Staying Busy

It has only been a couple of weeks since Jenni’s parents have left, but we miss them! Here is a picture of our good bye at Joburg airport. We still can’t believe that they came and experienced Africa. Here is a picture of when they went on the lion walk in Zimbabwe. Only crazy people would dare to walk with the lions! We have heard recently that there is a possibility of a team coming from our home church (Holladay Baptist Church) this fall, which makes us very excited! This will be such an encouragement to us and the people here as well. We are praying for all of you who are wanting to come and all of the details involved with you getting here! We know that if God wants you here, you will be here!

We had a great Good Friday & Easter! (sorry we didn’t post until now about it) On Good Friday, our church held a special service and watched a little bit of the Jesus film. We were asked to transport the Jesus film to our church from the Bible institute. Well on a normal day it would take about 20 minutes, but for some reason the road was closed and we had to take a very crowded dirt (full of gigantic potholes) road. It took us 1 ½ hours. We arrived to the service 30 minutes late….so we thought! Actually, the service hadn’t even started so we were stressed for no reason! I guess we still haven’t gotten used to Africa time! Anyways, the Good Friday service went well. Watching some of the people’s reactions to the crucifixion was very interesting: some cried, some couldn’t watch it out of sadness, and some just stared at it without much emotion. However Easter Sunday, our church was so lively! It was awesome to see the way they worshiped our living Savior! They were dancing and singing for hours….literally! Our service was 4 ½ hours. It was refreshing to see the joy of these people singing Hosanna in their heart language. After the service we enjoyed a Mexican lunch at our house with some other missionaries. It was a good day!
We have found that ministry comes in lots of different forms. We came to minister in certain ways here, but there are so many more ways to minister that God blesses us with than we could even imagine. This past week we hosted some missionaries in our home. Nate and Jenni just completed their term and have gone home to America. They served in Cuamba, a very little town in Northern Mozambique. They faced many challenges, but also saw the Lord work in so many ways. We were able to encourage them, feed them, and have them in our home. God has really helped us learn to grow in hospitality toward the nationals and missionaries…something that definitely doesn’t come natural to us. We were grateful for the opportunity to minister to them and have their friendship!

On Friday afternoons we have been spending our time with our friends Tomei and Ruthi. Tomei actually is the Pastor of the church that we attend here. Ruthi is one of Jenni’s closest friends here in Nampula. She always picks Jenni fresh flowers and surprises her with them. They always cook us a delicious African meal and then we sit around and TRY really hard to communicate. We have decided to help each other out. They want to learn English and we want to improve our Portuguese. We are going to memorize verses to help our learning, so it should be fun and rewarding at the same time. We really love our time with them. We all make funny mistakes in the language, but it gives us lots of opportunities to laugh! (For example: Jenni asked for the recipe for poop shrimp instead of coconut shrimp. OOPS!)

Last week we went to the basketball courts and watched some of the youth play. They are really good. The girls are teamed up against the guys and they did a great job! In fact, they ruled the court. Now we are trying to figure out the best strategy of a sports ministry with basketball, since b-ball is Corey’s favorite sport. We will be meeting with the coach of the team that was playing just to see what opportunities already exist in Nampula. Please keep this in your prayers as we need continued direction from the Lord and good ideas that can only come from Him!

We have been meeting with our supervisor Eddie and the True Love Waits team to get them on board for sharing the gospel in the schools. They have a lot of fear and we have been struggling with our team for some time now. Not only do they have a lot of fear but they have a lack of motivation/commitment as well. Unfortunately in such a poor country, ministry seems to be contingent on food and transport. We keep hearing, “We can’t do that if we don’t have our lunch provided.” This is an ongoing frustration for us. People only want to be involved in ministry if they can get something out of it, which is so contrary to the Bible. We need patience in all of these issues. We have a heart for this program and we are eager to see it thrive! Please pray for our True Love Waits Team. We have another meeting this week (Tues) and hopefully we can effectively communicate to them the importance of sharing the gospel…food or no food!

Here is a picture of some sweet little girls that go to our church. The one on the left had a pretty dress on with sequins. During the service, a sequin fell off her dress. The other little girls saw her playing with it and so they also wanted a sequin. What she did next surprised me….she ripped off every sequin on her dress and started handing them out so that all the little girls could have one too. I couldn’t believe it. They put the sequins on their faces for decoration. It comes to show you that things don’t matter to them. It’s what you DO with the things that you have…even the little sequins.

Prayer Requests: 1) God would lead a team from HBC to minister and share the gospel with the people of Mozambique 2) Pray that our language skills would improve and that God would help us to memorize scripture in Portuguese. 3) Ideas for Basketball sports ministry 4) Patience and words of wisdom and grace for our True Love Waits team. 5) Our organization requires all of their missionaries to attend the conferences they hold. Jenni will be attending a Ladies Conference in Kenya May 1-May 6 and she will be FLYING there without Corey. Please pray God will give her grace and that He will conquer her fear from the last time she flew a couple of weeks ago. Pray that she will be encouraged at this meeting and she will leave renewed and refreshed in the Lord.

