Three Reasons to Pray

Each week I am here I experience life that still seems so foreign to me from my small-town, Wyoming frame of reference.  But it doesn’t matter where my reference comes from, I have a HUGE God whose frame of reference is love, reconciliation and hope!

•At 7 in the morning I glanced out my window as I hurried to unbar and open all the windows and put on my ritual of deet.  There was a man sitting outside which unnerved me because I didn’t recognize him.  I wasn’t sure if I should call my husband back who had left for the day’s work or brave the encounter.  As I opted for the latter I heard my empregada arrive and discuss something with the stranger.  It then occurred to me that this man was no stranger.  He was my employee.  He hadn’t worked for months because he had become ill with a disease that ravages the body until its trademark skeletal frame robs the bearer of identity. His presence was his need for bus fare to return to his family 600 kilometers from Dondo. It was just a formality to articulate the closure of his employment, give him severance pay and send him on his way.  But not without a prayer….not without a sigh that one more person’s life has been cut short.  I don’t see this going away soon. I only see the congregants adding daily to their numbers. Please pray for this former employee and the many sufferers of AIDS in Mozambique.

•Each week the activistas discuss with me the prayer needs in Project Life, our AIDS hospice without walls. The requests are varied: fevers, abscesses, coughing, TB, malaria…the needs are great. Then Inácio, one of our activistas shared his request. A girl named Marta had dropped by to visit with his brother. At 14, she had barely left her “tween-hood.”   Inácio invited her to stay and eat.  She looked like she could use some food and company.  After a while, this young girl related her story.  Her dad had divorced and abandoned her family when she was three.  Her mom remarried, apparently not happily. In an argument with her new husband, she pushed him down a well and killed him.  She was given a sentence of 10 years in jail; seven now have been served.  But that left Marta fighting to survive on her own. Six months ago she moved in with two prostitutes in Dondo because she needed a place to stay. She works daily in Beira applying the new trade her housemates have now taught her.  Inácio was heartsick at the thought of another young girl exposing herself to immorality, exploitation and AIDS. We prayed that God would open a door for us to minister to this young lady. Inácio reported that on Monday we might have the opportunity to take her to see her mom in jail.  Please pray for the time we have with Marta and the other precious lives that are caught in prostitution.

•I met another Marta today.  She doesn’t have any idea how old she is, but her leathery and wrinkled skin suggests she has been in the hot African sun for a few years. Tati called me to go pick her up and take her to the clinic.  I arrived at her home with two young ladies from the church assigned to assist me. A small voice came from inside her mud home. I looked in but saw no one. I looked down on the dirt floor and there she was, crawling painfully and slowly towards me. She had just a capalana thrown around her and it was apparent she needed a bath. The girls disappeared after we arrived in order to find her suitable clothes but from a friend's house close by.  I settled down next to her hoping she would understand my Portuguese.  She only spoke Sena.  Eventually the neighbor girl saw my predicament and came over to translate. It was then I discovered she lived alone, had no family and was at the mercy of this neighbor for some meals. I noted she had a mat to sleep on, a container for water, a couple of odds and ends lying on her floor. That seemed to be the whole of her wealth.  When the girls arrived, they provided a bucket bath and helped her dress. We gingerly helped her into my 20+year-old beater car – hardly the ambulance I used to drive as an EMT. She seemed genuinely relieved we were headed to the clinic. We will transfer her for more tests to Beira as soon as it can be arranged.  Please pray for Marta, and the many widows here who are trying to survive in extreme poverty. 

Here are some pictures from this week. I stopped

by El Shaddai earlier this week and thought I 

would take some pictures of the children.

Orange is the uniform that they

normally wear.  I happened to 

go to El Shaddai on Wednesday

and found out that it is the day

that they don't have to wear

their uniform because that is

the day they set aside to have

mom wash it for them.

So I hunted around for kids wearing

their uniform! This little guy is on

the playground equipment some

of our former interns built a few

years ago.

I told the kids they could continue on with their

work as I quietly took pictures. But I also told

them they could smile. In Mozambique, many

think that a good picture is without a smile.

I love pictures that catch kids being

buddies.  It is what being a kid

is all about!

More buddies...they were very busy working

on something and never looked up.

But some of the kids smiled!

El Shaddai now goes through 8th grade. Since

I have been here for 8 years I couldn't believe

how much these children have grown up and

changed over the years.

El Shaddai offers a quality Christian education and the

children learn to speak English. I was surprised

as I went in Tati's class and heard her only speaking

English to the children.

More classrooms and more teachers

will be needed each year they add

another level.

A good education is part of the strategy of the

ROL project and CRI in making a difference

for the future of Mozambique.

In one of the Bible studies this week, this little

girl wasn't sure she wanted her picture taken.

Then she was very sure so she put her shirt

over her head and turned around!

We celebrated two Green Door house dedications

today!  What a blessing - house #77 & #78!

We are trying some different color combinations

this year.  We don't have many colors to choose

from so we have to creative.

This little girl was trying to eat

her cookie and drink her pop at

the same time.

Emilia is passing out the dozens

of cookies we bake for the dedications.

Good to the last drop!

