A Blur of photos

Hi all, it seems I have once again fall far far behind in updating the blog. So, in attempt to catch you up,  im going to provide you with a whirlwind of photos,  in no particular order, but hopefully it will help you get a feel for all thats gone on in the last month. Rick has been up north for the past week, and when he gets back Im sure I will be able to have a full blog post just from his pictures and videos alone, which will be nice!

 Rick and Armando tiled the shower.

 The truck with most of our supplies arrived, as well as rolls and rolls of fencing for the farm.

 Our house workers bringing our new washing machine down to the house. Been saving for awhile to purchase this- will make a big difference! Our old one has been on the fritz for quite a while now and finally kicked the bucket two months ago! 

 Working on assembling the kitchen cupboards.

 After years of no storage, we made very certain this kitchen would have PLENTY.

 Main bathroom... see that thing in the back left corner? Its a bath tub. I cannot tell you how excited I am about this- havent had a bath at home in FIVE YEARS!!!!

Gladys is VERY happy about the new washing machine- shes been washing the laundry by hand for months now!

 Tendai giving Chupicai (one of the Amigo Orphans) a "new" coat.

 Mae Farecia was LOVING her new coat!

 We purchased a stroller to help little Malachias to be able sit in a more upright position, using tightly rolled blankets to support his body and head.

 wasnt so sure about Ricks beard at first... but after a while he was giggling!

Everyone is very happy with the new chair.

 The wood boards for our kitchen cabinets have been planed and prepared... now to sand them down, stain them and finish them for installation.

 Rick and our Puppy, Higgins, enjoying a brief rest after a hard days work.

 Local kids gathered to see what the fuss what about, when I became ambulance driver after being asked to take the brother of one of the farm staff to the hospital. He was extremely sick with pneumonia.

 Little Suzanah giving me her best smile!

 We had friends (fellow missionaries) from up in Tete come visit and help me deliver food to the orphan families.

 After being sorted out by visitors from Canada, we were able to give new t-shirts and dresses to all of the Amigo Orphans and their caregivers.

 Tia Johanna was thrilled with her new dress.

 Visitors from Canada took time to try their hand at pounding the maize in the traditional way.

 And separating the chaff from the kernel afterwards.

I was able to visit with Linda and her newborn twins, and the midwife who delivered them, less than twenty four hours after they were born!

 Tendai was given a set of REAL doctors scrubs, just in miniature size from Kyra who was visiting from Alberta Canada- her dad runs a medical supply store!

 Using her REAL (albeit not very functional) stethoscope to check on daddy. (dont worry he wasnt sick really)

 We chatted with our Home church via skype, and spent the time waiting for the connection to get started taking selfie pictures of our little family. 

 Yeah... that was interesting.

 Went for a family hike for supper one night, and discovered a whole BUNCH of nasty scorpions. This is a mama with tons of babies on her back!

 ACK!

And weve seen a few wonderful sunsets as well- this one i stopped on the side of the highway to take the picture.. i just couldnt pass up the chance it was so lovely!

Thanks again for your prayers and support. Tendai and I have been home alone this last week as Rick has been up north leading seminars. We appreciate all the prayers since Rick has been travelling on horrible roads, and so far has had no problems. 

We hope to be moving into our new house before the end of June, Lord Willing. Our main holdup at the moment is the plumbing- it needs to be installed before we can move in! We would also like to have the cabinets installed as well, since they are a lot of bits and peices that could get lost in the shuffle.

God Bless,

Rick, Heather & Tendai

Of this and that and a few other things.

Every other week or so, the Amigo Orphan kids who live close enough to our base to walk here, come for a meeting with Pastor Mariano. They spend a few hours, playing, singing, hearing a Bible story, and especially lately, memorizing scripture.

A few of the verses the kids are memorizing.

We have given them a challenge to memorize 10 Bible verses this year, and if they can do it, they will get a prize! We are hoping to hand out lovely portuguese children's Bibles if we can find enough cash to purchase them. The children who live close by are getting lots of help because they have the meetings to come to where Pastor Mariano is diligently demonstrating new ways for them to memorize and encouraging them. Hopefully the children who live a bit further off will be able to memorize as well- we will have to make sure to encourage them quite a bit!

Some of the girls reading from the Portuguese Children's Bible.

Last Friday we had an orphan program, which most of the local kids attended since they are on holidays from school. Usually the kids are broken up into two groups, some who come in the mornings and some who come in the afternoons, since they attend school at the opposite time. It was so nice to have all of them together again and to spend some time playing and chatting with them.