Good Times Minus One

We apologize for such a long delay in posting. We have had computer trouble which is now resolved and we were away on vacation with Jenni’s parents. We had a wonderful time with them and we are so grateful that they could come. God definitely had His hand on all of their travel. They never lost any luggage, they made all of their flight connections, and the only sickness suffered was a cold…which they gave to us! It was fun to see things through a new set of eyes. Everything was so new to them and so foreign. We have grown so accustom to everything here which is totally a God thing! Their experience here will be one that will always be remembered and definitely leave a permanent imprint on their lives.

Their first week in Nampula was spent adapting to the wonderful heat and humidity along with a new language and culture. The first day they suffered from complete sleep depravation and heat exhaustion! So we let them rest and take it easy. This day was also like Christmas for us….we got to open their suitcases filled with stuff for us! It was so wonderful! We will be enjoying American goodies until our term ends next March! The next day we showed them around the city of Nampula and familiarized them with our every day tasks.

On Tuesday, one of our favorite days with them, we took them to our friend Choveque’s house. Choveque had prepared a wonderful African meal in his hut for them to experience. The food was delicious…ok we are used to the food and we really like it, but my mom and dad did a really great job with trying something so different!We ate nshima, covi (cabbage in a peanut sauce),butter beans, and biscottis (cookies).
This was a humbling and wonderful experience for us all. Everyone lives such simple lives here. People have practically nothing but are willing to give all that they have! My parents had brought gifts for all of Choveque’s family and they were so excited to receive these special things (the kids' sunglasses made us all laugh). All in all, it was a very special day!

The next days we took them to the beautiful beaches of Mozambique. One night we spent in our own personal hut on a private beach and then the next night we made our way to an air conditioned room! We returned Friday afternoon wishing to relax, but instead, we took shifts of making 100 tortillas for our next adventure! Saturday morning we headed to the orphanage, the highlight of the trip, where we played games with the orphans all morning.


My parents had brought tons of games and coloring books from the States for the kids and they absolutely LOVED them! After a fun filled morning of playing game after game, we introduced TACOS to the kids for lunch. They loved them! The director of the orphanage, Victor, had spent 5 years in the US, and he has told the kids about tacos for years. We wanted to give them the opportunity to try them. It was such a fun day. Before we left the kids got on a stage and thanked and prayed for my parents. The orphans have so much love in their hearts for people they hardly know. Even arriving at the orphanage that morning they had decorated with signs welcoming us and saying they loved us. We all learned from their beautiful example of love. This day will always be in our hearts! It blessed us to see how happy the kids were and my parents were.

The next days were a bit trying as we were without water…which meant we were without our relief of a cold shower! Thank goodness we were due for vacation! We were off to South Africa where we went to Kruger National Park and took my parents on a safari. We saw so many animals in the 2 days we were there. Unfortuantely the lions, leopards, and cheetahs were shy and didn’t want to be seen. We did get very close to zebras, giraffes, rhinos, and elephants…in fact it was a bit freaky! After this neat experience, we went to Cape Town where we stayed in a place called Fish Hoek.
















It was one of the most beautiful places we have ever visited! We had so much fun. We did most of the main tourist attractions Cape Point, Table Mountain, Boulders Beach (where we got to see penguins on the beach) and VA Waterfront. Corey also had his first encounter with a great white shark. One of my favorite things we did was we surprised my mom with a 50th birthday present.
She has always wanted to go horseback riding on the beach. We actually pulled off surprising her, which is a very hard thing to do if you know my mom. It was a wonderful time!

We absolutely loved our time with my parents. We felt so loved that they would come to a foreign land and overcome such great fears to spend time with us. We treasured our time with them and we are truly grateful for all they did to make us feel so special! Thanks to all who prayed for our trip. It was blessed in so many ways!

This next part might seem out of place from what is written above, but it goes together so bare with us! We want to especially thank those of you who have prayed for us during our travel. During our travel back to Nampula we were in a plane accident. It was raining really hard and the pilot could not see the runway. The pilot ran INTO the runway upon landing and all 4 tires burst which sent us swirving off of the runway and spinning around. The wing drug on the ground and at this point we thought we were going to roll. When the plane finally came to a stop and level ground, everyone on the plane panicked. We had to use the emergency doors to evacuate…which meant we used the slide which you only see in movies. Once off the plane, we had to walk about a mile in the pouring rain down the runway to the airport. We spent the night in the city of Beira and arrived in Nampula the next afternoon. We have never been so scared in our whole lives and at the same time so grateful to be alive. It is truly a miracle that our plane did not blow up. Some people were injured, but we walked away without a scratch…just emotional scarring for the rest of our lives! So we want to thank all of you for prayers on our behalf. God showed us His mercy and kept us alive and we are so grateful! Here’s a picture to show that the Duncans are alive and well!

That’s all for now! Oh and did anyone notice that we had TONS of pictures this time??? We have recently been blessed with a DSL connection so be expecting updates more often with more pictures!!