The last day in Dondo, the girls of Tikvah plus our Canadian friend, Shara, spent the morning at the beach. Holli really wanted to see the Indian ocean from Africa so we thought, why not? 

We were told the local beach wasn't all that great and I guess in comparison to most tourist beaches it wasn't. But it was much nicer than I was anticipating. There were very few people there and the sand was nice and it seemed clean. No trash strewn about like I've seen before! And the water was nice, though I only put my feet in.

We took some photos and just spent a few moments soaking up the rays and hanging out. It was a great way to end the month in Mozambique!

Prison life is never enjoyable I am sure, but after visiting the local Dondo prison, I can't imagine people having to live in places like that.  Dirty concrete buildings and lots of people crammed together.  Not a great place to stay.

Fortunately, even in such a dreary place, God is making Himself known.  Twice, members of Tikvah got to go minister to the prisoners there. The first time, Holli gave a message and several of the men responded when asked if they wanted to accept Jesus as Lord! Amen! The second time, Nate gave a great message and, though no one responded it was obvious that the message made an impact. The men were praising God passionately through song and shouting "Amen" throughout the sermon.

Pray as Iris continues this much needed ministry and pray for the men specifically, that they will truly come to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior!

Some of my team got the opportunity to join a group from Iris that visits the local hospital to pray for the patients. I was so glad that I went. This was the first time in a while that I have been able to truly focus for a long period of time on prayer.  I typically struggle with wandering thoughts and often am not sure what to pray for specifically. That was not a problem at all at the hospital.

We went around to the different rooms, praying first for the children, then the men, and finally the women. In each place we asked if everyone was okay with us praying for them. I was surprised that no one ever said no. We got a lot of blank stares, but we laid hands on people and prayed for them anyways. 

If I ever ran out of words to pray I found that songs about healing would pop into my head. The one that stood out the most was Michael W. Smith's song, "Healing Rain." I know many people are not fans of his, but he does have some great songs, especially if you listen to the lyrics. This song is one of my favorites. If you haven't seen the music video, I would highly recommend you check it out. While at the hospital I kept envisioning healing rain falling down right there just like in the video. 

I truly do believe that God wants to rain down healing on the people of Mozambique. So please join me in prayer that the people here will let go of the ties they have to witch craft, immorality and unbelief that would prevent them from experiencing this healing rain!

I would like to ask all of you to join me in prayer for a local Pastor and his ministry to the kids in his neighborhood. He and his wife have obeyed God's call to help provide food and spiritual guidance to almost 100 kids that desperately needed it. From talking to them it is easy to see their passion and love for them. It is also easy to see that they have a vision to see more happen. The pastor wants to see a mission organization come in and provide more order and opportunities for the kids. He also wants to see more money come in so they can provide more substance both physically and spiritually.

We had the great privilege to spend an afternoon with the kids and get to play with them and just love on them.   I joined in on several local African kids games that were a lot of fun. They all really enjoyed getting their pictures taken and went a little crazy when I pulled out the camera. I wish we would have had more time to spend with them but I am glad that we had the time that we did.

Please pray for these children and for the dedicated workers who are helping to take care of them!

I was disappointed this month that we did not actually live fully in the culture. We were staying at an orphanage base and had our American comforts like a real toilet and shower and a kitchen to cook in. I did, however, still get the opportunity to see some of the real culture of Mozambique.

We got the opportunity to go on an overnight evangelism trip to a village named Buzi. The plan was to show the "Jesus" Film and do a little preaching to encourage the local church. The church actually lost its pastor and church building to another organization and now meets under a tree at the new pastor's house.

When we got there the women were separated from the men. Women were sitting on mats on the ground and the men were sitting on chairs on the other side of the house. This was the only time I really saw the division of men and women that I was told about at training camp.

We got to eat lunch and dinner cooked by the local women. This meant we ate shema and chicken for lunch, and then rice and beans for dinner. Both times we ate with our hands, the cultural norm. Rice and beans with your hands can get quite messy!

The evening service started with lots of music and dancing. I enjoyed watching the Africans dance and was impressed with how they had the energy to keep going. Even after all the preaching they got back up to dance late into the night! 

We ended up not being able to show the "Jesus" Film, but Holli and I both gave a little testimony and a pastor gave a message to the congregation.

