Once again we are nearing the end of a month of ministry in
a country and as usual I haven’t told anything about what’s been happening
here. Let me give you a few of the
highlights over the past two and a half weeks…
We are working with an organization called Iris Ministries that does
work all over Mozambique. We live in a
place called Masaka and are working with Don Foster who heads up the Benjamin
Project. The Benjamin Project is a place
where guys come to live and use as a transition time between life in an
orphanage and life out on the streets. It allows them to start living in a place where everything is not
provided, where they have to work for a living, but also have more freedom to
make their own decisions. Currently
there aren’t many boys living here and so we have been trying to help make the
property more livable. We have been
helping dig holes and plant numerous trees (there are going to be 2,000 trees
planted before it’s all said and done…but that will be completed after we
leave), putting up shelves, painting rooms, and cooking for those who live
here.
able to visit people in the surrounding area and do different ministries in the
local community. We visited a larger
Iris base in Zimpato and were able to see how it functioned and how they feed
hundreds of kids. While we were they we
played for a couple hours in the baby house…
base but the following happened…
I’ve become used to
flat tires, but losing an axle doesn’t happen every day. Instead of going to the base, we hitched a
ride into town and got a few groceries before heading back home.
months, so going into town or doing errands proves to be a bit more difficult
than you might think. Since arriving,
we’ve been eager to show the “Jesus Film” but have been waiting to see if we
could use Don’s van to transport everything. After getting word that that option wasn’t going to be available during
our time here, we decided to just pick up the equipment needed in hand, hike out
to where we wanted to show it, and set up shop…
The day after showing the film we headed back out into the
same region and passed out vouchers that people could redeem bug nets for. In this area there are a lot of people who
contract malaria. Typically the malaria
carrying mosquitoes come out at dusk and by sleeping with a mosquito net you
can drastically reduce the risk getting bit. So, we walked around the area and talked with people, sprayed their
existing nets if they had them, and gave people who needed nets the vouchers. The vouchers allow us not to have to carry large
amounts of nets with us, but they also give us a way to invite them to church
the next day so they can redeem their ticket after the service. It went well…we handed out about 70 tickets
and had over 50 tickets redeemed after people heard the gospel message.
I have one more thing here that I love to do, but I’ll save
it till my next post since this one is getting lengthy and I was always told to
keep my blogs short….whoops.
