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!!

The Keys are in Mozambique!

Just wanted to let you know that Jenni's parents have arrived in Mozambique! They made it safely here with all of their luggage. Praise the Lord! Thank you so much for your prayers! We are having a wonderful time with them and are so excited they are here. Please pray for continued health and safety as we show them around the city. They are having some serious culture shock! We will post more pictures of their adventure at the end of this week.

Computer Down, Portuguese Up!

Our computer is broken and so we can only email from our friend's
house. We are sad because this was our only way of communication to our friends and families. Pray that our computer will be fixed soon! We will probably have to take it to South Africa when we go on vacation with our parents. They will be here soon and we are so excited!

We have had a good week. Our pastor's wife Ruthi had her first baby and she asked Jenni if she could come and stay with us for a couple of days. It has been such a great experience for us to have her in our home. It has been our first real opportunity to speak Portuguese continually day and night. Also Jenni has been able to do newborn care
and postpartum teaching with her IN PORTUGUESE. We have loved it! Before Ruthi came to our house we visited her in the hospital a couple of times. We were impressed with the actual structure and cleanliness. By no means does it compare to an American hospital, but it is pretty good for Mozambique! Unfortunately the nursing care was non-existent, but at least it was clean.

Our supervisors Eddie and Janice will be moving in a couple of weeks and we are very excited to have them come to Nampula. They came for a visit this past week and our meetings with them and the government went well. Now we are in the process of applying for a nursing degree in Mozambique and exploring more ideas of how to use it where it is most needed. Again, we ask for prayer in all of this decision making...as many of you know we are the most indecisive people!

Prayer requests for this week: 1) Pray for safe travel of Jenni's parents as they leave March 9th and return March29th. Pray they will be protected from uneasiness and illness during their preparation and their time here. 2) Decision making to be led by God. 3)Praise that our Portuguese has improved greatly! 4)Discipline in our spiritual and physical lives.

Our new house...and kitten!

We have a new house! Thank you for your prayers and encouragement for this! We are still unpacking our things, but it is starting to feel like a home! Our house is nice, but a lot of work had to go into it before we moved in. As we hired painters, electricians, phone installers and even a plumber, we found ourselves improving in our language ability as were challenged with many new words. Our house is on a very busy street and in the middle of Nampula which has its good and bad points, but for the most part we are liking it. We are just happy that we can finally get settled again!

Other great news…we have an addition to our family! Yep, we got a new little kitten. His name is Lucky. He is keeping us on our toes. He loves to play, eat, sleep, chew on feet, and poop on Corey’s shoes. He is so cute! We are glad that we have him.

We had dinner with an American doctor/missionary last week and he gave us some great insight on medical ministries here in Mozambique. The government is pretty strict with foreigners practicing medicine so we have a lot of challenges ahead of us. We will be meeting with the Director of Health this week so please be praying for this. We will also be meeting with other organizations to see other possibilities. We are still on the search, but we know that it is not in vain! At our dinner, the doctor reminded us of the story of Hagar. As Hagar was in the desert, she cried because there was no water left for her and her baby Ishmael and she didn’t want to see him die. However, she didn’t see the well of water until God opened her eyes. (Genesis 21:14-19) So it is the same for us. Whether it be ministry or any other situation, our eyes must be opened by God. We tend to always see the problem, but God sees the solutions and we must wait for Him to open our eyes in His timing. So we are learning more patience as we wait on the Lord to see “our well” of ministry opportunities in Mozambique!

We are excited to announce that Jenni’s parents will be coming March 9-29. This is quite a huge step for them to do overseas travel. 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, and lots of wonderful memories. We can hardly wait!!! Thank you again for your prayers for our housing situation, language acquisition, and protection from Malaria. God is so good and He is faithfully answering them! Please continue to pray for us to wait with patient hearts for the Lord’s direction and clarity. Please pray for Corey as he will be starting a sports ministry next week. He will be seeking out places to play basketball and soccer. We are very excited about this! Also, please pray for continued protection against malaria. Thanks again and we love you!!

Some frustrations

Looking for a house has been a continual source of frustration for us. Every time we get ready to sign a contract, someone beats us to it or something happens that we can’t make the deal. We have noticed so many cultural differences just in looking for a house. The realtors we have had are completely unorganized and unprepared. We spent hours driving around to see the “outside” of the houses and being asked, “would you like to see the inside?” After such a statement, they figure that we are actually wanting to live inside the house and that they now have a dilemma. They will need to contact the owner and track down the keys…wherever they may be. Unfortunately there is no such thing as a simple phone call away. Every thing just works different here. Sometimes it is bearable, but on days that every thing seems to be going wrong, we find ourselves not appreciating our differences. For instance, we went without electricity for 3 days this week. Every thing that we had bought/stocked up on spoiled in our fridge and freezer. Everytime we called the electric company, they said they would be at our house in 15 minutes. Let’s just say that got really old by the first night. The second morning we went to their office to complain that no one had come and we were told to be patient…Corey responded that he thought 28 hours was patient enough! It has been really hot and for some reason, rainy season didn’t help us out for 3 nights we stayed awake sweating. We didn’t even get a breeze or a slight rain shower. We decided that it would be good to sleep downstairs, since it would be cooler. We made a huge mistake…we were eaten alive by mosquitoes! So, we have had quite a stressful week looking for houses, battling the language barrier, battling the electric company, watching hours slowly go by through each night, being covered with mosquito bites, and having the house we liked rented just hours before we could make the deal. AAAAAHHHH!!!

