HEre is a photo of the monitors who are being trained to take over the program while we are on Home Assignment.

These men are dedicated church leaders who are working for no pay.  They will each be leading a weekly Bible class, which lasts 10 weeks.  We hope that there will be several rounds of classes during this next year, and that the monitors will stay strong in the Lord, and healthy.  They are participating in this program because they want to see others grow in the wisdom and knowledge of the scriptures and of God, and it is exciting to see them at work!  Kevin has been supervising their classes since March, and discipling them along the way. -C

I realized that my last post was done in March, and I apologize.  We hadn’t had internet at home from late February until early June, and just never had the time to update the blog from the internet cafe.

A lot has happened in the last few months and I will try to do some short blog posts to catch you up.  However, we are moving from Moz to Connecticut on Saturday, so there is not much time! – C

Toby turned 8 on April 25th, and we can’t believe he is so old.  He is in second grade this year, and has been reading longer and longer books all by himself.  He is  voracious reader, and has in particular been enjoying the Hank the Cowdog books this year.  We are so blessed with a great library at his school, where he can take books out weekly. This is a photo of a recent MAF flight, by the way.  He and i got the chance to accompany these two MKs to pick up their dad.  We flew 1 1/2 hours but once we got there, the clouds were too thick to land, so we had to turn around and come back without the dad.  Toby rode in front with the pilot, and when the pilot told he that we couldn’t land because of the clouds, Toby was quiet for a minute and then asked calmly “Does that mean we are going to crash?”.  The pilot was quite taken aback, and told us later that he’ll have to phrase that differently in future!

This year, Toby has been meeting twice weekly with a Portuguese tutor, and shown a lot of progress.  He doesn’t enjoy speaking Portuguese that much, but we think it was because he wasn’t very good at it.  His skills have improved remarkably and he is more comfortable playing with kids who speak no English.  He has been very successful in school this year and is an enthusiastic learner.  But he is even more enthusiastic to spend time with his friends, of which he has many.  He is very social, and lots of fun to be with.  In particular, he’s gotten very good at several complicated board games and regularly trounces his parents but is a good sport when he loses.  We are enjoying him in different ways as he grows, having deeper conversations and discussions, and he has a real interest in spiritual things.  We are so proud of the person he is becoming and look forward to what the year holds for him!  -C

Kevin has been busily supervising the new TEE monitors (the six men chosen to teach classes in Theological Education by Extension) as well as teaching two of his own classes.  Mostly, it has been good and Kevin is impressed by the level of commitment from most of the monitors.  He has been attending almost all of their classes and helping them to improve and condense what they know into a great environment for discussions.  More on that in our upcoming newsletter! -C

It was sad to me that I wasn’t with Ben on his 4th birthday, since I was in South Africa, but being Ben, he wasn’t sad.  He is a happy little guy and despite his many moments of stubborn determination to do exactly what he is not supposed to, we enjoy him a great deal.  He is destined to do great things, with all that willpower.  Here is a photo of him with his Spiderman cake, which mommy made after she got back.  We enjoyed his party with dear friends, and he also had a party at school with his little playmates.  Ben’s accomplishments this year include learning to use a computer (seemingly effortlessly), beginning to speak Portuguese, pouring drinks without spilling (mostly) and inventing all kinds of new ways to try to get what he wants.  We are on to him, though.  What  a joy he is to all of us, and his funny remarks frequently leave us laughing. – C

We have purchased our tickets back to the USA!  I was tempted to write “home” but Mozambique is our home now and we try to make that a point with the kids.  They are living here at home, not away from their home.

Here is a photo of us walking home from church.  We have to ford a small stream.

We will land in New York on July 19th, after 21 hours total flying time and one overnight stay in Tanzania.  We have been looking at schedules and plan to be in Ohio in August for two weeks, then settle in Casa Zwart (Kevin’s parents) from September to December, then in Fairfield Country, CT (near our main supporting church) from February to May.  During those months, we’ll be doing a lot of side trips to various places including Oklahoma, Colorado, Hawaii, Ohio and two locations in New York State.  We should have our schedule published in the next couple of months.  Meanwhile, we’ll be moving out of our house here in early June, and staying at the SIL missions compound in town until our departure date.  So, May will be “pack up everything we own” month, which we aren’t especially looking forward to.  It will be sad to leave our house here, which has been a huge blessing to us, but we are excited about what is ahead.  Top of the list:  seeing loved ones.  It is hard to believe it will be 3 ½ years since most of our family has seen us and the kids, and it will be a happy reunion. – C

