heading south for the winter…

Dear Friends and Family,

Hello again from northern Mozambique! We’re in the middle of our “winter,” which means the air is very dry, and it’s actually chilly in the mornings and pleasant all day long, which we are thankful for!  This week we are preparing and packing for a trip down to South Africa; we are in need of a few services hard to come by in northern Mozambique. For starters, our truck needs some work by a fully equipped mechanic, and we are also all lined up with dentist appointments – nothing like driving 3 ½ days so you can go to the dentist! Also, on July 12^th, Ellie will have surgery to close her umbilical hernia – please keep her in your prayers! My parents will join us in South Africa a few days after that, and then we’ll have a week of vacation before re-packing the truck and driving 3 ½ days back up Mozambique.

We got word Monday that Belarmino, a very sweet man from one of the churches here in town had died. He had been very sick for a long time, and a few months ago his relatives came from the Namuno district and took him back to his home village with them. We were sad about that, especially since his sweet wife Delfina, along with other believers were doing such a good job taking care of him, but it is a common practice in this culture to take very sick people away from their immediate families back to their mother’s original village. Tuesday Alan took Delfina and other family members out past Namuno to that village, and yesterday I took church members out to do the Third Day ceremony together in that village.

A few weeks ago Alan went and visited with Belarmino. He was pretty sick, being mostly confined to a rope bed and after spending a few minutes catching up on the news from Montepuez he asked Alan, “Do you know why I am sick? My family member was jealous of me and put a curse on me.” After listening for a few minutes Alan asked him if a child of God can be cursed. Belarmino shook his head “no” and said it was hard being confined to a bed and sometimes he thinks too much about it. Alan reminded Belarmino of the scripture that he had been memorizing with our teammate Jeremy Smith earlier in the year and encouraged him to “remain in Christ” and not to give up hope. We believe that Belarmino will have his hope fulfilled!

Our team has had missions interns from Harding University with us for almost a month now. The Missions Internship is for students who think they might be interested in living and working in Africa, so they can come and experience a small slice of that. At the first of June eight college students arrived and have had a busy schedule learning Makua, spending weekends out in villages, eating interesting foods and job-shadowing us for the last few weeks. Right now they are with our teammates Jeremy and Chad doing a survey of another people group here in Mozambique, in hopes that God might plant a seed for one or some of them to come back long-term!

Work with the churches over the last couple months has seen a number of issues come to the surface, both good and bad. The churches in Newara, Nkororo and Kambiri have had some difficulties but seem to be heading in the right directions. Newara had a few baptisms earlier this month and are almost finished building their own church building (we only helped them with some black plastic for the roof). Nekwaya has had a lot of internal conflict lately and needs prayers for maturity. On the other hand, the Bible study and discipleship training in Chiure continues to be one of the most enjoyable and fruitful things we are a part of. The churches in that district have planned and held a number of meetings on their own, planted multiple churches this year, and the men we have worked closely with over the last few years have been mentoring others. We have been studying through the book of Acts together, and a few weeks ago the different men each shared about the baptisms that had happened on Easter Sunday in their churches. Alan started making a list and we realized that 70 people total had been baptized in the different churches in the Chiure district that day. Praise God!

One leader from each of the churches in Chipembe and Nkunama are also in leadership positions with the minority political party and are currently on bad terms with one of the local officials in the area (who is a member of the party in power). She is the woman we mentioned in our last newsletter who declared that the churches in that area were not allowed to teach their children and had to stop making visits to another village to plant a new church. This past Saturday, Alan was a part of a meeting with multiple government officials and church leaders as they tried to resolve this issue. Please pray for peace and wisdom for us and these leaders as they consider their allegiances.

The last week of May I was blessed to go to a missionary women’s retreat/renewal called Come Before Winter in Kigali, Rwanda with my teammates Martha and Amy. The CBW team travels to several places around the world each year conducting renewals for women in ministry, and the experience was a rich, deep blessing from God that was very much needed. Mentoring and counsel from believers who have been walking with God ten or twenty or thirty years longer than us is hard to come by when we live in such a remote location; we crave it and are very, very grateful when we are able to receive it.

