A Drive through Mesquita

Often I put pictures of our Green Door homes on my blog.  And I am about to do that again since we just had the dedications for houses 79 & 80 this last Saturday.  But, I wanted to take you on a little drive through a typical bairro today so you could see WHY we build these cement block houses.  After the Bible study today in the Mesquita bairro, I asked Agostinho to use my Canon 60D (a regular DSLR camera) and film our drive leaving the Bible study.  Though not the best quality, it still will give you an idea of the housing of the majority of people.

As I was sitting at the Bible study, I couldn't help but notice our hostess' mud home and her door.

Her door does not even go to the floor.  This can be an open invitation for all kinds of critters to join the comforts of her home. I was talking to a woman in PL a couple of weeks ago.  She told me she woke up one morning with a snake curled up beside her where she slept on the floor. Not exactly how I would want to wake up in the morning! I can imagine many mosquitoes are in her home too.

I noticed how she was trying to secure her door. Robbers are a real issue here and it is not uncommon for an entire neighborhood to be robbed and threatened with machetes in one night. Sadly, it wouldn't take much to open this door. This is why we are so passionate about building homes and blessing these people with a safe place to live. 

Another one of my passions is to teach the activistas so they can teach the Bible studies in their assigned bairros.  Caetano did a great job teaching the Christmas story today!  (Okay, I know it is Easter but we have been teaching chronologically the Bible and we just happened to come to the Christmas story during the Holy week of Easter.) I think that was God's timing because they will have the entire look at the gospel in one week from Christ's birth to His death to His resurrection!  It is not uncommon to have visitors from the neighborhoods join our studies. We had three visitors today including this woman (see photo) and a woman who hobbled in with her one leg after she noticed our crowd sitting outside. When it came time to pray for everyone's requests at the end of the study, we offered to pray for this crippled woman's needs too. She sadly looked up and said she couldn't possibly ask us to pray because she had too many needs for us to resolve.  Almost everyone immediately piped up that we don't solve our own needs....that is God's business! I can see that these Bible studies are producing good fruit. :-)

This is Felizarda who received a Green Door home this weekend. Many women do not have an education so writing is very difficult for them. Felizarda is practicing writing her name in the sand so she can sign her Inheritance Rights papers during the ceremony. 

We have government officials that come to our dedications.  This is a city councilman who is representing the mayor of Dondo. (in front) Manuel is standing beside him.

Tereza also received a home and she is signing her paperwork. This gives the women the right to choose who will have their home in case of their death. It affords them the opportunity to pass down their Green Door home to their children or another relative.

Of course we have lots of children who come for cookies.

We could use a full-time staff person baking cookies. Anyone interested?

Felizarda and Tereza both chose the blue color scheme for their homes. We give the recipients 6 different choices of color schemes and the majority choose blue or green.

Manuel is looking over Felizarda's shoulder to see if she was able to sign her name. :-)

This little boy came with his toy wheel...one of the toys that children play with when you don't have a Walmart.

Jeronimo is preaching - we always share the gospel at our dedications.

These were the highlights of my week. But my week also had some very sad and difficult moments. Our gardener passed away this last week - just two weeks after I gave him passage to go home to his family. We also lost one of our strongest activistas because of some poor choices she made. My heart is hurting.

And of course, the my time here in Moz would not be complete without an encounter with the police. :-/ For the first time in eight years, I took off Monday to go to Beira without my proper paperwork and documents.  I had stuffed them all in my camera bag the day of the house dedications in order to have just one bag to manage.  I had completely forgotten them in the camera bag and did not transfer them to my purse. As I entered Beira, a motorcycle police stopped me and asked for my documents. I was going to happily comply when I remembered they were sitting neatly back home 30 kilometers away in my camera bag. So....I was escorted to the police station and my car was confiscated.  I was informed they would not put me in jail because of my age (hey...being in your 60's has to count for something!).  Phil and Manuel had to come rescue me again. A few hours and $70 later I went on my way back to my original intent of going to Beira. I guess my age got me both in and out of trouble. It is bad I am getting old enough to be forgetful but good that I am too old to be put in jail for my forgetfulness!  

My prayer is that you have a wonderful week with your families as you celebrate the love of God who sent His Son Jesus (Emmanuel) to deliver us from the curse of death. Happy Easter!