The next morning we had another service that took nearly 6 hours because they had a lot of traditional things to do and several different groups had prepared dance numbers to perform for everyone. We were all ready to be done (especially Emily so she could get out of her skirt) but I for one was glad we had the opportunity to experience the adventure.

While at Iris ministries, one of the things we did was help them out with work projects. I am definitely most comfortable with physical labor projects because I feel like I can figure out what I am doing, see something tangible get accomplish and feel like I have actually done some work. (Not that teaching or building relationships isn't work...I just have a harder time seeing the results.)

Iris had two different work projects they wanted us to focus on. The first one was to knock down the old latrines. At first this meant taking a little hammer and chisel and trying to take the concrete walls apart brick by brick. They wanted to try to save as many bricks as possible, but we soon learned that they weren't really worth saving any way and so we were wasting time. Then we got a larger mallet and just started whacking the walls down as fast as possible.   That was kind of fun! And a great stress reliever! We also had to shovel dirt out of the stalls and dig up what was left of the concrete floor. It took awhile, but we worked at it at our own pace, taking breaks to play with kids or just relax when necessary.

The second work project was helping prepare ground for a new basketball court. This included hoeing up grass and raking up leaves and debris. We then started digging up dirt from the higher points and moving it to the lower points to even the ground out. We were not able to finish this project, but they had a couple of hard-working Mozambique guys who were helping us and I think they'll have it finished in no time!

Finally, while I did not personally help with this project, Nate and Natalie helped to organize and clean the orphanage library. Supposedly the boys don't quite understand how to take care of books and it doesn't take long before the place is a mess. Natalie was supposed to teach the children how to treat the books and the library in general, but because a translator wasn't available at the time it did not get done. Someone else will be left with that task, I ‘m sure.

I don't know how much we really accomplished overall in the grand scheme of things...but the Iris missionaries were thankful for our efforts and my body feels great for all the working out!

This month I decided I really wanted to challenge myself and step farther out of my comfort zone. So twice I volunteered to speak and give a message to the church. The first time was just a short testimony and I shared the story of the prodigal son and how I can relate to that story. I gave this message to a crowd at a village church we attended one weekend for evangelism.

The second time I spoke, I actually gave the main sermon for the church service at the Iris ministry base. I was completely nervous. I don't like speaking in front of crowds in America, let alone in Africa where they don't speak my language and I don't know if they will be able to relate to what I say. 

It is difficult to preach through a translator. You have to stop after every sentence, sometimes more often, and so it is hard to keep the flow of the message going and to keep the passion in your voice. Plus you have to trust that your translator will convey the message the right way. Fortunately we had a very competent translator named, Lovemore. And of course we have the Ultimate translator, God! I trust that He got across the message He wanted the Mozambique people to hear!

This month we logged lots of hours traveling. Fortunately most of the transportation was decent...at least the long-distance traveling. Of course we started out by flying from Bangkok, Thailand to Johannesburg, South Africa with a short stop in Kenya. We then got a bus to Nelspruit, SA and stayed there about a week. It took awhile to figure out transportation to Mozambique but we finally were able to secure vans with trailers to take us. They were long trips, but fortunately not as long as they told us they would be. We stopped once at a missionary's house and camped for the night by a lake, before waking up and enduring another day of van travel. The second day was the worst part because the roads were so bad...holes everywhere!

We got stopped at a check point place and the police tried to convince us that we had to pay a huge fine to use the roads. Fortunately, Iris came and picked us up from there and we were able to continue our journey. People have a tendency to try and weasel us "rich" Americans out of money!

While in Iris we traveled a couple times to evangelism. This meant cramming a bunch of people onto the back of a truck and enduring lots of bumpy roads and muscle pain (at least for me!). But it was cool because the Africans we were traveling with sang most of the way and kept us entertained!

 

The final mode of transportation we used this month was the Shopah, or however you spell it. It is like the public bus, except it's a van and they squeeze as many people as possible into it when necessary. I preferred to sit in the back, cause most of the squeezing happened in the front. I am glad I don't have to travel like that every day to work!

We found bus transportation back to South Africa and made it safely. It won't be long, though, until we get to start the whole thing over again to our next ministry destination!