Greetings from Montepuez!
The past few months for us have been VERY full, so we sat
down today to share a newsletter to catch you up on what's been going on in our
part of the world.
It was SHEER JOY to have my parents, Larry and Evelyn
Wilson, come visit us back in March. My
Mom blessed our team immensely by staying for two months and teaching kindergarten
in our Montepuez team school, and my dad came for the last two weeks of that
time. It was so special to have them here
with us, but the time flew by so fast.
Also in March I started studying again with women in
different villages as the rains usually slow down in March and the harvest
begins. This year's abundant rains were
record-setting, though, and continued strong through April, so I spent more
time driving in water and mud than I'd expected! This year I've been studying with women in
three different clusters outside of Montepuez, and each group is at a different
level of maturity and understanding.
I've been trying to encourage leadership by asking others to do the
reading and the teaching, and that has been interesting and exciting.
Another major event on the calendar in April was the annual
women's conference for our province, which was held in Balama this year, and the
teaching and worship and testimonies all went well. There were a couple difficult conversations
during the three-day seminar, one about one particular woman's treatment of the
other women in her church, and another about the difficulties of the organization
of the women province-wide (town church women vs. village church women). And while it can be discouraging to see our
friends struggle through disagreements with each other, it also struck me as
growing pains that are to be expected at this stage of development as Jesus'
Kingdom Gospel continues to sink in and challenge the hard areas in our hearts.
Over the past few months, Alan has continued with his
regular schedule of visits with different church clusters. In this stage of our work, he is not involved
directly in planting churches but is focusing his attention on discipling and
equipping emerging leaders. He has
continued teaching a series of lessons on leadership that are specifically
geared for this context in different clusters, and the series of lessons he
developed on how to respond to poverty have been very well received. Besides teaching on poverty to our regular
groups of churches, Alan has also presented the material on poverty at a
Christian Women's Business Seminar and to the debate club at the local High
School here in Montepuez.
What will undoubtedly be the highlight for the whole year,
though, was a visit from Evertt and Ileene Huffard and Monte and Beth Cox
(former missionaries who currently serve as professors of missions (and more!)
with Harding University). They spent the last week of May here in Montepuez
meeting with our team and Mozambican church leaders in order to evaluate the
state of the work. Currently the Smith,
Westerholm and Howell families have all committed to stay in Montepuez into
2018, and as a team we are committed to doing our best to prepare the churches
for our eventual departure, whenever that may be. So, the major goals of the "consultant
visit" were to discern the strengths and weaknesses of these churches and
our work with them, and also to help us figure out how long we should stay here
as well as forming a healthy exit strategy.
We've begun chewing on their suggestions and will spend some time over
the next few months reflecting on how best to put their suggestions into
practice. 
Immediately following the Huffards' and Coxes' departure, our
team again hosted college student interns this year. The four of them spent six weeks
job-shadowing us and experiencing what life in Mozambique can be like. They went with us on village visits, learned
to speak some basic Makua-Metto, harvested rice and carried water on their
heads as well as learning to cook xima. Each of them also tried spending a weekend
with a Mozambican family without any other English speakers. And of course they were celebrities with our
kids, who thoroughly enjoyed having a new audience to entertain! The
internship is an opportunity to give students interested in missions an
experience of what serving as a missionary actually looks like on the ground.
On the same day that the interns left to return to the U.S.,
our family flew south to Maputo. We
crossed over into South Africa and spent the first few days visiting the
doctor, the dentist, and the orthodontist before heading into the mountains for
a few days of vacation. We spend our
vacation days hiking, sleeping late, eating broccoli and ice cream (not
together!), and being followed by our new friend Gerry the extremely social,
half-blind Giraffe. When we
crossed back into Mozambique, we spent Abby's eleventh birthday renewing Ellie's
and Katie's passports at the US embassy.
She appreciated Alan's joke about spending her special day on U.S. soil,
but said it wasn't nearly as good as being with our friends and family in
States. We've been back home in
Montepuez for almost a week now and are settling in to regular life again.
The other development and side projects that Alan has been
involved in are moving forward as well. We
have had a good response from the sustainable agriculture project this year -
it looks like a good portion of association members are beginning to implement
what they've been learning in their personal farming plots. Also, all the funding that we need for the bridge
project has come in, so, Lord willing, construction should begin within the
next few weeks. This bridge will bless
thousands of people in the region who are cut off from Montepuez during the
rainy season each year. To read more
check out this blog post.
Our team works with about fifty churches of Christ here in
Cabo Delgado with a total of around one-thousand members. One of the challenges we are facing for long-term sustainability is
in the area of organization. So, every
other month we've been meeting with a group of men who are respected as leaders
in the churches in order to build a better sense of unity and figure out how to
work effectively together. This same group
met with Evertt Huffard and Monte Cox while they were here, and in a few weeks on
August 29th our team will present the consultants' recommendations to these
church leaders. Hopefully by
implementing a plan together we will be able to move forward in a process of
naming deacons and elders and setting up healthy structures to serve God's Kingdom.
Please be in prayer about this meeting
that God's spirit would give us wisdom to know how to best serve His purposes.
Mission work and ministry in general can often feel like the
waves of the ocean - flowing in an out.
One place where this dynamic has been felt recently has been in the
cluster of churches in Chipembe. Last
year, they experienced some growth and we felt like the churches in those
villages were gaining some real traction.
Unfortunately, over the past few months two men in the church died of
illness, another man divorced his wife and then another fell back into drunkenness,
and it feels like some of the momentum has been lost. Those kinds of experiences are discouraging,
but we're praying that that cluster and others can experience more sustained
growth.
Our team has had multiple transitions lately; we were sad to
say goodbye to Kara Tobey in early June; she taught in the Montepuez team school
for two years and became an important part of our lives and ministries - she is
certainly missed! Also in June the
Westerholms moved out of their rental house and onto the land, and then two
weeks ago after about eight months without a vehicle, the Smiths have received
their new truck and have begun their drive back to northern Mozambique. In a little over a week I am starting
graduate school working towards an MA at Harding School of Theology. AND, thankfully God has provided us with two new
teachers, Rosemary Perry and Amber Roe.
We are grateful for the blessing of receiving teachers to come help
educate our children; it is a vital part of our team ministry - it greatly
increases the hours we can spend teaching, training, and mentoring. They will be moving to Montepuez in just a
few weeks, but both of them still lack funds to complete their total financial
needs for their time in Mozambique. If
you or anyone you know could assist them please contact us.
Our other big news is that our upcoming furlough in summer
2015 will be extended so that we can serve as Visiting Missionaries-in-Residence
at Harding University in Searcy, AR for the 2015-16 school year. We're excited about this new opportunity to influence
and recruit students to missions, and hopefully even to Mozambique. We know, though, that by the time that year
is wrapping up we will be very anxious to get back to our home, friends and
teammates here in Montepuez.
Thanks so much for keeping up with us and keeping us in your
prayers. Please be sure to pray along
with us about the following things:
- upcoming leader meeting Aug. 29 where we'll be presenting some of the consultant's recommendations.
- peace in upcoming Mozambican elections in November
- teachers transition to Mozambique and blessings for this school year
Grace and Peace,
Rachel, Alan and the girls
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