Many of you know that I have been having back problems for a long time now – over two years.  The severity of back pain has ranged from bad to none, though since August of last year it has been constant.  After seeing a German physiotherapist (translation:  someone who is actually qualified as opposed to the treatment you’d get in the physio department of the local hospital here) for some months and seeing little improvement, God made a way for me to leave my family for 10 days and fly south.  This would be 2 ½ day trip by car (over some bumpy roads) but I was able to fly only two hours to the capital city of Maputo, then take the bus 3 hours west, crossing the border into South Africa.

Long story short, x-rays revealed that I have mild scoliosis (which we knew) and a tilted pelvis.  Because my “core” muscles that support the back are very weak (after 3 c-sections) my spine is not properly supported and parts of my spine are rubbing together, resulting in some arthritis.  This is part of the reason for more severe pain when I do a lot of driving over our bumpy roads here in Nampula.  Since my core muscles don’t work right, my back muscles are trying to support the spine and have all gone into spasm.  Pain cause number two.  The physio I saw who specializes in backs feels that strengthening my core muscles will resolve a lot of the back pain, and has given me an hour-long program which I do every morning.  I appreciate your prayers for me, that all back pain will be gone!  I am so grateful to God for the doors he opened for me to take this trip, and to Kevin for being willing to shoulder so much while I was gone, as well as to the dear friends who helped him out.

by the way, I brought back MacDonalds french fries for the guys, but they were a sad disappointment – 30 hours on the road did not leave them very tasty!  Toby still loved them, though. – C

Conversation between Kevin and Cami, driving in the car one evening:

Kevin:  There’s the crazy guy.
Cami:  He doesn’t have any pants on tonight.
Kevin:  Well, it is hot today.
Cami:  Yup, that’s true
<long pause>
Cami:  Did we just think that was a normal conversation?
<both burst into laughter>

Yes, we have given him clothes before, but sometimes he doesn’t wear them.  Sometimes we just take for granted things here that would be totally off-the-wall if we lived in America!  This conversation was about a mentally ill man who lives in town – there are a few people like this around town, and sometimes you do see totally naked people walking down the street.  Likely they need medications, but that type of thing isn’t very available here.  They are still doing shock therapy at the mental hospital to “cure” people.  Sad.

Yesterday Kevin and I went out for our Valentine’s Day lunch (early, ’cause we work on Sundays) at one of the big hotels in town, where they serve authentic Indian food (there are many Indians in town) and then enjoyed a bit of roadside shopping at the used clothing stalls. We bought a few things for Benjamin and a new purse for me.  Mine was stolen in November and I never did replace it.  Toby’s school had a little party, and I brought cupcakes for the whole student body and teachers (numbering 30), while Benjamin played at a nearby friend’s house.  I did quite a bit of shopping this week, stocking up the larder with cans of black beans, a big can of powdered milk, spaghetti, and fresh produce in the fridge (lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots and green peppers).  Kevin has been meeting with the monitors, overseeing classes, preparing a sermon and he attended the funeral of our landlord’s father.

This morning we received word that the son of one of our monitors, Alberto Castelo, died. Earlier this week, I took his wife and this child around to several pharmacies in town to buy the medication that they would never be able to afford:  Malaria treatment, antibiotics, and Tylenol.  Total cost:  about $8.  We hoped that this treatment would send him on the road to recovery, but this latest sickness was too much for him.  He had been sick off and on since birth, and didn’t walk even though he was almost 3 years old.  He was as small as a 14 month old.  It is another tragedy for Castelo, who lost a baby just last year in April.  The funeral will likely be on Monday.

Today is also the funeral for Kevin’s grandfather.  Lorance was his last living grandparent, and the sixth of our grandparents who has died while we were overseas.  It is painful for us to miss yet another funeral for a loved one, and we are especially sad that we won’t be able to see Lorance again on this earth.  He was 95 and a really good guy.  We are thankful, however, that he knew the Lord and we will see him again in heaven.

