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.