A Memorable Mission Trip

We tried to post more pictures last week before our team left for Johannesburg, but blogger was acting up and wouldn’t let us post, so forgive us for the delay!!! We actually went down to South Africa with them for a week and we are now back in Nampula full of wonderful memories of our HBC team!! We already miss you and it is way to quiet around here! So here’s a trip down memory lane from last week.

Last post we showed you pics of our TLW rally and discipleship time. It was awesome to see God work in the lives of the Mozambican youth! On Sunday, we went to a local Baptist church. Each week, every group (women, children, youth, etc.) prepares a time of “special music” We knew that they would ask our group, so we prepared the night before to sing a song in their heart language. We sang Khavolinkana…which means “There’s No One Like Jesus.” The church loved it and sang along with us. They were also very gracious to all of the words we pronounced wrong!! The team loved it and so did the nationals. After church we went to Bamboo, a yummy place to eat just out of Nampula! Tony smoked us out when he cooked hot peppers with his "beef on a hot rock." Everyone thought it was funny until the peppers took their breath away! We were a table of coughing Americans. It was quite the scene! It's now a funny memory! Then we were off to the Sunday Market to buy Mozambique souvenirs. The market is quite an unique cultural experience. There are so many people selling and buying, it can be a little overwhelming. Everyone learned how to bargain for what they wanted!!! After the market, Tony and Roberta taught our marriage class and the rest of the team went prayer walking around Nampula. During the marriage class, the couples were encouraged to strive for a marriage that reflects Jesus and His church. Towards the end of the class, each couple had to TALK to each other about the ways they could reflect Jesus in their marriage. In the Mozambican culture, couples do not talk to each other, so this was a huge break through for them. It was definitely uncomfortable for them to do this, but we have heard a positive response from them. It was such a great day!

Monday, the team was split into 2 groups and rotated between a hospital ministry and a village ministry. At the hospital, the team was able to see the oppression of the people here. There are 2-3 families to a bed and the children are very ill. They were able to play with some of the children and make them smile during a hard time! In the village, the team shared Bible stories from creation to the time of Jesus. Teaching in the village gave the team, “I can’t believe I am in Africa!” realization! The nationals flocked to the story time and 4 people prayed to receive Jesus in their lives!! The majority of our team said that this was their favorite experience!

Tuesday, we had a time of rest and went to the beach to relax! Mozambique has the most beautiful beaches and so we took them to one of our favorite secluded beaches called Chocas Mar. It took about 2 ½ hours to get there. Initially, we were going to go snorkeling, however it was to windy to take a boat out. So we just played in the waves and slept in the sand. It was really needed!

Wednesday and Thursday we spent at the orphanage. The kids welcomed the team with decorations (see first pic on blog) and some songs. The team prepared the cutest crafts for them to make! The kids just loved our team! They loved playing sports, learning about TLW, making crafts, learning Christian songs in English, and dancing! The kids were full of smiles and laughter! It was Roberta’s birthday on Wednesday and the kids surprised her and baked her a cake and threw her a party. This party started with her having to cut and serve the cake…and then everyone danced! It was pretty hilarious to see a bunch of white people shaking their groove thing…the kids loved it though!
Especially when Tony showed his moves with the sprinkler!! Our team also had the challenge of getting a HUGE plate of rice and goat down. When it is really hot, you don’t feel like eating, especially a bunch of rice, but they did a good job! At the end, our team gave each orphan a “goody bag” and it was like Christmas.
They loved everything in their bags! Before they left, Victor gave us a tour and told us the vision God has given him for the orphanage and Dana gave the leaders some first aid training. The team really bonded with the children and I think they wanted to take some of the cute little orphans home with them! It was such a special time and we are really glad we spent 2 days there!!




Friday, we left for South Africa to go on a safari!! We saw lots of animals! We will have to post another blog later to show you some pictures! A highlight of our time was spending some much needed quality time with Kaitlyn and Karissa. It was such a wonderful time and they always kept us laughing! We are so glad that they stayed with us in our house! It felt like we had never been apart! They are such special, beautiful girls! What a blessing they are! It was so much fun to reconnect with our friends and family from HBC. What a blessing the whole HBC team was to us!!! They were a much needed source of encouragement and laughter! God had our team full of unique spiritual gifts that He put into great use while they ministered for Jesus in Mozambique. It was amazing to watch God work through our team! Thanks so much to each of you for coming and thanks to everyone that contributed to their mission expenses!

