Translation workshop

For two weeks in July, Carol has been participating in a translation workshop. In this workshop, the participants translate Bible stories and other small pamphlets into the language which they are working with. There are 5 different language groups represented and each group is translating the material into theirappropriate language.

Top of the mountain

On Sunday, June 25th, Mozambique celebrated their independence day. Since the holiday fell on a Sunday, the schools and other businesses had Monday off so we went on a hike with some friends of Carol's. The day started off with a misting of rain but we climbed anyway. The view from the top was AWESOME! As we reached the top of the mountain, one of the kids with us said, "Now you can see all the things our Lord has made." I guess that sums it up!

Above the pulpit

In Carol's church this is painted on the wall above the pulpit. Translated it says: Jesus is the Way.

Carol's church

This is Carol's church. Kim had the privilege of visiting Carol's church and hearing her preach. Carol spoke about the characteristics of God and while she was speaking, Kim said she couldn't help but think how faithful God has been to help her with the language. Only last year when Kim was visiting, Carol was still becoming comfortable with the language and was learning how to hold a conversation. Now Carol is able to preach a sermon in Portuguese. Kim said it has been interesting to hear Carol converse with others and notice how comfortable Carol is with the language.

"Good eats" in Pemba

While in Pemba, Carol enjoyed shrimp and french fries. Notice the size of the shrimp!!!!

Time to Recharge

Even missionaries need time to recharge their batteries and that's just what Kim and Carol did for several nights in Pemba. Pemba is a coastal town, (in fact, it's where Carol first thought she would be living). While in Pemba, they enjoyed the beach, eating shrimp and wonderful service at the hotel.

Thoughts on the village trips

1. It feels awkward to eat away from the group with "servants" waiting on you. The Mozambicans do this as a sign of respect, but it's hard to adjust to having someone wait on you and watch you eat.

2. Kids love attention no matter where you are. I picked up one little girl and sat her on my lap. At first she was "holding on with all her might", then she relaxed enough to fall asleep in my arms.

3. Some of the ladies walked several days to get to the meeting. I can't imagine that! I love to hear "The Hoppers" sing, but I don't know if I would be dedicated enough to walk days to hear them.

4. God loves each of us!!! I overheard one of Carol's friends singing this song to her children after we had enjoyed supper with them. "Jesus DIED for all the children. All the children of the world. Red and yellow black and white, they are precious in His sight. Jesus DIED for all the children in the world. Cultures and languages are different. Skin colors are different. Yet EVERYONE deserves to know about the love of Jesus Christ.

Kids are kids

Kids are kids no matter where you are and they help break down language and culture barriers.
At Monapo, a group of 50 ladies gathered and most had a child by the hand and one on their back. Most of the children enjoyed playing with us. We played catch and dodgeball with tiny watermelon balls. Then Carol broke out the soccer ball and we all had a great time. I think I only scared one little boy. He was passing by on his way to school and when I tried to look at his schoolbook, he ran away from me. By this time we had played enough with the other kids they just laughed.

Monapo Church

This shows the inside of the church. Notice what they are sitting on.
Here we also were served a meal- lunch. Many of the ladies either brought their own lunch or brought money (5,000 meticais, about 40 cents) to have lunch provided. Carol and the pastor left to get lunch at Peixe from Mama's which is Fish from Mama's House. I couldn't believe we were getting to eat from there because this type of house is all over Mozambique and I had been kidding about wanting to eat at one. Well, let me tell you the fish was great EVEN if it still had its head, eyes, and tail. We also had rice and some beans that were much like pintos, just better.

Kim's Second "bush" trip

Monapo - our day trip

This village only took us about an hour to get there. However, the most interesting thing was the "TURN" to get to the village. The turn was just a small break in the corn field and I do mean a SMALL break. Thankfully, the church was only a short way down the path.

There were several ladies waiting outside for us singing as we drove up. This was cool and made me feel quite welcome!

Meal Time

During meals, we were served in our tent area and we were ALWAYS served more than anyone could eat!

Notice the lady in the right of our picture(Anita). She served us and ate with us. Out of respect, she would stop eating when we did so we made sure to stay around the cloth until she had enough to eat.

This picture shows us with chema, quail, and rabbit. The chema tasted pretty good. I appreciated the sacrifice of the quail and rabbit, although I just couldn't make myself eat it. Thankfully, the chema was served separately from the meat.