So, needless to say, we are in some serious need of prayer! Despite these frustrations, God has been good to us and He has shown us how blessed we are and how much we take our blessings from Him for granted. Please pray that God would lead us to the right house and that this week we would strive to respond to every situation the way Christ would! Pray that bad circumstances wouldn’t get the best of us and change our attitudes in a negative way. Please pray that we would be patient. Please pray that God would grant us clarity and a vision for our AIDS ministry…there are so many details that are unknown to us right now. Please pray that God would continue to protect us from Malaria!

Christmas in Africa

We are back again in Nampula. We returned yesterday from our trip to South Africa for a prayer retreat. We have been on the go so much lately. Thank you for your prayers for our safety. God has blessed us with His protection throughout all of our travels. We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. On Dec. 22nd we went to the orphanage and decorated a paper Christmas tree and ornaments. Then we decorated sugar cookies…it was the first cookie decoration and tasting for all of the orphans. They loved it. Then Jenni took the girls and taught them how to make them. They are excited to venture on their own and make more of these new delicious treats. We also spent time sharing the true meaning of Christmas with all of them. We challenged them to share this message with at least one of their friends and they all committed to doing it! We were excited. We had such a blessed time with them.

We had a wonderful Christmas, although it was very different than what we are used to. We spent time with our new supervisors Eddie and Janice. It was great! They spoiled us and made us feel like family. Also, we were able to talk to our families in the States and actually see them on the web cam. Thank the Lord for Skype and instant messaging! Eddie and Janice are blessed to have a fast internet connection, so we had a blast and took advantage of seeing our family. It sure made our separation easier. We can’t complain since we were able to actually see and talk to our families. We are so grateful that God has blessed us with Skype and a missionary family that took us in. Being away from family, friends, and pretty Christmas decorations and goodies was hard, but God made the transition wonderful. Whether we have any of those things or not, we still celebrated the most important thing…Christ’s birth. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, the meaning of Christmas remains the same. It was actually weird to be stripped from the commercialism of Christmas, but it was wonderfully weird. It helped us to focus only on the birth of our Savior!!!

After Christmas, we drove to South Africa. Can you say culture shock??? We had adapted to having nothing, and all of a sudden we felt like we were back in America. We went from a land with huts for homes and bad dirt roads, to a land with beautiful homes, movie theaters, hair salons, real grocery stores and PAVED roads! It was so weird…we felt like we were in America, however we were missing everyone we love so much. Everything felt so familiar, yet it felt so empty without our family and friends. We miss all of you so much!! Here is a picture of the first place we went to in Johannesburg…yep that would be Micky D’s! It was like a party in our mouths!!! Who knew fries, nuggets, and a McFlurry could taste so good!!

The Prayer Retreat was wonderful. There was a team who came from the States and they led us in worship and Bible Study. It was awesome to praise God in English! The days were very full of prayer time and worship time. We enjoyed it very much. At night, we had free time, and we took advantage of it and went to the movies. We highly recommend Charolette’s Web to everyone! Jenni also got her hair cut and styled, which was quite the experience. In the States you can just say I would like a cut/style. In Johannesburg, you have to be very specific and say you want your hair washed, then conditioned, then cut, then blow dried, and then straightened…Why??? Well because you have the privilege of paying for each and everything done to your hair. We know for next time, but it was quite an expensive, frustrating experience. It did turn out good though, so no complaints there!

Upon our arrival to Nampula, we were blessed with several Christmas packages awaiting us! We want to thank all of you for the time and money in postage/package materials that you put out to make us feel so special. We felt so loved and we appreciate the kindness and generosity that you showed us. THANK YOU!!! Now we are refreshed and stocked up on lots of yummy American food that should cure some cravings!

We had a meeting with Samaritan’s Purse when we returned to Mozambique a couple of days ago. We are in the process of looking at a bunch of AIDS ministry materials and making some big decisions on how to do ministry here. We need your prayers as we seek God to lead us in this decision making process. We also need you to pray for us this week as we search for an apartment to live in. We need to move ASAP out of our house, because the house we are living in now is going to be the home of our new supervisors. We had found a great option, but it fell through. Pray God would lead us to a good home and that the move would go smoothly. Also, pray that we would just lean on the Lord and not worry about the details of the move and decisions we need to make! God bless you and we hope that you are all having a wonderful New Year!!

Our 40/40 Adventure

We are back! 40/40 is over and we have returned to Nampula. Thank you so much for all of your prayer support! We really appreciate it and we know God was faithful to answer them! 40/40 was an excellent experience for us and we are so grateful that God blessed us with the opportunity to go. It was definitely not what we expected, but it turned out to be so much better than our expectations. Bear with us as we try and summarize our 5 week journey!

Our journey began with us traveling from Nampula, Mozambique to Lusaka, Zambia. We stayed in Lusaka at a Baptist seminary dormitory for 13 days where we went out with our Zambian assistants (local pastors and members of the Baptist churches in Zambia) to “engage Africans”. This was a lot of fun as we were able to go out into the local communities and talk to them about several different aspects of their culture. We talked to them about health, medicine, missionaries, church, etc. This was very informative for us as we learned so much about how they live and how they think. It was also really neat for us because many of these encounters led to us being able to share the gospel with them. It was such a wonderful experience to share this Good News and other Bible stories side by side.