Thanks for all of your prayers for health, safety, and for God blessing our time with our HBC team. We all saw God work not only in the lives of the Mozambicans, but in us individually as well. We can all walk away from this incredible experience with a new perspective of God and His awesomeness!!!

HBC Mission Trip

We are having a wonderful time with our HBC team! We wanted to share some of their experiences and how God is working through them this week. It's been such a blessing to have them all here! We are just loving it! They arrived Friday totally exhausted and excited to finally be here. We were so excited to see all of them. It was such a sweet reunionWe are so happy they are here! We are having a lot of fun laughing together as well as ministering together.


Here is a picture of Trina teaching our TLW discipleship program. We had a great turnout...our entire team showed up! This has never happened before! Trina and Dana taught about sharing our faith and how it should be natural for us to share Christ with people. The youth were really encouraged! Here's Karissa at our TLW discipleship program playing "telephone" with the team. They loved playing it in Makuwa, Portuguese, and English!

Here's a picture of Bev having a good discussion with one of our translators Noma. God has given Bev awesome opportunities to share with the youth and encourage them to not lose heart in times of discouragement. She helped them to see the importance of being bold to share their faith with others and to believe that God's timing is everything.

Our team was able to experience their first African meal. Jenni and Choveque made shima and couve (cabbage in a peanut sauce.) Everyone loved it and it was a sweet time of fellowship with our HBC team and the Nampula TLW team.


In the rally we broke into small groups of boys and girls. Here are some pictures of the discussion groups. It went really well as the Mozambican girls and boys opened up and shared some intimate things about their culture. They really desire to have their relationships please the Lord, but it is hard to go against what they have been taught all of their lives. They had never heard that sex before marriage is wrong and is against God's plan for our lives. We had about 40-50 participants...and now they all know the truth from God's word about sex! Our HBC team did a great job sharing great biblical truths with these guys about God's plan for sex inside a marriage covenant. It was a blessing to watch God work in this rally!

Here is a picture of us with the Wolffies! Corey and Tony are sporting their new Mozambique shirts. Roberta, Kaitlyn, Karissa, and Jenni are wearing their new capalanas. Actually, all of the girls had matching capalanas (african skirts). In the Mozambican culture, when the women have an important event to attend, they show how much they care about it by wearing matching capalanas! So we all had the same capalana, but in different colors, and the Mozambicans loved it! Corey and Tony matched too....how cute!

God has given Roberta a gift when it comes to loving on children. Normally babies scream when they see the "white woman or man" but this beautiful Mozambican baby loved Roberta and really bonded with her. It was so sweet!

We will be posting more pictures soon. Please pray for Bev, Shannon, Dana, Trina, Tony, Roberta, Kaitlyn, and Karissa as they go out to preach the gospel in a local village tomorrow. Pray that they will have boldness to share God's word and that God will open the hearts, eyes, and ears of the Mozambican to His saving grace. Thanks for all of your prayers for our team...we feel them and are blessed by them!

HBC in Nampula!

HBC has arrived safely in Mozambique...with all of their luggage! Thank you so much for your prayers for them! Please continue to pray for us all as we witness to the people of Nampula together this week. We are so excited and so blessed to have our church here to encourage us and serve God here beside us! We will post pictures and give more details later.

Witnessing the Work of the Great Physician!

The last few weeks have been pretty intense for the Duncans. Besides being really busy preparing for our HBC team and Jenni’s dad to come, we have been busy being involved in medical emergencies. A couple of weeks ago another missionary family brought their 1 year-old boy (Caleb) to our house for Jenni to evaluate because he wasn’t breathing very well due to what they thought was a case of croup. Jenni then began to treat him using the nebulizer we had received for Corey’s asthma. After trying several different treatments, he still failed to respond to the treatments. From there we decided to take him to world renown Nampula Hospital (see pics) so that he could be on oxygen. So after about 24 hours of terror at Nampula Hospital, and the doctors not thinking he was in “serious condition” until he turned blue, the family decided to have him medically evacuated to Johannesburg. This family didn’t have med-evac insurance so they had to arrange everything themselves, and make full payment before the plane would leave Joburg to come to Nampula. It was $23,000.

