A Very Busy & Fun Month!

Sorry for the delay in posting our blog! It’s a good thing February has 29 days, giving us an extra day to get a post done for February! It has been an extremely busy month for us. One of our supervisors had offered to help us out and drive our bags down to Johannesburg. This was to help us save hundreds of dollars in shipping or in overweight/excess baggage on any airline. So in one week we had to pack almost all of our stuff to send with him. It is always a very crazy ordeal to pack and move overseas. It definitely involves some strategy and creativity! He took 6 of our bags down to Johannesburg by car so…now we will only have 2 bags to check when we leave Nampula. It was such a blessing to have him do this for us! We are so grateful! From Joburg we will grab all of our stuff and make our way home with everything but the kitchen sink!


Despite the craziness in packing we have had a really fun time, especially with our kiddos out at the orphanage. Our church from Utah had graciously donated mattresses so that each child could sleep comfortably in their beds. The kids were so surprised and so excited to get these mattresses. It was incredibly fun to here all of their giggles and watch them take their mattresses to their room to try them out! Thanks again Holladay Baptist Church! Another really fun activity we had with our kiddos…an ICE CREAM PARTY!
Nothing could get better than this! We had lots of different flavors so that they could try all of them! It was really fun to see them enjoy a huge plate of ice cream! The room was filled with silence and smiles as each child was very focused on experiencing the new flavors! It was great! Thanks Momo and Popo for throwing this party for them! They loved it so much! Also, thanks Joey for having a birthday so we could have an excuse to eat this much icecream!

We have less than 3 weeks left until we leave Mozambique! It’s crazy! We can’t believe that our time here is just about finished. It has gone by so fast (slow at times, but mostly fast)! We are really excited to come home and see all of our family and friends! However, we are definitely going to have some difficult good-byes in the coming days. God has blessed us with some great friendships and we are not looking forward to these good-byes in a few weeks. It makes us cry when we think about it, so we are in a state of denial when it comes to these goodbyes!


Thank you for your prayers for our friends Joey and Lindsay! They made it here and returned safely to Port Elizabeth. We had a wonderful time with them! They were such an incredible blessing to us and they helped us out tremendously! While they were here we taught them the True Love Waits Program. They will be taking this program back to South Africa and sharing it with the youth in schools and church groups. So, they studied it throughout the week and then had their first opportunity to teach the True Love Waits material in a church out in the bush. We drove about an hour out of Nampula to a bush town called Netia . It was a great experience for everyone involved. Joey and Lindsay did a great job teaching and the people loved learning from them. In fact the church rewarded them with their very own pigeons to take home to eat! There were about 100 people who came to participate in the program…. some walking as far as 30 kilometers, just to hear God’s plan for their lives. This is always humbling to hear of how far people will walk to hear the Word of God. We take God’s Word for granted way to often.

This was probably the first time for most of the people to hear about God’s plan for sex within a marriage covenant. Sex is such a huge part of this culture and to wait until you’re married to have sex is almost unheard of. In Mozambique, both boys and girls start having sex at a disturbingly early age of 7 and have had several partners before they get married. We believe this rally gave them a lot to think about along with many challenges regarding their sexual behavior and their relationship with God.

While Joey and Lindsay were here with us, they had the opportunity to bond with our wonderful kids at the oprhanage and they helped us with a project that took a lot of hard work (which was rewarded with lots of ice cream.) In our down time we did a project with the orphanage compiling every orphan’s story and putting it into writing. The stories were composed of how they became a Christian, how their life was before the orphanage, how it is now, and the difference Christ is making in their life now. It was so amazing to hear the stories of each child (there are 52 kids). All we ever see are the smiles on their faces, but almost all of the children have a heart-wrenching story. We are so grateful to the Lord for giving us the grace and privilege to accomplish this project.Through these biographies, we would like to raise awareness for these orphans when we go home. The director of the orphanage’s vision is “to raise godly leaders for Mozambique for the glory of God;” we want to join him in this God-given vision and create a prayer network for these kiddos. We made prayer cards for each child so that people and churches can “adopt” them by praying and/or supporting them financially. We are so excited and can’t wait to see how God uses this to show His love and faithfulness to these orphans. Thank you so much Joey and Lindsay for coming and for all of your hard work! It was such a blessing for us to have you here! We love you guys and we had so much fun with you!