After only being there a couple of days, Jenni’s assistant became very ill and was hospitalized. Because he was ill on a weekend, there were no doctors to treat him. Jenni went to visit him and found him being treated for Malaria….but he did not have malaria. Her assistant had a severe stroke. Jenni felt so helpless. She tried so hard to convince the nurse there to reevaluate the patient’s diagnosis and treatment. Then she tried to have the family get him transferred, but that would go against “the culture” and cause further problems with relationships with the medical staff. A day later, Jenni’s assistant died. It was so sad. He left behind an 11 year old daughter. It really made us realize the desperate need for good medical care in this part of the world. We take it for granted in the US, that is for sure. So many people die here, because either they do not have access to a doctor, or they are completely misdiagnosed, or the physician doesn’t work on nights and weekends, or the people care more about what the medical staff would think of them if they got a second opinion than they do about their dying relative, or they simply cannot afford treatment. Whatever the reasons, the situations here break our hearts.

After 13 days in the city of Lusaka we headed out for bush camp for 13 days. We went to a rural town in eastern Zambia called Petauke, so we could experience the rural side of Africa. This was a lot of fun and a good experience as well for us. However, it was a big difference from life in the city to life in the villages. In our bush camp we faced some delightful challenges: we stayed in tents, pumped our own water at the well, used squatty potties, took some bucket baths, washed our clothes by hand, killed some gigantic spiders and scorpions, and listened to the “demon drums”, etc. It was kinda freaky. We were told that these drums were played loudly to worship the evil spirits. Every night we would hear drums and it always seemed like they were getting closer. We had to keep thinking that “greater is He who is in us than he that is in the world,” and pray that one day those same people could be drumming for Jesus and not evil spirits. Our time in the bush was definitely an unforgettable experience.


We didn’t really eat anything too bizarre during our time in Lusaka and the bush camp. We ate nshima every day, with a variety of other things. Nshima is an African staple and is eaten throughout most of Africa. It is a combination of ground corn meal and water and is eaten for nearly every meal, every day except breakfast. It isn’t terrible, but it isn’t exactly wonderful tasting either! There were some termites available in town, but thank goodness they were never offered to us so we didn’t have to partake. The strangest thing we ate was some capenta which are little dried fish with no meat (only bones, scales, and eyeballs!). It tasted like trout, only completely different. We ate these at the end of our time at 40/40 during our homestay. For our homestay, we stayed with a young Zambian couple and their 1 year old daughter (Here is a picture of Corey holding her.) They live in a district town. This was a lot of fun for us as we got to experience how an average Zambian family lives. Jenni learned how to make nshima amongst other African delicacies, while she also taught them how to make some American dishes. She was taught how to cook with only coals, one pan, and no cooking utensils. We realized that people can live so simple. We were humbled and felt guilty for thinking that we “need” so many things to live. This homestay taught us that we don’t need as much as we think that we do.

We did have a funny experience that is just too good not share. While we were at our homestay, we got to experience both bucket baths and squatty potties which in themselves are kind of funny. Anyway, one day as we were taking a bucket bath, Corey set his hat upon the ledge which separates the squatty potty from the bucket bath. Then he accidentally knocked the hat over onto the squatty potty side. He couldn’t see where it landed, but only hoped that it didn’t fall into the 3 meter deep feces hole. Thankfully it had not fallen in, but instead it landed perfectly on the hole which was still pretty disgusting! We gave it a good wash though and Corey continues to wear it and represent the first place Utah Jazz everywhere we go.

When we completed our 3 night homestay, we traveled to a resort for a few days to debrief our experiences. We were so happy to see steak and not nshima! After we finished with 40/40 we were blessed with the opportunity to visit Victoria Falls. If you’re ever in Zambia or Zimbabwe, we highly recommend visiting this magnificent piece of God’s creation. We will post some pictures and thoughts of this a little later. Also, we wanted to share with you all a note of praise and thanksgiving to God. While we were at 40/40 we found out that we will have some new supervisors, Eddie and Janice. This is a big answer to prayer as we have been without leadership for awhile. Eddie and Janice will be moving up to Nampula in February and we are so excited to have them as our new leaders. Now we are back on track planning medical clinics with a sports ministry. God is so amazing!

Here are some prayer requests: Please continue to pray for God’s leading and direction in our ministries. Please pray that God would help us to be disciplined in our walk with Him. Please pray for spiritual refreshment and safety as we travel to South Africa Dec27-Jan3 for a prayer retreat. Praise God that he was merciful to our stomachs during our time in Zambia. Other than a 2 day stomach flu, our stomachs did amazingly well.
God Bless You. We love and miss all of you so much and pray that you have a blessed Christmas!

Off to Zambia

We want to start this blog off by thanking our wonderful families and friends who have blessed us with many packages. We have realized how much we miss and take for granted the things that we can get so easily in the States. This past week we received several boxes of Lucky Charms (for Jenni) and packages of beef jerky (for Corey) and many other US things which we have enjoyed greatly. We also received the new Chris Tomlin CD which Jenni has worn out already. It is a great CD! We highly recommend it for everyone!

Lately, it has been SO HOT. We think we’re going to burn out our A/C in our room! It has been working overtime for us! It’s very humid here and the sun is so intense. We think we might eventually melt, especially since it is only going to get hotter.