This was such a scary thing for us to witness this family almost lose their baby boy, but it was also an amazing display of God’s power as He saved this child’s life. God truly worked a miracle!! Many times we wondered if this boy would make it out of that hospital alive but by the grace of God, The Great Physician, he did. This was also such a touching experience for us as we really saw the body of Christ unite and come together to support this family in probably their darkest hour. It was so awesome to see Christians from America, Brazil, Portugal, and Mozambique rally around this family with love and prayers. It is something we will never forget and something we feel so blessed to have witnessed. Please continue to pray for this baby boy and his family as they are still in Johannesburg waiting for him to come out of the Intensive Care Unit. He is intubated, sedated, and battling some major infections. As we were anxiously waiting for the plane to arrive, God gave us encouragement through His Word. Psalms 41:1-3 says, ..."The Lord will deliver him in a day of trouble. The Lord will protect him and keep him alive. And he shall be called blessed upon the earth...The Lord will sustain him upon his sickbed; in his illness, You restore him to health." These verses spoke and continue to speak to our worrisome hearts!

It was a very long weekend. After 36 hours of no sleep, we went home for some shut eye…and then the phone rang again. Their 2 year old daughter came down with the same symptoms…so Jenni and another nurse set up a clinic in their home and tried to stabilize her as the father frantically tried to get a flight to Johannesburg that night. She responded very well to the treatments that Jenni had given her, and went to Johannesburg and recovered there. She is doing great, praise the Lord! Two days after this happened, we were called for another medical emergency to evacuate a Chinese man that had cerebral malaria. It was pretty stressful, but awesome that God put Jenni’s nursing skills to great use! We stand in awe to see a glimpse of the “bigger” picture. Sometimes we don’t realize how important "little" decisions or circumstances can prepare us for God’s big plans. We have witnessed this a lot in the past weeks and it just makes us amazed. God is so unfathomable and awesome!

In other news we just started a marriage seminar with two other Mozambican couples that we are really excited about. These two couples are good friends of ours and so we are looking forward to getting to know them better and strive together to have more Christ-like marriages. Our main focus and goal for this study is that we would strive to have our marriages reflect the relationship that Christ has with His church. Here is a picture of us taken in front of our house. Please pray that God would transform our marriages through this study. Pray also that God would help us to communicate these biblical principles effectively in Portuguese.

On a sad note and a concern for prayer, we found out today that one of the ladies on our TLW team was abused by her husband for being a part of this team. This past weekend our meeting went a little long and then afterwards she wanted to talk to Jenni about some personal things. Then once she got home he beat her for being so late and ripped up her notebook that we had given her. This notebook contained all of the truths that she has learned from the classes we teach, including her personal reflections on Bible stories and memory verses. She was devastated. We are going to visit her tomorrow and hope to encourage her as well as talk with her husband. We hope to share truth with him and thank him for the time he allows his precious wife to spend with our team. Maybe he will be able to see the good of her participating in this program, and not just the time it takes away from his family. Please pray that this situation would be handled with grace and kindness.

Well we have only 5 days until our team arrives in Nampula! They depart the US in 3 days. Please pray that it will be a great experience for them and that they will have peace of mind, safe travel, little culture shock, little jet lag, good health, protection from Malaria, flexibility, servant’s hearts, and lots of wonderful memories!! They will arrive during a major 4 week holiday for a religion that has a heavy influence here. This holiday has the focus of “searching for God.” Pray that as these M. Mozambicans are searching, they will find the One True God and use our 8 team members as His vessels to share the GOOD NEWS!! We can’t wait til you all get here!!! We are praying for you!

Finally, please be praying for Jenni’s dad. He is having some health issues and will be able to determine what to do this week. He will have an MRI to see if he has a herniated disk in his lower back. He is scheduled to arrive in Nampula in October. Pray that God would heal him before he gets on that plane!