So we are wrapping things up here in Nampula. We are continuing to teach the discipleship program to the TLW team each week. We have also started to teach the TLW material specifically to a few who have stepped into leadership roles. These leaders are going to teach the program to other churches, schools, and communities. Please pray for this team (Choveque, Daniel, and Augosio) as they venture out in faith to teach their fellow youth God’s plan for sex and marriage. We are really excited for them to be leaders! Through the last couple of months we have seen their desire to follow God in all areas of their lives. It has been so encouraging!

Our prayer requests for next couple of weeks: 1) Our TLW team to be motivated and purposeful to reach their country for Christ, 2) Protection over them so that they will not become easily discouraged by our departure. They can do all things with Christ…not with Corey and Jenni! 3) Guidance as we prepare to return to the States. So many logistical details that are still unknown to us (car, house, $$$) 4) Guidance for our final 3 weeks here in Nampula 5) Our very sad goodbyes to our orphans, friends, and brothers & sisters in Christ.

Thank you for all of your prayers in these last 2 years. We have been so encouraged by them! See you all soon!!

The Garden Route

We are finally back from our prayer retreat and vacation. Thank you so much for your prayers while we traveled! We left on December 26th and started our trip with a sad goodbye to our Baptist colleague and friend Carol. She is now in the States living it up in the snow with family, friends, and good food. We miss you Carol!

We had a great time at our prayer retreat in Johannesburg. A church from Lyons, Georgia came to help with it and minister to us. They were such a blessing to us all! You never know how much you miss being with other believers until you’re away from it for so long. Worshipping and hearing a message in English is such a wonderful thing! The conference was about “Remembering.” The pastor challenged us to remember God’s character, what He has done, what He is doing, and what He promises to do in the future. It was sooo good and refreshing to hear. It was so fun to look back on our lives and remember God and we are so happy to have had this conference to spur us to do this! A huge highlight of the conference was when the Pastor’s wife talked to the missionary women. She shared from 2 Chronicles where King Jehosaphat hears about several armies coming to invade their land. Then the first thing that he does is drop to his knees and seeks help from the Lord. Then he says “Lord we don’t know what to do but our eyes are on you.” This was such a good passage to hear as we think about how to wrap up our ministry here and as we plan to go home with all of the unknown. We really don’t know what to do, but our eyes need to be on the Lord and seeking Him for help. That is great comfort for us! So as we are facing so many unknowns and decisions in the near future, pray that we follow in the footsteps of Jehosaphat!

After our prayer retreat we took a little break and visited some parts of South Africa, (mainly the Garden Route) that we had never seen before. We started in Port Elizabeth where we stayed with a wonderful family of believers. It was a “mom and dad” with 8 mission kids from various parts of the States. They were so hospitable and gracious to us to let us stay with them. We had such a great time with them all! The fellowship was so sweet and we felt like we were in college again with so many fun, active youth around us!! It was really neat as well because one of them was from Utah. You don’t meet a whole lot of Christians in Africa from Utah so it was pretty cool. Her name is Lindsay and she is coming to visit us along with another missionary, Joey, to learn the True Love Waits program. This is a total God thing for us to meet up with them the way that we did and now to have them coming up to visit us next month is such a blessing! We are excited to see TLW spread to South Africa and be implemented in the school system there.

