a supply trip down to South Africa in the beginning of Feburary- it will be our last trip for several months (unless there is an emergency), as Dwight and Lynn leave again in March for an abreviated furlough trip to Brazil and Canada. So... we know we have to stock up on neccesities while we can! We appreciate your prayers for safety as we continue to travel in our borrowed Isuzu bakkie- Rick informed me the other day that it now has over 294,000 Kilometres on it- and those are AFRICAN bush "highway" kilometres.. not TransCanada Highway km's!On this trip down to South Africa we will be scouting out and pricing a new truck, as we begin to fundraise for a more reliable vehicle. We are looking at fundraising for a Toyota- for one thing parts are more readily available for Toyotas, and secondly- they seem to last forever (or almost forever!). Stay tuned for updates on our search!

God Bless, Rick & Heather.

After a long day of driving... Rick crashes in the hammock!

Thumbs Up!

Last week on food delivery day we got lots of "Thumbs Up's!" That's kinda how I feel about our experience so far here in Mozambique. There have been tough times, and times when we have been lonely and tired, but for the most part- Thumb's Up would describe how I feel. We know this is where God has called us, and it is exciting to see how we are fitting into the work here. As we enter this new year we can look back (and forward) and give a definete Two Thumbs Up !

This week we have been here alone on the farm for the first time since moving to Mozambique, with both Francois& Alta and Dwight & Lynn in South Africa. We have managed to keep things going and nothing has been destroyed yet so I guess we are doing OK. I thought this week I would simply post some pictures from the past week, to show you what goes on around here!

The new roof on Liria's house!! Its almost done! If you would like to contribute towards the cost of this let us know!

Another crazy rain storm brought our river level WAY up.

Gabriel ( aparently taking my concern for his safety seriously) tied a rope around his waist before going down to take out our river pump in case the water rose any higher.

When it rains so hard the river turns a chocolate milk shade of brown.

A work-for-food program participant works to clear land for our training centre with a young baby tied to her back.

Rick installing ceiling board in Dwight and Lynn's place- now THIS is progress!!

And of course... here is a pic of the giant spider rick killed for me..

and the machete he used to kill it!!

Have a great week- and thanks again for the prayers. We have had several crazy storms recently, with a lot of lightning striking near here. We apreciate your prayers for our safety! God Bless, Rick & Heather