This morning I went to a ladies meeting at my church.  We met at the pastor’s house (20 minutes fast walk from my house), then walked another 20 minutes to the church, then afterwards walked 15 minutes to visit a lady with a baby, then another 20 minutes back to my house.  With temps in the high 90s, I returned feeling rather limp!  While visiting the lady with the baby, I noticed that the one-month old was wearing a charm around his wrist, to protect him from evil spirits.  Almost all babies wear these, and they are put on by witch doctors.  I’ll have to speak to the pastor’s wife, who didn’t seem bothered by it.  She also announced that the baby was now a Christian, since we had prayed for him, which is another thing we’ll have to discuss.  Just another example of the “heresies” that are present in all the churches here and are due to the lack of Bible teaching.  At the meeting, they asked me to teach them an American song and dance (we dance while we sing here) and since I don’t have any praise dance songs, I taught them to do the cha-cha-cha while we sang “God is so Good” in Portuguese, Makua, and English!  They enjoyed it a lot and it promises to be a fun time tomorrow when we do the cha-cha-cha in church.  We also practiced a drama of the parable of the Prodigal Son for performance in church tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Kevin and the boys went to a yard sale of retiring missionaries.  These kind of sales are a big draw for missionaries, because you can buy items that you’d never get in stores here.  The big purchase of the morning was a used American-made standing fan for $20, and we were glad to have it!  Most of the electronics you buy here are poor quality, and American-made promises to last for some time.  They also bought some construction paper, watercolor paints, and a hot glue gun.

This afternoon, Toby’s Portuguese teacher will come at 3 pm to teach Toby for an hour, and he’ll teach me from 4 to 5. He is a very pleasant young man who is well-spoken, though his spelling is awful.  I need to find out what the difference is for two words, which are similar to “put” and “place”, and when I should use which one. I also want to find out all of the words for “attend” and “go to”, as there are different verbs for different situations.  You may attend a church service, but have another word when you go to a meeting, and another word when you are at a public event. Portuguese is a very specific language, verb-wise.  Meanwhile, Kevin is off to oversee more classes, teach a class, and then will drive 30 minutes outside of town to find out when the funeral for Castelo’s child will be. No one out there has a phone. – C

Yesterday, there was a terrible event in our town:  the young son of a Nampula family was kidnapped at gunpoint right outside of his house while on his way to school.  This family was certainly targeted because they are very wealthy, and a ransom of about $8,000 has been asked.  This is a huge sum for people here, though this family is doubtless able to pay.  Apparently the same thing happened in another big town last year, and although the money was paid, the child was not returned and has not been seen since.

I feel terrible for this family and hope and pray that they get their son back unharmed.  The whole situation makes me very nervous for my family as well, since we are perceived to be wealthy since we are white, and American.  The car we drive is the same make as the one the president drives (though ours is 15 years old, it looks much newer than that) and we live in a much larger house than your average Mozambican.  Here, unfortunately, “white” equals “rich” and although it is true that we are much wealthier than your average Mozambican, our bank balance is still not very high.  It is often frustrating to us to be perceived as limitlessly wealthy, and we know it is frustrating to local people here sometimes that we don’t give out more money.

Anyway, we just have to hope that none of the missionaries here will be targeted by this kind of crime.  It is the first kidnapping for ransom that we have heard of in Nampula, though in the capital of Mozambique it has been happening for some time.  We hope that this is not the start of a crime wave of this type.

I was speaking to a Mozambican about this event yesterday, and he said “Now you know how we feel.  Black people are kidnapped all the time, and their families never see them again.”  There are foreigners (other Africans, mostly) who “steal” people in Nampula (and in other places) and sell them as slaves, sending them to other countries.  Stories are circulating about people stolen during the night when they went out of their house to use the bathroom, and about children who are stolen in the middle of the daytime.  I’m not sure how many of these stories are just rumors, because there are lots of rumors also about how white people eat black children, and how much human trafficking actually does go on.  I have seen statistics, though, that do show that trafficking does come through Mozambique, whether it is people stolen from other parts of Africa and brought through Moz on the way to somewhere else, or people stolen from Moz I don’t know.

How will I protect my family?  Mostly just pray.  Also we don’t leave the kids unattended, or allow them to be escorted around town by local people, who are much more likely to be assaulted.  It seems unfair that there is yet one more thing to have to be on our guard against, when there is so much already!  But we are thankful that we live in a secure home and have people to watch out for us. – C

UPDATE:  We found out later that the child was kidnapped because his father refused to pay after he made a deal with the mafia.  The money was paid and the child returned.