After Port Elizabeth we made our way to Jeffrey’s Bay and to Knysna. These places are known to have some of the largest waves in the world. This part of the Garden Route is so beautiful. The scenary is all mountains and ocean. The total drive is about 8 hours, but there is so much to do and see along the way that it usually takes days to get through everything. We loved it. Before heading off to Cape Town we stopped in a strawberry field to pick our very own fresh strawberries! It was a very fun and delicious activity! We then drove to Cape Town where we celebrated our third anniversary! It was such a great time as we enjoyed each other, the ocean, the beautiful scenery, a superb train ride, and great seafood. We can’t believe three years have already passed but we thank God for the blessing of bringing us together and for each moment we have had together! It has been an awesome experience to be in Africa every day together at such an early stage of our marriage! We wish everyone could experience this! We wouldn’t trade it for the world!

We stayed a couple more nights in Fish Hoek at the same place where we stayed with Jenni’s parents when they were here. It is such a beautiful place and we totally recommend it if you ever want to travel to South Africa. This time we took the coastal route train and we loved it! We love Cape Town and consider it one of the most beautiful places you could ever visit.

So after relaxing, enjoying God’s creation, being refreshed, being cold, drinking fresh milk, eating fresh fruit and veggies without bleaching them, eating at a variety of yummy restaurants, savoring root beer floats, and frequenting Micky D’s, we packed up and headed back to the extreme heat and humidity of Mozambique. It’s amazing the difference of temperatures there are from two neighboring countries. Once we got back to Nampula, after a 9 hour delay in Maputo with Mozambique Airlines (yeah that was a nice welcome home treat!), we have been extremely busy and constantly on the go. There is so much to do in just a couple of months before we leave that it is becoming a little overwhelming. We think we will be back in the States somewhere between the 21st and the 23rd of March. We will let you all know once we find out. We are so excited to be coming back and to be able to see all of our friends and family again! We have missed you all so much! Speaking of which…thanks to all who thought of us during the holidays! It was really fun to come home to Christmas packages and cards! You made us feel loved, so thanks for the effort and money to send stuff to Africa! It was very special to us!


Please pray for: 1) Wisdom and clarity as to how we should wrap up our TLW ministry. 2) Pray for the two missionaries, Joey and Lindsay, from Port Elizabeth as they plan to come next month for 2 weeks 3) Guidance as we prepare to return to the States. Both of us need to be able to get jobs quickly, buy a car, and get settled in somewhere 4) Guidance for our final 2 months here in Nampula

Christmas in Mozambique

We have had quite the eventful December here in Nampula. We have been extremely busy with many different things but we have also been very sick. We possibly had our first bout of Malaria this month and it was awful! The worst part about it was that not just one of us had it but we both suffered through it! One morning we both woke up not feeling so good and as the day progressed, we just got worse. We had high fevers that wouldn’t break, chills, headaches, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, the works. We would have these symptoms at the same times too. It was so weird. So after all this stuff we were going through, we decided to take a malaria test. The test was negative but the symptoms still continued. (Many people have “false negatives” here) After trying to figure out what we might have, our nurse friend persuaded us to just treat for Malaria and an amoeba as we had symptoms of both sicknesses. This was such a miserable experience for us as neither of us could serve the other person. We were both stuck in bed being sick and miserable and helpless. This experience did help us to appreciate our health more and appreciate the body of Christ. Many people were praying for us and several other missionaries helped us out a lot by bringing us dinner and being willing to help us out in any way. We really appreciated all that they did and are very grateful for the body of Christ.

In happier news, Jenni had a really good time with some missionary friends throwing a Starbucks/craft party. This was so much fun for Jenni as she is so gifted and creative with these types of things. Her and some other ladies did some Christmas crafts as they drank Starbucks coffee. That’s right, Nampula just opened a Starbucks Coffee! Well close enough…Jenni’s best friend sent some Starbuck’s Christmas blend coffee with some Starbucks cups, lids, and holders. All of the ladies enjoyed the atmosphere of a familiar coffee shop while sipping frozen Gingerbread latte’s! This was such a blessing for everyone as the holidays can be very difficult when you’re away from home. Please pray for missionaries during this time of year as it can be the most difficult time of the year for them as they are away from all of their friends, family…and familiarity.