We are really, really excited to share an answer to prayer: Allison and Robert Berger are joining our team for one year to come and teach our children! This fall we will have one older class (Abby, and Luke and Andrew Smith), and one kindergarten class (Ellie, and Maggie Westerholm), and so we are very grateful that the Bergers have chosen to come work with us. Robert and Allison currently live in California, and they just celebrated the arrival of their first child Miriam, and they plan to arrive in Mozambique early this fall.

The house construction is going well – it’s always a little behind the schedule we’d prefer, but this is Mozambique, which means we don’t have a Home Depot down the street! Alan has had to work as the contractor while continuing in ministry activities. We have finished the walls up to the top of the windows, but work will stop for a few weeks while we are out of the country. We have received $24,525 towards our fundraising goal of $30,000 – praise be to God and thank you so much!

One significant challenge the last month has been the lack of water. We built a cistern out near the house and hooked it up to the city water, but because of broken pumps and lower water levels, we have not had water coming into the cistern for over a month. It is becoming clear that we need to pursue digging a well on our land to deal with the water shortages for most of the year; this would serve all the families on the land (us, the Westerholms, the teacher house and school house, one Mozambican family living on the land) as well as providing water for ministry events. We have begun looking into the process of digging a bore hole on the land; depending on which company we use in the area, the cost could be between $5,000 and $10,000, which unfortunately was not part of our family’s original construction budget.

So we need $5,500 more to reach our construction goal, and then we are praying for God to provide the additional funds for digging a well on the land; if you feel led to help contribute to these needs, checks can be written to Donelson Church of Christ, 2706 Old Lebanon Rd, Nashville, TN 37214. The memo line should read “Mozambique Construction,” and a note included specifying that the funds are for Construction in Mozambique.

Both construction and our drive down to South Africa are weighing on our minds right now. Please join us in asking God for:

· The remaining funds for house construction and well-drilling

· Protection from car accidents, breakdowns, and theft as we travel to and in South Africa

· Ellie’s surgery on July 12^th to be successful and peaceful and that she will heal well

· Our dental visits/procedures to be reasonable

· Our vacation to actually provide the rest we need

· Kingdom vision for us and our Makua-Metto friends!

May God’s will be done here on earth as it is in Heaven! Amen!

With love,

Rachel and Alan

April 2011 Update

Hello again from northern Mozambique!

Yes, we’re a little late getting this newsletter out! Life and work have been very full lately, making it difficult to set aside the time to sit down and write.

It has been a wonderful rainy season this year – rains were plentiful but not to the point of destructive flooding, and we are so thankful for that blessing from God! Our Mozambican friends love sharing their food, and there are regular piles of corn and pumpkin in the kitchen (sometimes overflowing to the back porch!) While we are still receiving some sporadic rains, the roads that were impassable in January are clear again (though still muddy and bumpy!), and people are starting to spend more time back in their villages again instead of so many days out on the farm.

With the end of the rains our weekly women’s study group will start back up next week, which I am really looking forward to. During the hiatus I still enjoyed taking Thursdays to go visit those women in their homes, but I am looking forward to seeing the whole group more often again.

Alan and our teammate Jeremy have continued studying twice a month with church leaders in the Chiure district (southeast of us), currently going through the book of Acts together. The fruit they are showing is exciting – these leaders are planting new churches and teaching others what they are learning.

The church members in Chipembe and Nkunama, along with Alan, have had to put their regular visits to plant a church in the village of Maputo Familiar on hold. A recently appointed local leader recently decided to show off her authority and publicly stated her belief that Alan and the church are working with the minority political party; she also decided that the churches aren’t allowed to teach the children on Sundays when they gather together. Alan has met with the leaders of those churches about this; they were encouraged by stories in Acts 5 where the early church dealt with persecution and how their consistency in the midst of suffering was a powerful witness. We were encouraged to see these believers leaning on each other and seeking wisdom from God about what to do. Alan and the church leaders met with local authorities, and Alan has also spent time meeting with the authority one step above the local leader causing the problems, who has been kind and professional about the issue and recommended a wise course of action for avoiding problems with her. Please pray for the chief over the locality of Chipembe that God would change her heart and that the churches in that area would display the fruits of the Spirit in all they do.