Bath Time

After teaching was completed for the day, we all enjoyed a COLD swim/bath. One of the ladies ran off all the boys who were swimming there so we all could bathe. The Mozambican ladies shed their shirts and got in. Being the shy Americans we are, we kept our shirts on but dared to wear our shorts instead of the skirts we had been wearing. The water was cold and the ladies just laughed at us when we shivered. They took our hands and guided us to the best spot to stand then also guided us back to shore. This fun activity seemed to bond us to them and gave us something in common in the face of obvious cultural differences. It's funny how something as simple as water can wipe out all the dust we keep ourselves covered with, huh?

Kim's first "bush" trip

As many of you know, my sister, Kim has been blessed to visit me again this summer. She has participated in two village trips with me so far. As you look at a few of the pictures, she has given a few of her thoughts on what we are doing here.



Mecurbi- Our overnight trip
We had to cross this on our way to the village.
The trip to Mecurbi took us over 2 hours to get there. It was definitely a 4x4 experience!!!!

How Great Thou Art!

How big is God? Big enough so that I could enjoy singing this well known hymn while standing in the midst of people from about 20 different African countries! On Tuesday evenings I have started attending a Women of Virtue Bible study. However it is not just for women, men have started attending as well. There are people there from about 20 different countries. It is a time of singing, dancing (a favorite pastime of Africans), Bible study and prayer. It is really a good service.

Tonight we sang the very familiar hymn, How Great thou Art. As we sang it I was reminded of the times in America when we would have Sunday night hymn sings or times of singing favorite hymns and this one was almost always sung at these events. Then here I am across the ocean from America and I am singing it with many other nationalities.

I guess another way of saying it isn’t God’s world small?

If you will click on the link below, you'll be taken to Selah's website and be able to click an awesome recording of this song
http://www.selahonline.com/music.htm

Concurso?

Concurso…A word I will remember.

The other day a lady was talking to me and she was inviting me to something which her church was having. I listened and I said sure I’ll go. Well those are words which you have to be careful with when you are learning a new language and a new culture. I had followed most of what she was saying but I missed out on something. After I agreed to go I found out that concurso is a contest. The lady coordinating it thought it would be good to have someone from the USA, from Brazil, from Portugal and from Mozambique. The event was about four days after the day she asked me. The more I thought about it, the more I thought am I going to be a contestant. Will I have to sing? dance? draw? compete in the funny clothes contest? What will I have to do? I thought singing, dancing, and drawing are not talents of mine.

I kept saying God is sovereign, nothing catches him by surprise. He knew that I would say yes to this event and He has it under control. Each time times of apprehension would come up I would think that.

Then the Thursday morning of the concurso was here. I walked in the church for the event. Imagine my relief when I saw a room full of youth and a I found out that I was going to be a judge and not a contestant! What relief!

It was a good event. They had 10 or so different categories which the youth could compete in such as singing, dancing, crazy clothes contest, drawing, Bible questions and even arm wrestling! Each winner for the event won prizes. It was a lot of fun.

Easter Activities

Easter

Many people have asked what I did for Easter. Easter was very good.

The day started early. I went to an Easter sunrise service which started at 4:30 am. Why so early? Because the sun comes up early here and we wanted to see the sunrise. There were about 12 of us, we went and climbed a rock so that we would have a good view of the city and of the sunrise. Because of a little rain and clouds we weren’t able to see the sunrise. But it was still nice; we sang Easter hymns and read the Easter story.

Then we (the missionaries) had an Easter service. One of the families lives on a nice farm outside of town. So we had a service there and spent the day there complete with a covered dish lunch and an Easter egg hunt for the kids. Oh and we had a really good volleyball game followed by a trip to the stream/small river for the kids to swim in. It was a good day.

It seems that Protestant churches here don’t celebrate a lot of the holidays. I haven’t quite figured out why. One missionary said it is because they don’t want to celebrate and have people confuse them with Catholics. It was interesting to me because one of the Mozambicans asked me if we celebrate Good Friday and Easter in the states. I said we do. He said why don’t we? I said good question. He is also very interested in getting more people involved in his church and he is wondering why the church attendance is so small. He has some good questions, some of the same questions which I’ve had myself.
His name is Choveke if you would like to pray for him.