Well, we’re wrapping up our language study this week and that’s kind of scary since we are far from communicating effectively. We had another funny experience with our language class this week. If you remember, we learned how a “castanha” can be a chestnut or donkey poop. This week we discovered a false cognate that we thought was pretty funny. The word we learned was “constipaçao”, which sounds like constipation. So we thought our language teacher was telling us he had constipation, but he really had a cold. Just a little difference!

We have had many interesting experiences here in Nampula. Last week, we had been asked to help a family in one of the churches that needed help with transporting a baby that had just died. A pastor had asked us if we could transport the baby from the city hospital to the family’s house (about 40 kilometers outside of the city). It was a lot different from what we’ve seen in the States. There was no casket, no ceremony, nothing like that. A family member of the baby’s mother just held the baby wrapped up in an African cloth (capalana) until we got to the mother’s house. We were able to witness another huge difference in the way people live here compared to America.

Next Monday we will be going to Zambia for a 5 week training. This training will teach us how to live AFRICAN STYLE. (ie, living in the bush, learning about African culture, how to go to the bathroom in a hole in the ground, how to wash our clothes by hand, etc.) We think that it will be good to actually live how Africans live and gain a heart for them and their way of life. After our training, we are going to visit Victoria Falls and take a much needed break! We are so excited about this! It is one place we definitely wanted to see while living here in Africa. Also, while we are there, we are going to jump from one of the highest bungee jumps in the world! It is about 100 meters and you jump from a bridge that looks over a river. It should be fun. OK… if you know Jenni…this would never happen unless we were the final 3 on the Amazing Race!

So you probably won’t hear from us for about 6 weeks or so. We wish we could have some access to family and friends, but we don’t. That is the way of life for Africans, so we will have to get used to that part as well.

Please Pray For : 1) Our stomachs while living in the bush. We are nervous about it because we have had some “stomach issues” for some time now, and we really don’t want to experience these issues in the bush! Also, the mosquitoes are really bad now that it is hot, so pray that we don’t get malaria! 2) Safety as we travel to and from Zambia. We return Dec. 11th 3) This week we will say goodbye to some missionaries for a little while as they go on furlough. Please pray that God would raise up new leaders for our team. 4) Please pray that we wouldn’t take too many steps back in Portuguese since we will not be immersed in it for 6 weeks. Pray God would protect our memories from losing to many words!

“The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised.” Job 1:21

In our last blog, we wrote about being able to work at an orphanage. We were so excited about this opportunity we felt God had given us. It just seemed like the perfect fit for us. However, we recently found out that we would not be able to work there as our primary ministry. This was very sad and disappointing for us, because we were really looking forward to working there. However, we will still be able to work there on our day off! We know God is still in control though and His plans cannot be thwarted. Whether or not we understand why He took this away from us, His name is still worthy to be praised and we are excited to see what He has for us!

Last week we were able to see Choveque’s (our house worker and friend) wife get baptized. It was our first time to see a baptism since we’ve been here. It was really cool because it was in a river and it made us feel like we were in Jesus’ time. There were hundreds of people who were there to either watch the baptisms or to be baptized. After every baptism, the people broke into a chorus in Makuwa. It was a great cultural experience for us.

We now have a couple of weeks left of Portuguese classes and needless to say, we are a little nervous about this. It is coming along…just not as fast as we would like. We do have a funny story to share about our language learning. Last week our teacher asked us if we had ever eaten a “castanha”. Neither of us had ever heard this word before and so we looked it up in the dictionary. The word had 2 different meanings. First, it was a type of nut, which is what he was talking about. The other meaning it had was donkey excrement! We had quite the laugh! We told him NO to both definitions! We now know to be very careful when someone offers us “castanhas” because someone could either be giving us chestnuts or donkey poop!

We have another story which is just too good not to share. We have recently been eyewitnesses to the eating of a grasshopper by a native Mozambican who happens to be our language teacher. We both agree that it is the most disgusting thing our eyes have ever witnessed. Last week Luis caught a grasshopper (not just any grasshopper, but a very large one) and said he would eat it. So…we threw it into some water to boil it and put a little bit of salt into it…and 10 minutes later…Bon Appetite! It was thoroughly disgusting!

Here are some prayer requests for this week: 1) Please pray for the meetings we will have this week with the pastors here. Pray that God would give us vision and direction for the ministries we are here to lead. 2) Pray for our last weeks of Portuguese. We need discipline in studying and divine intervention with memorizing 3) We will be leaving in 3 weeks for a training in Zambia that we are nervous to attend. We will give more information in our next blog about it, but please pray for our health and safe travel during the 5 weeks we will be away. 4) Pray for us as the heat of Mozambique has started to “zap” all of our energy!

Nothing is too hard for the LORD!!!!

God’s promises are as true today as when they were spoken and given to us in His Word, yet why do we fail to proclaim these promises and actually believe them? So often we find ourselves wavering in unbelief. Also, it is so hard sometimes for us to believe in God’s grace. We always think we have to earn it or do something in order to receive it. How is it possible that we are made right with God through the death of His Son? Oh how much higher are God’s ways and thoughts than ours. His love for us is amazing! With that said…we are very excited to share with you this post. We never thought this would be possible, because it just seemed too good to be true.