Recently two churches that have had problems in the past, Nakuka (several years ago) and Neewara (more recently) have reorganized and started gathering together again. This past Sunday we enjoyed joining the church in Neewara for worship together, followed by a shared meal of xima (stiff corn porridge) and matapa (whatever you eat with the xima, in this case beans and also mushrooms). That morning a rain shower had just passed through, and following the rain, swarming ants came out by the millions all over the ground – they were in the paths and around the houses and in the crops nearby. We all had to squeeze very close to each other on the porches of the mud hut we were worshiping in, as it seemed at the beginning that the ants weren’t interested in coming up onto the porch. By the end, though, we were starting to get bitten on the feet, and we were ready to get the kids into the car!

Lately we have committed as a team to work very intentionally towards redeeming a relationship with a church leader in town who, while a gifted visionary, has at times been very stubborn and frustrating to work with (for our team and for some church members). We realized how this problem has affected or caused other problems, and it was time to actively pursue resolution instead of just wishing it would go away. We have been praying diligently over this relationship and Jeremy, Alan, and Chad have been meeting together with him monthly to pray together, and already we are seeing fruits of increased trust, understanding, and humility. We are praising God for the way the spirit and atmosphere in the church where that leader usually worships has started to change.

One recent Sunday we worshiped with the Napai church here in Montepuez, and we were so encouraged. The joy of the Spirit was palpable that morning as we all praised God together. This church has begun including their children more in the times of gathering together to worship; the kids presented some songs for the church and Abby jumped up there to sing along with them. It was a beautiful, joyful day. There was also one woman there who we were surprised to see, the mother of a believer named Saide, whose family has been almost completely Muslim. She was very angry at first that her son had become a follower of Jesus and one day called Alan a pig to his face in 2008 while he and Saide were studying the scriptures together. She recently decided to follow Jesus, and to watch her sing and dance while the children were singing was amazing, considering how far she has come since Alan first met her.

In March we had the very special blessing of a visit from Steve, Lidian, Henry, and Kate Howard from Plano, Texas. The Howards worship with my parents there and have always loved on us a lot when we are in their neck of the woods, and this year they got on a plane and came all the way over to see us! They loved on us a lot, and they even brought us some Dr. Pepper and summer sausage! We tried our best to show them a “little bit of everything;” they enjoyed meeting many of our Mozambican friends – as many as you can in eight days, and they practiced greeting them all with Makua phrases. They ate Mozambican food with their hands and rode in the back of the truck with 10 other people, and they endured frequent power outages and our poorly-planned plumbing in this rental house. We hope we didn’t wear them out too much, and we hope they’ll come back again!

 

This year is a construction year for our whole team. We and the Westerholms are both building our own houses. The Smiths have been working on a large meeting pavilion, an entrance gate, and building a schoolroom and house for a teacher. It has been an interesting challenge to try to balance construction, life and ministry and keep everything in a healthy balance. Our hope is to have the roof on by the end of June and move in sometime in October. We have been blessed by many of you who have donated to our construction fund. Currently we have received donations and pledges of $26,625 towards our budget of $30,000, leaving $3,375 to be raised – thanks be to God! If you feel led to help contribute to this need, checks can be written to Donelson Church of Christ, 2706 Old Lebanon Rd, Nashville, TN 37214. The memo line should read “Mozambique Construction,” and a note included specifying that the funds are for Construction in Mozambique.

Katie Joy is extremely mobile now – she walks all of the house and yard and does her best to keep up with her sisters. We really enjoy trying to translate her attempts at communicating with us – she’s got “Mama” down very well, of course, and is working pretty hard at getting “Daddy, Abby, Ellie” to come out. Most of the time she can also tell you what a lion, elephant, duck, dog, monkey, bird, and gorilla say. Abby and Ellie love riding their bikes and do a great job keeping an eye on their little sister; Ellie continues to enjoy learning to read, and Abby may be soon at a point where she has more gaps than teeth in her mouth.