Rimbudzai 2 (there are Rimbudzai's in the same family so we distinguish them by a 1 or a 2) brought her tests from the first term of school for me to see. She had very good marks in almost all of her tests, with only a few below the passing mark. Here kids are graded out of 20 and with pressure on teachers to prove their position of power over students, it is rare to find find kids who are actually excelling enough to get these types of grades! It is encouraging to see that there are many kids in our program who are not only passing, but passing WELL!

In addition to the scripture memory challenge, we have also challenged the kids to really work at getting good marks this year. The attitude here is, "as long as I pass, who cares? why bother putting in effort to get a higher than passing mark?" We want to encourage the kids to strive for excellence not just in their schooling, but in all areas of life! One of the things we are doing to motivate them is by letting them know that at the end of the school year, those with an average of 15/20 on their school marks will be going on a "little trip." They dont know where, or when, or what they will see, but the prospect of going on a little trip has most of them so excited they are working VERY hard to try and reach that 15/20 average. We are hoping we will be able to arrange to take them north of here, to a game reserve where they will be able to see lots of wild animals- which most of them will have NEVER seen before- there is even the possibility of seeing elephant and lions- a true adventure for anyone, let alone these kids who were thrilled last week to see Dwight and Lynn's little Duiker, Pumpkin wander thru their game of soccer.

In other news, our house is trucking along- though at this point it feels like every small thing takes FOREVER!!! We are finishing up odd jobs right now, such as the final plastering under the overhand of the roof, the lid on the septic tank, painting touchups, roof work on the porch, etc, while we wait for our order to arrive on a really big truck from South Africa.

The mission is purchasing fencing for the front of the farm as a security measure, and its coming from SA, so we were able to combine our order with that and get a much cheaper rate on transport costs. All of our toilets, sinks, tub, showers, cabinets, remaining paint we need, and even our fridge will be coming on the truck! We cannot wait for it to get here!!! :) Our goal had been to be in the house by our 12th anniversiary on the 28th of April- but the order from SA has taken much longer than we anticipated, so it looks like I will have to hope on being in the house before my birthday in June instead.

 

Please pray with us during this "home stretch"- we are still short of funds, and have had to borrow from other areas to purchase these items up front. Pray the remaining funds will come in and that we can get the work done, even with Rick spending a good chunk of may up north doing Children's Ministry Training seminars!

We had family photos taken this past week, which was a good thing bc Rick woke up on Saturday morning with one side of his face VERY swollen and in pain. Despite several days of antibiotics, etc, the swelling has only increased and at this point we feel he has been bitten by a spider. We are seeking medical advice from South Africa regarding how to proceed, but we ask for your prayers- Rick has quite a bit of pain now from the swelling and is pretty uncomfortable.

And, just purely for the sake of cuteness to brighten your day after that lovely pic of Rick's swollen face, here is a pic of Tendai and our two dogs, Magnum (the big black one) and Higgins, (the soon to be big brown one) playing in the grass. :)

 

Thanks so much for all your prayers and support! Since I started writing this blog update this morning, Ricks swelling has already started to go down somewhat! We pray it will continue to go down further, and stay away! (the last few days it has gone down, but returned in the evenings, though today it has gone down the most) If you would like to get in touch with us, to drop us a word of encouragement or get more info on how you can pray for us, or support us, please use the email up on the right hand side of the screen.

God Bless, Rick, Heather & Tendai Neufeld

 

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The Challenges of Culture. (one of them at least)

One of the challenges of working in a different culture is learning to not let our own personal bias (or that of our culture) to dictate how we react to situations around us. For instance it would be easy for me to get really upset about the practice of Lebola (bride price). However, once I took the time to listen and understand the reasoning behind it, - the deep cultural traditions that lie in respecting the bride, and her value as part of a family unit, and not placing a monetary "value" on her as an object- I began to see it in an entirely different way. Are their problems with its current implementation? For sure. Do some abuse the system? Absolutely. But, at its heart, lebola is not intended to devalue or treat women as objects.

There are of course, many other examples. Many times where I have mentally sat on my "high horse" and judged the culture around me for its failures (compared to my culture). Sometimes those feelings are somewhat "justified". Although Lebola itself does not devalue women, there are many other things here that do- girls are not encouraged to finish school, women are expected to know that their husband loves them when he "disciplines" them, and women are rarely accepted as teacher or leaders over a group of men. This is changing, but in the rural areas where we work this is still the prevailing attitude.