We were recently victims of unbelief yet God proved to us this past week that nothing is too hard for Him! As we came to Mozambique, many of you know that we have struggled with some of the ministries that awaited us. There had been some miscommunication about us working in an orphanage. We found out that we were not here to do nursing and sports evangelism, but facilitate some other ministries that were here. We thought we would be helping these ministries, but our primary focus would be at the orphanage. So we really struggled with this miscommunication, because we longed to use the gifts and skills that God has gifted us with to share with the people here. So as the months have gone by, we have waited on the Lord with anticipation. However we thought there would be no way for us to work at this orphanage as our primary ministry. By God’s grace, we found out this week that we would be able to work at the orphanage on a regular basis and not just in our spare time! Our focus will be to minister to these orphans on a daily basis! We are so excited about this and we are praising God for this incredible opportunity and for answering our prayers in this way! We believe that He worked a miracle for us! We were encouraged by this verse this past week and it really leaped off the page to us: Ephesians 3:20 “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is in work within us to him be the glory...” God made this happen in His power for His glory and we are so excited that He did!

We feel like it is such a perfect fit for us as we will both be able to use the gifts God has given to us! Jenni will be able to utilize her nursing skills, teach English, and share the love of Christ through her gifts of encouragement and mercy. Corey will be able to play sports with the orphans, teach them how to play the drums, and be a servant to the orphans in many other ways. Our hope is to build relationships through these avenues so that we can share the love of Christ with them and start Bible studies. We are looking forward to seeing how God will continue to work at this orphanage. We have already been able to work there a couple times and Corey has been teaching them some of the basics about drumming.(We tried posting pictures of this, but blogger would not allow us to post more than one.) This has been so much fun and such a blessing as Corey has really missed playing the drums. Jenni also had the opportunity to minister to one of the youth who had some health issues. Please pray with us about this exciting opportunity and that God would receive glory and that He would work out all the details that we are still unsure about.

Here are some prayer requests for this week: 1) Pray that God would work out the details of us working at the orphanage. Please pray for our leaders and the decisions that they need to make regarding our work there. Pray that God would protect us from worry as we wait on these decisions…we want to keep our eyes on Him and keep praising Him for this miracle! 2) Pray for God’s wisdom and direction with our other ministries that we are here to help. 3) Pray for patience in learning the language. We are almost to the end of our formal language learning and we are nervous to have only 4 weeks left. We have so much to learn in such little time!

Memorable experiences

This past week was very encouraging to us as God put us into complete awe of Him and His works! We had the chance to visit a Christian orphanage where we witnessed the hand of God. It was such a neat experience! God totally has His hand on this orphanage! The director told us many stories of how God has delivered these orphans from the power of Satan. It was so refreshing and encouraging to hear these incredible acts of God. He has blessed this orphanage with a leader (Victor) who is passionate about Christ. Victor wants to see these children know and love God with all of their hearts. It was also so wonderful to talk with him about the opportunities of being able to help there one day a week. It was such a “God thing” as he asked Corey about teaching the kids how to play the drums (they actually had an American style drum set there). Then (without him even knowing Corey is here to start a sports ministry), he asked if he could play sports with the kids as well. He also loved the idea of Jenni helping to be a nurse there and to care for the kids when they are sick. We are so excited to help out at this orphanage (even though it’s only once a week) and we know that God has blessed us with this opportunity! We look forward to sharing more about this in the future.

Recently, we had our first goat eating experience and to our surprise, it was really good! It didn’t “taste like chicken,” but it was a mix between beef and pork. Anyway, one of our night guards (Filipe) invited us to a party celebrating the dedication of their baby to the Lord. It was really cool because Filipe’s wife wasn’t able to bear a child, yet they fervently prayed that God would give them a child. God answered their prayer and gave them a beautiful baby girl, and they named her Precious Grace. After the baby dedication they had a party and this is where we ate the goat. We had a great time at the party and we were so humbled by their hospitality. His family spent over a month’s wages to provide food for us and the 20 or so people that attended. Even afterwards they asked us if we wanted to take home the leftovers. Filipe and his family truly have giving hearts! This is a apicture of the goat before we ate it. Filipe brought it to our house on the back of his bike. It made us laugh so hard! We still shake our heads in unbelief that people put live animals on the back of their bikes, on the handle bars…really any free space will be taken by something alive!

We also had a date night recently which was a lot of fun. We went to a nice restaurant and had a great time (This picture is of us outside of the restaurant). However, we have found out that there really isn’t much to do here in Nampula. You can’t really do dinner/movie here or dinner/bowling or anything like that. We can do dinner and then a movie on the laptop! We’ll take it though. We also have been playing a lot of games. We have found that we are both bad losers! We have really enjoyed all of the time that we get to spend together, and we feel so blessed to be together every day!

Here are some prayer requests for this week: 1) Grace to learn the language. It’s coming along slowly but surely. 2) God’s direction and clarity with the ministries He has placed us in. 3) Wisdom and discernment with our giving. Everyone has “a need” and a request for us to fill that need and we need God’s help to know who to give to and when! 4) We are revising some of the True Love Waits material and we will be meeting with the team next Wednesday to do this. Please pray that God would help us know what to revise so that we can minister more effectively to the school aged children here in Nampula!