It looks like God is answering our prayers for a team teacher for the 2011-2012 school year, and we are REALLY excited about that! We’ll write more about that in our next newsletter, but we wanted to share that answer to prayer!

As we close, please pray with us:

· For the Kingdom of God to continue breaking into this area

· For maturity, humility, and unity in church leaders

· For rest and balance as we balance ministry, house construction, and family

· For our trip to South Africa later this year (July) that will include surgery for Ellie (to close her umbilical hernia)

· For fundraising for our school teacher!

We love and miss you all!

Grace and peace,

Rachel, Alan, Abby, Ellie, and Katie Joy Howell

Under Construction

It has begun.  This week we (mostly) finished our storage/guest building and broke ground on the main house.  I’m also posting some other pictures of some of the other things happening at the land right now (not including the Westerholm’s cob house construction which deserves its own post).  The large pavilion for seminars and meetings was just finished on Tuesday and we put it to use right away to host the last day of a farming seminar for a Leprosy group here in our province.  Keep all our team’s construction work in your prayers – especially as we try to balance it with ministry as well.

Storage building and some guest space

Working on our cistern

Digging the foundation for our house (I hired 18 guys and we finished most of it in one day – no backhoes here!)

compressed earth bricks ready to go

Jeremy lining up the teacher house

the new gate (almost finished)

the newly finished meeting pavilion (way to go Jeremy!)

the leprosy group after finishing up the farming seminar

happy new year!

Hello again from Mozambique!

Happy New Year! We hope that your holidays were peaceful and full of time with loved ones. We’ve enjoyed seeing pictures and hearing stories of all the beautiful snow many of you have had in the States – meanwhile we are right in the middle of our hot, humid season! We enjoyed celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas together with our friends and teammates, though ours involved sunscreen and swimming and temperatures near 100 degrees. (and some pretty sweet holiday care packages!!!)

  Over the past couple months Alan has begun going with a few men from the Chipembe cluster to teach in a new village called Maputo Familiar where some there have been asking us to come. He has also made visits with the leaders of churches in several different districts and hearing from them what their goals are for 2011; it has been encouraging to see some of them grab hold of a vision for their area. In some places our ministry is changing to more of an equipping role for local leaders. In the Namuno district, we are working with Napoleon to provide training resources for him to work with leaders in his area, and we are hoping to start soon in the district of Balama as well. While some of the churches are doing well, others are struggling; the churches in Nkororo, Neewara and Namwaciko need prayers for godly leadership and freedom from drunkenness.

In November, we participated in a meeting in Pemba of all the Churches of Christ in the  province of Cabo Delgado. It was encouraging to see some of the emerging leaders teach boldly and encourage each other to be faithful, and Alan taught using the story of Achan from the book of Joshua about how the sin of one person can sabotage the plans of the whole group. The churches are at a tough transition point and are going through some growing pains; please pray for us as we work with Germindo Jaime to try and move the focus of leadership down to the local level and encourage the churches to focus on loving God and loving their neighbor.

In 2010, a donor in the States provided funds to purchase 30 wind-up MP3 players and they have been a huge blessing. The players have over 100 songs in Makua-Metto, recordings of the books of Mark and James and some Bible stories. It is a fun way for the churches to share the good news with their friends and neighbors and a great way for them to learn the stories, especially in such an oral society where so few read well and many can’t read at all. Many of our friends sit up into the night winding these MP3 players surrounded by a crowd of interested listeners. During lunch on Tuesday, my friend Joao summarized the story of Job (that he had heard on the recordings) for some neighbors and talked about how we as God followers should respond to suffering.

The weekly women’s study group continued into December working through Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount from the book of Matthew, including one trip out to visit and study with the women from the church in the village of Nanhupu. I’ve also participated in a couple Ikomas (girls’ initiation ceremonies) in the last few months; it’s encouraging to see women who follow Jesus work to reclaim and redeem a practice that is so significant in this culture. The women’s group takes a break every year during the rainy season, usually from December through February, since everyone is spending so much time out in their farms. During this break I still go out on most Thursdays to visit a few women if we can catch them at home.