More often than not though, my feelings are not justified. I am comparing their culture to mine, instead of a more common Biblical standard. (bc lets be honest folks, there is a whole lot of "Christian Culture" in north america that has very little to do with the Bible at all!) I am learning however, i'm learning to keep my culture in the background and instead view things here with a Biblical worldview. Im even learning to remember that the overwhelming majority here have not had the benefit of even a semi decent education, or training in critical thinking or even common sense. I am learning to see that many things I hold near and dear to my heart as true and right, are not actually true or right. They are simply " what i am used to", - they are comfortable and familiar - I must recognise that they are not a standard I can use to determine the trueness or rightness of this culture.

Working with the orphan program has exposed me to lots of cultural practices that are difficult to understand or accept. Mothers who feel they must abandon their children with family, so that they can marry again, because many men will not raise another mans child. Orphan girls who are taken in, only to be treated like servants, or worse, eventually put out by the "aunty" when they become a potential second wife around 13 years of age. (not always the case of course, but all to common)

Recently though, Ive been confronted with a cultural "norm" that really really really gets me hopping mad. We have struggled with keeping the orphan girls in the program. Over the last two years EVERY SINGLE girl in a higher grade (grade 6-8) has left school, only to marry, and get pregnant (sometimes not in that order) around age 16 or 17. Although this is frustrating, since each of these girls had/has the potential to finish school and make a real impact in their communities, its not technically illegal, since Mozambican law says girls must stay in school and cannot get married until age 16. Sixteen is young, but I have come to terms with this, knowing that a 16 year old here has usually been well prepared for caring for a family, even if they are not completely prepared for a marriage.

Obviously the program's goal is to keep the girls in school, we are encouraging all the children with different incentives, have hosted some talks by Mozambican professionals (both women and men) who can say " I did it! You can too!" But at the same time as we are encouraging them to stay in school, we are pouring into their lives so that the time we do have to impact their lives, is well used.

This year at least three orphan girls studying in grade six, and we are continually encouraging them to stay in school. But it is a challenge. In December we were informed that one of the orphan girls had been given in marriage to a young man from a nearby village. The granny had accepted the Lebola since the girl had said she wanted to go marry him... that she "loved" him. When I heard the news I cried for an hour. And then teared up anytime i thought of it for days afterwards. I also got really angry. I was outraged and ready to jump on my North American high horse and "visit" the young man, and the granny myself. This granny had illegally accepted a lebola. And the young man had also broken the law. Why was it illegal you ask? Well, the girl was nowhere near the legal age of 16. She was 12. TWELVE!!!! Of course she thought she was "in love" with the guy.... don't most 12 yr. olds the world over "love" someone???

Aside from being illegal here its even quite a bit outside of cultural norms. It took a while, but I reigned in my high horse enough to deal with it as the culture here dictates. And for that i'm actually pretty proud of myself! As is required community law, we informed the local leader, who responded that he was scared of curses and didn't want to get involved (more "culture" to deal with). So we informed the district leader, and the police in her area- they came, told the man he would go to prison if he came close to the girl again, brought the girl home and told her to stay away from the man. Shes back at home now, going to school, and we hope she will continue to be a part of the program, and continue her education. At first she was not to happy, but she seems to be adjusting to being back at home, going to school and is hanging out with her friends, and has started attending the orphan meetings again.

It was hard for me to let someone else deal with the issue. It was hard to see a young girl that I care for very much and have been a part of her life for nearly five years throw away a chance at a future and an education. It was hard to not rush over to that mans house and give him a good dose of my North American " common sense". It was hard for Rick, as his " daddy heart" was enraged at the thought of a child being with a man. It was hard to see a granny take the easy road by not defending the best interests of the girl.

It. Was. Hard.

On the flip side we have several grannies who are determined that their children will stay in school and get an education. Though they themselves never recieved an education, they are now attempting to learn how to write their own names. We are so excited to partner with these grannies to see their children succeed! And succeed they are- getting high marks in school, caring for those around them, showing initiative and creativity- its wonderful! We have recieved reports in the last week that several of the orphan girls are receiving wonderful marks this year, and many of them have been able to get a good start in our Bible Verse Memorization challenge as well.

 

Anyway, all of this long essay was to say... please pray for us as we work here. We love it here. We love the people, and yes, we even love many many many many things about this culture, but we do struggle. We struggle to stay focused on God's culture in the midst of a lot of frustration. We struggle to understand why girls (the world over really) cannot see their value, and why their caregivers do not value an education. Please pray for all the children in the orphan program, but specifically for the girls that they will continue with their schooling, resist temptation to run around with the boys, etc. Pray that we as leaders can inspire the children to have dreams for their future. And, as always, pray for our health and safety here. Pray that we will be encouraged in the work. Pray that our financial needs will be met and our house will be completed so we can devote more time to the training seminars and our other work as well. We covet your prayers. Always.

Thank you!

God Bless, Rick, Heather & Tendai

 

 

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