“So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:12

These past couple of weeks have been very sad and sobering for us, which has led us to write what we are going to write. On August 1, Corey found out that his friend, Chris Mitchell died. It’s hard to describe the feeling you have in your soul after hearing that someone you love has died. So many thoughts and feelings go through your heart after this happens. There is sorrow that hurts to your core, yet there is also a peace and comfort if that person is a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Death is such a sobering reality. Whether we think about it or not, the truth is that we are all ordained to die. This is where the reality sets in: where will we spend our eternity? The purpose of this is not to scare people or to frighten people, but so that we might search our hearts and seek the face of God. Are we reconciled to God? (2 Corinthians 5:20) Are we storing up treasures on earth or are we storing them up in heaven? Are we living as if earth is our home? Are we loving people like we love ourselves? Are we making the most of every opportunity that God gives us? (Ephesians 5:15)

God has burdened our hearts to share with you and the people in Africa of his saving grace. We can know without a doubt where we will spend eternity! (1 John 5:13) Heaven is a wonderful thing to think about and yet God gives us a chance to have a little bit of heaven here on Earth. We can enter into His presence daily through prayer and by reading His Word, and we can be witnesses of His glory through the sunsets, beautiful mountains…everything declares the glory of God! (Psalm 19:1) We can live an abundant life and have freedom in God and no longer live for the things of this world. This abundant and free life can only come from Jesus! (John 10:10) Every person on this Earth is a sinner and has a desperate need for a Savior. Because we all have an appointment with death, we must truly search our hearts. The Bible says in Romans 3:10-12 “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” Romans 6:23 “for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.” Have you received this precious gift in Jesus? Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrated his own love for us in this: While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 10:8-10 “...the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.” Ephesians 2:8 “For it is by grace that you are saved, through faith and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.” Romans 5:20 “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

These verses are good news (Gospel)! But, they are only good news to those who repent of their sins and trust only in Christ to save them from their sins. For those who do not repent and believe, they will experience the torment of hell for all of eternity. Hell is a very real place. (2 Peter 2:4-10, Revelation 21:8) The fact is that we all deserve hell. Praise the Lord that He loves us so much that He would be gracious and merciful to us by providing His one and only Son to die on the cross for our sins! May we live every day of our life seeing what the Lord has saved us from…our eternal separation from Him.

Our prayer is that any of our friends and family that have not seen their need for a Savior, they will do so now! Our time is short here on Earth and we never know when God will choose to take us, which is why there are warnings given throughout the Bible. “Behold, now is the acceptable time, behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). These words in Hebrews chapters 3 & 4 are repeated 3 times: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts…”

We will never be able to do enough, say enough, be “a good enough person”, or live forever in happiness in heaven without the saving grace of Jesus to wash us “white as snow.” (Isaiah 1:18) Our sins separate us from God (Isaiah 59:2), but when we receive the gift of His grace in our lives, we can live not only eternally with God, but every minute of everyday! This sweet fellowship (1 John 1:3) is something worth living for! In Jesus you always have a Redeemer, Provider, Friend, Father, Calmer of Storms, Great Physician, Healer, Sustainer, Peace Giver, the list could go on and on and on! Everyday you search for these things in the world and the world will never provide them… “Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life.” (John 14:6) May Jesus be in all of our hearts and the only reason to live for now and for eternity!!!!

Our trip to Malawi

After 2,375 km (1500 miles) and a total of 31 hours of driving like we were on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland and 36 mosquito bites (32 on Jenni and 4 on Corey), we are back from Malawi! What a trip! We had a great time in Malawi, but we’re happy to finally be back “home”. Before we made it to the meeting at Lake Malawi, we got to stay at a Tea Estate. It was so wonderful! It was so beautiful and peaceful there. We had a relaxing time there just enjoying the tranquility of the place. Here are a couple of pictures of what it looked like there. It is not your typical Africa scenery!
After 2 days at the tea estates, we headed to the hotel where we would be attending our meeting. The hotel where we stayed was beautiful and we felt so blessed to be able to stay at such a nice hotel. We weren’t roughing it by any means. However, we didn’t really get to enjoy the scenery to much since we were in meetings all day, but it was still nice to stay there. Our meeting was about the persecuted church and it was very meaningful to us (while we were in Virginia we had the same training and this time it was even better). It was a good reminder of what our brothers and sisters in Christ go through around the world. We really loved hearing all the stories about how God is working all over the world. It reminded us of John 3:8 when Jesus compares the Holy Spirit to the wind and how you see its effects but you don’t know where it comes from or where it’s going. We don’t know why or when or even how God works sometimes, but we definitely can see the effects of His working in the world and in His Church. We were so blessed and encouraged to hear story after story about how God is working around the world and in places that seem hopeless. He is so much greater than we can ever imagine!

In the little free time that we had, we got to enjoy some kayaking on the lake. This was so much fun until someone told us about a story of how a hippo tipped over a boat while on a river that flowed from Lake Malawi. After this story, we watched something similar on National Geographic and let’s just say the rest of our kayaking time we were a little tense from thinking there were crocs or hippos under us! Here is a picture of us next to the kayaks.

Overall, we really enjoyed our trip. The end of our week was sad, as we said goodbye to some fellow Mozambican missionaries, Harvey and Jen. They went back home to the USA after serving here for 2 years in a city called Angoche. We were so blessed to spend some time with them while they were here and it was amazing to hear about how God worked in their lives and used them mightily. We miss and love you Harvey and Jen!

Thank you for your prayers while we were gone. God definitely was merciful to us as we drove! Thank you God! Anytime you go on a trip with these types of roads, it’s a miracle that your vehicle is still in one piece.(and us too!)

Here are some prayer requests for this week. Please pray for: 1) Protection against Malaria (since our chance of getting it is increased from all the bites we got in Malawi.) 2) Continued patience and endurance with the language. We realized we took some steps backwards by not using the language for 10 days. 3) Clarity for the ministries that await us!

Why did the chicken cross the road?