Another neat thing that we did this month was throw a party for the kids at the orphanage. We did the same thing last year and had so much fun so we wanted to do another one this year. We had such a great time! They made ornaments for the Christmas tree, ornaments with their picture on it, and they decorated some Christmas cookies. We also received many generous donations and so we made them school bags with names on them and stuffed them with brand new school supplies. This was really neat as Victor, the orphanage director, and the kids had prayed that they would receive all these things even being specific as having their names on the bags! It was so great to see the kids’ faces when Victor told them we had a special gift for them. He asked them, “Do you remember what we prayed for a couple months ago, concerning school supplies?” They answered, “Yeah, that God would provide us with new supplies.” Then Victor asked them, “And what did we pray for these supplies to go in?” The kid’s answered, “A school bag!” Victor then asked, “And what did we ask God specifically about these school bags?” Then they answered with full excitement, “School bags with our names on them!” We brought out the bags and Victor explained to them that he didn’t tell us about this prayer request, but God Himself put this special projects on our hearts and in the hearts of people back in the US that gave generously to do this. The kids were amazed and really excited at the answered prayer!! They can truly see the faithfulness of our God in every little aspect of their lives. They can see that He is the father of the fatherless and how much he cares for them. We thank our Lord Jesus so much that He has let us be a part of this great work and that we could witness with our own eyes what He is doing at that orphanage….and in the hearts of so many people.

In our TLW meetings we are still continuing to teach discipleship lessons as we feel like we need to touch on many more issues. This past week was good yet bad. We talked about the issue of corruption here in Mozambique. This is a huge problem in Mozambique. According to our TLW team, one of the greatest temptations for Mozambicans is to give into corruption. This can occur in several different ways but the most common is paying for work and paying for grades. When we say paying for work it means that people will pay someone to get a job. For example, we knew someone who paid about 40 or 50 dollars to get a government type job. Many times here the jobs don’t go to the most qualified or hardest workers but to those who are willing to pay the most. Many of them will say that to get a really good job with the government or other business, it is nearly impossible without bribes. So we confronted that issue and challenged them to suffer even if it means not getting a job or passing to the next class in school. We shared 1 Peter 4:19 with them and how we should suffer for doing good and for doing God’s will and commit ourselves to our faithful Creator. This was very challenging for them as it was the first time for many of them to hear that it’s not right to give bribes.

Christmas Eve was special as we sat around our Christmas tree singing Christmas Carols and sipping some more Gingerbread Lattes! Jenni’s friend Stacy sent her a recipe for some Café Rio pork, so we had some more taste from home and it was great…although we are looking forward to the “real thing!” We had a wonderful Christmas day. Since, there is NOTHING to buy here in Nampula, we decided to wrap up some things from around the house. It surely was creative and funny!


We spent part of the day with the orphans celebrating Jesus’ birth by having a big goat lunch and eating “Happy Birthday Jesus cupcakes.” It was really special, and it was so neat to hear them sing Happy Birthday to Jesus with their sweet voices! They are such a blessing in our lives. Tonight we had a big turkey dinner with some of our good missionary friends. It was very special and delicious! It has been a good day and it kept us smiling in the midst of being sad that we are not with our families. God has really provided us with some great family through our kiddos at the orphanage and through friends!

Well, this will be our last post for 2007 as we will be traveling to South Africa this week. (We are ready for a little break…off and on we’ve had no water, electricity, or phone for a month now…it’s time for a break!) We will be attending our annual prayer retreat and then celebrating our 3rd anniversary of being married. What a blessing it has been to share our lives and to serve our Lord together! Thank you Lord! Then once we return we only have a couple months of our term. Craziness!

Please pray for: 1) Wisdom and clarity as to how we should wrap up our TLW ministry. 2) Guidance as we prepare to return to the States. 3) Traveling mercies to and from South Africa.

We hope that all of you have a wonderful Christmas celebrating our Saviour's birth! FELIZ NATAL!! (HAPPY CHRISTMAS!)