Easter Activities for the Missionaries

This was taken today at the Easter celebration which we
(the missionaries) had. We had a service and then
covered dish lunch and then we played volleyball and
went to the river/stream. It was held at another
missionary's farm place, a really nice out in the
country place. It was fun...Carol

Easter Celebration in Nampula

This is the Easter sunrise service group. The sun rises
early here. We met at 4:15 am and got to the place at
about 4:30. It was a cloudy morning but we could still
see at least a break in the clouds for the sunrise.
Notice the moon behind them in this picture..We just
sang some Easter songs and read the Easter story. .Carol

What has Carol been doing?

March 2006

Hello,
I’m sure many of you are wondering how the past few weeks have gone for me. Right now I am not feeling well so I haven’t sent out any updates about my recent literacy workshops. I’ll try to sum up things in this note. This refers back to two weekends ago. Last week I was out of commission all week except for one of the literacy workshops. The Thursday and Friday prior to this we had also done a literacy workshop.

On Saturday night we had a team birthday party for two of the members who had birthdays this month. We were all able to attend except for one guy who wasn’t able to travel in because of bad road conditions. It is the rainy season now which means that it has rained about 5 of 7 days maybe in the afternoon or during the night. Of course somedays more than others.

Sunday was a 1 year anniversary celebration of a church not far from the city. There were people from another church who had walked 11 hours to arrive at the celebration! The way the cars travel it would be about 55 kms, I’m not sure how many kms it was by foot, it was still a lot anyway you look at it. We feasted on chema, rice, goat, and chicken after a 3 hour or so service.

Then Monday I woke up and went walking. When I returned from that I realized that I did not feel well at all. After that is when the “fun” started. I won’t go into details of anything but I’ll just say Monday and Tuesday I went from the bed to the bathroom. Wednesday I was doing a little better still not great. But I knew that Thursday we needed to go on the literacy workshop. I did have a little bit of an appetite on Thursday which was good.

After traveling 100 kms on pothole dirty roads we arrived at our destination. There were 24 people at the first literacy workshop. We took the material to them and showed them how to teach the actual literacy classes in their churches. The area is so large here that there is no way one person could go to all the churches in different areas and lead the classes so we train people in the church to teach the classes. They decide when the best time to have the class is, a lot of that depends upon planting time and harvest times for the machambas-the gardens of the people.

I did enjoy going in the watering hole with the ladies for a bath. That was nice.

Friday we returned to Nampula. By the time we returned home I was feeling tired. I did enjoy some potato soup and NCAA basketball.

Saturday and Sunday I rested and stayed home. There were things I wanted to do but I decided I still wasn’t feeling the best so I didn’t go. I have been able to see some of the NCAA basketball tourney which has been a blessing.

This week I am still taking medicine working on getting my strength back up to normal. I’m a lot closer than what I have been but still not there yet. I know many prayers were lifted up for me on Sunday because I felt a lot better when I woke up Monday morning!

On a language note, I’ll be stopping Makhuwa lessons for now and just working on Portuguese. I think this will be good, that way I can work on some things in Portuguese which I’ve realized I need some help on since the Makhuwa lessons have been in Portuguese.

I’m sure I could have written a lot more for you. But that is all for today. I’ll work on getting some pictures to you as well because I know you would like to see those. Right now no interesting stories like pigs coming in the outhouse on the trip. However there was a chicken who thought about coming in our tent. Thankfully he decided not to!

Take care,
Carol

P.S. If you haven’t picked up the Beth Moore devotional book, Voices of the Faithful, I would really encourage you to go pick it up today. Today’s reading, 3-29-06, was written by one of my missionary friends. As I read this devotional I thought I have those same thoughts. In short the college age son was sick; his parents were in Middle America where they lived. He called home and said if I ever wish I could be home today is the day. The missionary then cried out to God to provide someone to fill the void that she couldn’t feel because of being miles away. God provided in his sovereign way a doctor who had been on a missionary medical trip to work with this family. As I was reading that just now I thought that is the way I felt the other day. I just wanted someone to take care of me, someone to say it will be okay, someone to bring me water. Looking back on the week I can’t say that I had just one person who God gave me to help me through but there were different ones at different times who were able to help me even if it was “just” a phone call to check on me. Of course there is nothing as “just” a phone call, sometimes that is just as important as many other things…..

What More Could a Person Want??

The smiles say it all!