We have learned that chickens, people, and many other living things cross the road not only to get to the other side, but for a pure adrenaline rush! This adrenaline rush comes from running as fast as possible in a last minute decision to get to the other side. It is amazing that we haven’t hit anything! Besides avoiding chickens crossing the road, we are continuing to learn Portuguese every day. It seems like we will never be able to communicate effectively although it’s encouraging to look back a month ago and to see how much we have learned.

One thing we were able to do this past week was attend a 4th of July BBQ with the American missionary community in Nampula. It was so much fun! We got to eat some grilled pork chops that were amazing! Pork is very rare here. Tender, juicy, yummy meat is a very rare thing to come by. We also played volleyball. Basketball would have been better (except for those who would have experienced the Corey Crossover), but volleyball was still a lot of fun.

We also received our first package from the Krafts, which was an awesome blessing! It was so exciting to receive a package! We didn’t even have to pay duty on it and it was in one piece (normally they open the package to see the contents and charge you for it.) Thanks again Kraft Family!!

Another thing that was really cool this past week was that we learned a new song. Our house worker taught us a song in the Makhuwa language. This song is about searching the whole world over and discovering that there is no one like Jesus. We really love this song! Once we got the tune down we tried it out on the guitar and sounded out some chords. We hope to someday sing this song with the Makuwa people at the church we are attending (pictured here). We have been attending Nampula Baptist Church. We like it there and we think we will like it even more when we know what they are saying!!!!

This will be our last post for about a week and a half as we are heading to Malawi to attend an annual meeting with other team members. We are excited to be able to see another country, but the downside is a full 24 hours of driving on awful roads. It will be an adventure!

Here are some prayer requests for this week. Please pray for: 1) Traveling mercies on our trip to and from Malawi, 2) That we will retain everything that we learned so far in Portuguese and that this 10 day trip will not set us back in our learning, 3) Clarity for the ministries that God has called us to in Mozambique.

Fala Portugues?

“What do the Duncan’s do everyday?”is probably a question most of you ask, right? Well, we are in language 3 hours a day/5 days a week and the other hours are spent cooking meals or still unpacking our bags. We have now realized that learning a language isn’t as easy or fun as we hoped for! It takes soooo much patience and perseverance. We do try to make it as fun as possible by learning numbers with Monopoly money or labeling everything in our house! We have a personal tutor named Luis (he is 4 feet tall and very funny!). He has taken us out to the market to help us learn our fruits and veggies. So it isn’t too bad, but our brains hurt everyday as we are now trying to form real sentences. aka “The book is on the table”…we are really expanding our vocabulary!! However, this past weekend we were also able to sit in on a True Love Waits session. This took place at a local school and involved about 40 youth from different areas of the city. As the youth were asked about cultural practices regarding premarital sex, our hearts were broken with the sad response of “kids start having sex at age 10.” It was good for us to gain a Mozambiquan perspective as we are still forming ideas regarding the True Love Waits program. Our goal is for these children to commit first to a relationship with Jesus Christ and then a commitment to abstinence. Please pray for this ministry as we are taking it into the school system and that we will declare the truth of the gospel boldly at these meetings.

We were also able to go to the coast for some downtime. Here are some pictures of our little weekend getaway we had with the rest of our team. We went to the beach and had so much fun! Our days consisted of snorkeling, eating, and relaxing on the beach. The beaches are beautiful and the water is so clear. The star fishes are gigantic and colorful. It was amazing to see the many different creatures of the sea that the Lord has created! This is definitely a place we plan on visiting again! Also, whenever any of you come and visit, we will take you to this place.

Here are some more prayer requests we have for this week. 1)Pray for the meeting we will have with our True Love Waits team as many changes are needed in this established ministry 2)The hearts of the children we minister to…that God will change their hearts to seek Him through the True Love Waits program. 3) Minds that absorb Portuguese and good memories, 4) Patience and endurance as we study the language 5) Safety as we are now driving in absolute chaos, and 6) Protection against Malaria and all other water/food borne illnesses…we have experienced some pretty bad GI problems lately.

Our first bush experience

We have been here for almost a month and now we can say that we have had our first “bush” experience! A week ago we had the chance to go out with some of our colleagues to the “bush” to do Bible storying. Bible storying is an awesome tool to use in oral cultures (such as the Makhuwa) because most of them are illiterate and they learn best by listening. Jenni and the other missionaries took turns telling stories chronologically from the Bible. We had a translator who spoke English, Portuguese, and Makhuwa. She did an amazing job translating in 3 languages for 2 straight days! The village that we visited was in the middle of no-where. It took about 2 ½ hours to go 100km to get to the villiage because of the awful roads. The drive alone was exhausting! I guess we can’t complain since some of the ladies that were meeting us there had to walk 6 hours or more in their bare feet without food or water! It was really humbling to see how these people live. Most of them live in mud huts with straw roofs with no electricity or running water. However, they are equipped with the finest squatty potty’s in town (aka hole in the ground)!
We really enjoyed our time with them. Even though we don’t speak any of their language (Makhuwa), we were still able to bond with them. Corey played the African drum with some of the ladies and as he played they danced and sang songs. It was really cool. They kept trying to teach him how to play the African beat (which is VERY different than anything he did in America). The Makhuwa love to dance…so we both danced with them and made fools of ourselves! We were all laughing really hard! We learned through this experience a cultural difference…when they laugh at you, it means they like you. However, in the States when people laugh at you it is usually because they are making fun of you or you’ve said something funny. People here just laugh at random times and sometimes it makes you think you’ve done something but really they just like you and they are happy.