A little creature outside my house. Today my

empregada told me we had a monkey come

visit in our yard but I didn't get out there in

time to take Mr. Monkey's portrait.

This is one of our guards where we live.

Usually I see men with AK47's here but he

happened to have a shotgun.  He also

wanted a copy of his picture. :-)

Time Out!

Mushroom on a stick....another strange mushroom that the rainy season brings!

Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."   John 4:10

In the Bible studies this week, I really saw a spiritual breakthrough. People with AIDS suffer a lot and have very little.  So 100% of the time their prayer requests are asking God to get well from serious health problems, a need for a house because their mud house has collapsed, a husband to care for them because they have no means of support, and the most vital...a way to find food. But as serious as these requests are...they still are just temporary needs. After this week's lesson, I started hearing different requests. One person was asking prayer to have a heart to forgive those that had deeply hurt her.  One admitted he needed prayer for getting angry too quickly.  Another person asked for prayer because she needed help with her compulsion of eating flour when stressed, and another for procrastinating and not attending church faithfully.  These matters of the heart shed a new transparency. The water they were wanting to drink from this week wasn't from an ordinary Mozambican well. It was the true, living water and it will satisfy their thirst. 

Sweet little Em....snuggling with her auntie.

Another cute little boy in PL.  May he come to know Jesus as his Savior!

If this picture looks like the ocean...it is!  We have been here one month and we committed to get away once a month for a break.  So we headed to the beach.

But not an ordinary beach.  The Chinese spent 150 million dollars on a resort in Beira called the Golden Peacock.  So we grabbed Alan and Kathy (friends who are missionaries here in Dondo but spent many years in Portugal before coming here) and Jimmy (an American working with another organization and has been here for two months...he is struggling with his visa so you might pray for him!) and decided to explore this new resort. It has 14 buildings with two restaurants, a casino, gym, spa, Olympic size swimming pool, many guest rooms.  We didn't know what to expect because it has been open for only two months. I couldn't imagine something this extravagant next to such extreme poverty.  Would it surprise you to tell you that we five were the only guests that day?

Well....we weren't the only ones exploring this new resort.  Mr. Chameleon was exploring it right along with us.

These fishermen were on the beach...doing what many Mozambicans do to survive...fish.

This is a typical boat that the fishermen use.

You can see the resort is quite amazing. But very empty of guests right now.

Mozambique has a long beach front on the east side of their country.  It has some of the best snorkeling and scuba diving in the world. Some resorts along the Moz beaches are there just for this purpose.

It was fun trying to catch the birds and waves in action.

Can you see the other guest?  There were lots of dragonflies and Tsetse flies at the beach with us.

You don't expect to see pine cones in tropical locations.  But these trees are very beautiful and many of them grow here. Mozambique really would be a beautiful place if it were to be developed so other countries have come here trying to develop some businesses and attractions for tourists.

The Chinese have some interesting architecture. They built a huge rock formation with bathrooms and changing rooms hidden in it.

They built two man-made lakes here and have a huge swimming pool.  They also have many little bridges over some of their water ways.

Part of the rock formation.

Of course you have to have water lilies in the water.

Another guest.  Actually, these crow-like birds are probably the most plentiful birds around and they had come to the resort in the hundreds.  They love to sit on the buildings.

Another dragonfly.

This is the Indian Ocean. It has received some attention these last two weeks because of the Malaysian airline that disappeared. It really is a vast ocean. I can't even imagine looking for a plane in it.

Who is to say what will become of this resort - if it will be successful or not.  We spent a few hours there enjoying it and pretending it was just built for us.  After all, it kind of felt like it considering no one else was there!

We Americans enjoyed the Chinese resort in Mozambique, Africa. However, we ate at their restaurants, enjoyed the beach and sat in their air-conditioned reception area. I don't think they were running to the bank after we left. :-)  We were thankful to enjoy a day's reprieve and rest.

Sugar in a Sauna

I promised I would put cute pictures of kids this week from the creche - or daycare at the ROL.  Sure enough, the kids were very cute. But make no mistake, making sugar cookies in a sauna is no sweet deal. With temps soaring in the mid 90's, turning on a gas oven only made the 76% humidity and heat soar even higher. You've heard that missionaries improvise with what they have...so here is my recipe: To keep from melting the dough (which we all know the recipe says "chill" your dough before using) roll out a small handful of dough on wax paper and put the rest in the freezer.  Then cut around the cut-out cookie to separate it from the others in order to flip the cookie upside down onto the cookie sheet while removing the wax paper from the top of the cookie.  DON'T move cookie from the cookie sheet once placed or it immediately becomes a blob!  Put baked cookies in freezer. Rapidly make frosting and throw in freezer. Grab cookie one at a time from freezer and quickly frost.  You have 30 seconds to frost and 10 seconds to put on colorful sprinkles. Return to freezer immediately before frosting slides off cookie.  Do this 48 times and you have 4 dozen cute little cookies.  BUT KEEP THEM IN THE FREEZER until they are ready to eat. :-)

My daughter-in-law Michele, who is Mrs. Homemaker Wyoming, gave me a recipe to make play dough with just four ingredients and water.  That is perfect for here since finding just the right ingredient can be tough. She also donated a huge sack of cookie cutters from letters, numbers, holiday icons, cars, trees, stars, well...just about everything imaginable. The kids were very hesitant at first to play with what they thought looked more like their usual diet of "masa."