We were able to meet with the AIDS and True Love Waits teams, which are made up of native Mozambicans. It was good to be introduced to them and we look forward to working with them once we get the language down! We will actually get to observe a True Love Waits rally this Saturday as they are hosting one at a local school here in the city. We are very excited for this! Also, last week we were able to meet some of the orphans we will be working with. Most of these orphans have lost their parents due to AIDS. We hope to form close relationships with all of them!

Here are some prayer requests that we have for this week: Please pray for 1) Minds that absorb Portuguese and good memories, 2) Patience and endurance as we study the language and adapt to a new culture, 3) Discipline in every area of our lives, 4) Safety as we are still learning to drive in absolute chaos, and 5) Attitudes that reflect Christ daily.

A Very Sad Day

Cheyenne Duncan 1/2006-6/12/06
Today was a very sad day in the Duncan household. Our precious puppy Cheyenne died after being hit by a truck tonight. For all of you dog lovers, you know how easy it is to love a dog and to make it part of your family. Even after only having her for a few weeks, we really loved her and she brought us great joy! She had such an awesome personality and was so fun to play with. The thought of not having her around anymore makes us very sad. We will miss our doggy very much. Please pray for us.


Here is a picture of our puppy playing with a ball. Thanks Karissa for buying her some balls! She loved to play with them!

Living in Nampula

Sorry for the delay in posting…we were not able to get an internet account until now!!! It is hard to know where to begin with this blog post, as we have experienced so many different feelings and emotions since arriving in Mozambique. It didn’t take long to experience some major culture shock. For those of you who have been out of the USA, you will know what we are talking about as driving just isn’t the same as it is back home. Driving is a near death experience every time you get into a vehicle. I think we could go on 60 Minutes or Dateline and tell them of how we “saw the light” every time our driver went into oncoming traffic to pass the car in front of us because they were supposedly going too slow. We use the word slow very loosely here in Mozambique as we do many other words. Also there are thousands of people walking on the side of the road. This probably wouldn’t be so shocking except for the fact that they like to cross the road at random times, usually at the last possible second so they can get as close to being hit by a car without actually getting hit. It has been said that driving in Mozambique is like a video game! Joking aside, it is pretty scary! On our first day here, we witnessed the car in front of us hit a little girl head on. It was awful. Also, we never thought driving on the right side of the car and left side of the road in a manual truck could be so hard! We need your prayers as we learn how to drive in this chaos!!!!

Well we are finally here in Nampula, Mozambique! This is where we will be living for the next 2 years! So far it has been challenging getting used to so many new things. New language, culture, home, food, people, dog (we have a “watch dog” named Cheyenne, she’s really cute), climate, etc. God has been very faithful though in helping us with our culture shock each day! We are very blessed to have such a wonderful team of missionaries that has shown us so much love! We had such a warm welcome from all of them. Many drove hours to spend a week with us to show us around and orient us to this foreign land that has become familiar to them. For Jenni’s birthday (June 1st) the team gave her a party with cake, ice-cream, cookies, and homemade pizza. We spent the evening celebrating by eating and playing card games. They went all out to make it very special. They even gave gifts (an African skirt, basket and some candles…there are some really funky smells here!!!) They truly made us feel so welcomed and loved. So far our team has taken us around the city to get familiar with everything. As you can imagine everything is VERY different than home. We are very overwhelmed with all of the new things we have to take in. Our brains are suffering from information overload.

We are excited to start learning Portuguese. We began our language study this past week with one of the native Mozambicans. So far it has been challenging since he doesn’t speak English. Eventually this will work to our advantage as we will be forced to speak the language and not use English as a crutch. We will be in language study for about 4 months and then hopefully by then we will be able to communicate effectively with the people here. Please pray for patience and for our brains to absorb this quickly!

Besides the driving, eating has been kind of a challenge. We haven’t really eaten anything strange (yet) but what we do eat has to be made from scratch. This is hard because it takes a couple of hours just to prepare a meal. Also, if we want to have salad or vegetables we have to soak them in bleach water for 20 minutes before we eat it, and then rinse with special filter water. There is the option of going out to eat, but that takes just as long because there is no such thing as fast food in Mozambique. One thing we found interesting about the food here (when we eat out) is how they serve french fries with everything. No matter what you order, if it’s steak, shrimp, or chicken, you will get some fries on the side.

As we said before, we do have a dog whose name is Cheyenne.

She is supposed to deter people from breaking in, but if that ever happens, I doubt the intruders will haveany trouble with our dog. The only thing she might do is pee on them. Every time she gets excited, urine flows from her like a river. She is really cute and we are really enjoying having a puppy and loving on her and playing with her.

Even though it has been crazy thus far, we are excited to be in Mozambique. We are looking forward to actually working with the people and ministering God’s grace to them. Some other things to pray for right now would be: 1) pray that we would have the same attitude as Christ Jesus as we adjust to the language and culture. 2) pray that God will glorify Himself through the AIDS/True Love Waits programs that we will work with after language school, 3) a vision and strategy for a sports ministry and 4) previously mentioned patience in language and driving!!!

Most importantly….Pray that we would praise God and place our hope and trust in Him…and in Him alone! This is our prayer for all of you as well. Sorry about the lack of pictures. This 1 picture took about 1 1/2 hours to post. We will try to post some more later. We love you!!!