Once I explained the mechanics of working with play dough they all quieted down and went to work.  You can see this little guy is really into his work...tongue and all.

There can be up to 35 children in the creche - all in one room. A few months ago the creche burned down and so now the children are meeting in a borrowed preschool room.

Because the preschool room was so hot, we put the children outside and their little plastic desks. But since I had promised them REAL cookies with the cookie cutters we had to put them back inside once they were done with the play dough because I didn't have enough for the entire preschool who had been watching with fascination as the little ones created with this new strange dough.

The creche serves as a daycare for many of the projects workers.  This is Joel.  He is our activista Josefa's only child.

I am sure hoping he is eating a cookie and not the play dough. :-/

The kids were fascinated with the shapes of the cookies.  The boy in the back is trying to make the shape of his cookie with his hand.  The boy in the front is trying to figure out if it is real dough or play dough.

This little cutie is Invanilde.She is the granddaughter of my empregada, Ana.

I also found ingredients in Beira to make my own version of rice krispies. I had also brought some M&M's with me to add to the ingredients. For the most part, they were a hit.

The children are not use to eating such a rich cookie!

Another sweet little girl. Notice she chose the PINK cookie.

I think this little one was feeling sick. But she tried to eat the cookie anyway.

Good even on your hands!

If you look closely, you can see the sweat on Joel's face.  One room with all these children and workers and temps in the 90's without a cross ventilation is almost unbearable.

Always a smile from Junior.  This is Manuel and Ramizia's son. He is the national leader working with Phil in the Green Door ministry. Manuel also teaches two times each week at El Shaddai, four different nights (two nights in Beira) at two different Bible schools, pastors the Savane church on Sundays, is working on a pastoral training program, and is involved in MOZ-CRI. Do you think he has enough to do?

I used the cut-out cookies to quickly explain God as our creator (a flower), God's love for us (a heart), His gift to us of his son (a star), and His salvation (a cross).  I had to about tell it that fast too because their attention span was very short!

What a sweet face.

Truthfully, the little kiddies weren't able to eat much of their cookies.  They were very hot and our American cookies are pretty rich for their humble diets. So they wrapped them up in the paper towels I had brought in order to take them home.  It was a fun day in the sugar sauna.

This is Carlitos and his wife Antonia. Carlitos is a lay pastor and lives in Macharote. He is suffering from TB of the bones. He has been sick for almost a year because it is so difficult to detect TB when it is not in the lungs. I went to visit them this week and Antonia was making their lunch.  It consisted of a type of bean she had picked and she was going to cook the leaves with the beans.  They also have several children and grandchildren who live with them.

I visited Chico who is blind and had accepted Christ last year in our Project Life program.  We had started him in a business and he and his sister, who is also involved in PL, continue to sell their products.  He had a lemon tree by his little rented house so I bought some of his lemons from him.  That is a blessing for Mozambique....all the available fruit trees one can eat from here during the fruit season. 

One of the reasons I took the time to go to the creche is to lighten my heart. Children can always lighten our load with their smiles!  I spend the week working in an AIDS hospice. The suffering of these people weighs heavily on my heart.  This is Isabel.  She was married for many years to the same man who died in 2011.  They had three children who are now 9, 13, and 16.  In this culture, even if her husband had a large cement block home, his relatives would have come and taken it upon his death. As it was, he had little and she was left with even less. Her mud home collapsed this last month in the rains and she is trying to rebuild her mud home (behind her) the best way she knows how. As you can see her roof is very precarious and will not keep the rains away for very long.  She is weak and tired, but she walks to her machamba (garden) which is 10 kilometers from where she lives as often as possible. She knows that God will never leave her nor forsake her, but every day her reality is a struggle to keep her children and herself alive. 

This is one Green Door home of two that we are in the process of building. We praise God for the donors who come alongside the Isabels, the Marias, the Josés, who they do not know, and share their burdens of poverty. 

I would like to share one more story with you. I spent the week visiting individuals in their homes in PL.  I love to do that because as my translator said, "You can really begin to see the spirit of the person when you take the time to be with them."  How true. This woman's name is Fanita.  She has been on the waiting list for a Green Door home for a year.  She is suffering from a blood disorder.  Her activista had encouraged her to go to the doctor at the clinic.  The doctor then sent her to Beira for testing. She didn't have the 78 cents to take a ride to Beira. So she gave up. Of course she should have asked her activista for help. That is one way that we can help.  But the fight to stay alive has died within her. It is just too much of a struggle to fight to have a safe place to live, to fight to have food to eat, to fight to have medicine to take, and to fight loneliness. For the widow with AIDS, it is just too much of an overwhelming fight. We must intervene on the behalf of those who can no longer fight for themselves. Intervene with prayer, love and encouragement and every practical way we can. What a blessing it is to stand in the gap for these precious souls that Christ died for.....keep praying with us for the people in Project Life!