With the start of the rainy season some of our normal ministry activities are put on hold, not only because so many people are out in their farms, but also because some of the roads are increasingly impassable due to mud and lack of bridges. The villages along the main roads are still reachable by car, but the ones on the secondary roads are not. With the heat and the rain and the ripe mangoes lying on the ground everywhere, we also see an increase in flies and mosquitoes, which means that malaria, cholera, and other diarrhea illnesses are on the rise. Please join us in praying for rain, enough for the crops to grow (the last two years did not see sufficient rainfall), but not so much that it floods, and also in praying for health during this time of sickness.

We recently spent a few days in Pemba with our team to pray together and cast a vision for the next five years. The days spent there together were a blessing (it’s difficult to have that much uninterrupted time here in Montepuez), and we are almost done prayerfully fleshing out the vision and timeline. Our desire is to always be joining God in the work he is already doing in this corner of his kingdom.

Our girls are doing well! At our recent trip to Pemba it seemed they spent more time in the water than on dry land – they played and swam very hard. Even Katie Joy loves the water – she loves to dunk her own face in the water repeatedly, which is a little weird, but cute. Abby has started the second semester of second grade, reads voraciously and also gets a kick out of math and science. Ellie is learning to read and has moved beyond the first level of phonics, and is enjoying it more and more. Katie Joy just had her first birthday and is crawling all over the house, though she doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to walk just yet.

Our team is praying very hard for God to send us a school teacher (or teachers!) for our children – this fall we will have two third graders, a second grader, and two kindergarteners. We are very committed to educating our children well, but having a teacher come to help teach will allow us more time to participate in ministry with Mozambicans. If you know of anyone who might be interested in coming for a year to teach five (delightful, well-behaved!) children, please have them contact us!

To wrap up, we want to shout out a big ‘thank you!’ to everyone who has given to the house construction fund! (You will remember that we learned in July that we were moving from one rental property to another.) We are very glad to be free from the original landlord, though we are still trying to get running water here at the second rental house! We are encouraged and grateful to have received $14,100 with another $4000 or so pledged throughout 2011, which brings us to just over $18,000, nearly two-thirds of our construction budget of $30,000. So we’ll be starting to dig the foundation in the next couple weeks, and we request your prayers for the house construction to go smoothly. If you feel led to help contribute to this need, checks can be written to Donelson Church of Christ, 2706 Old Lebanon Rd, Nashville, TN 37214. The memo line should read “Mozambique Construction,” and a note included specifying that the funds are for Construction in Mozambique.

Please pray with us for:

· Enough rain for an abundant harvest but not flooding

· For God’s kingdom to continue to break through!

· Healing in the time of sickness

· Construction of a new home for us

· A teacher (or teachers) to come teach our children this fall

We love and miss you!

With peace,

Rachel, Alan, and the girls

a week in the life of the Howells

Sometimes in the States friends ask us “So what’s it like over there?” No small question! =) Often the answer starts with “Well how long do you have?” (and often includes a “really you should come visit us and see for yourself!”) So here’s a slice from last month to give you a week’s snapshot of our lives in Mozambique!

Saturday, Sept. 18 – We spent the morning receiving visitors and getting ready for a celebration with some church leaders I have been working with. We bought rice and goat meat and set up a big tent in the backyard, and the guys started arriving around 10am. These ten church leaders are from six different villages; I studied with them in two different groups based on where they live (Chiure and Chipembe), but we decided that the celebration should be together. These men committed to memorize the book of Titus together, most of them memorizing in Portuguese but some using Makua-Metto or Swahili. We all gathered on our front porch to take turns quoting Titus to each other. Some had the whole book down perfectly while others struggled to finish the first chapter. After we each finished our turns we had a big celebration meal together, and after the feast we went around the circle and shared what we had learned from this book and how we would apply it to our lives. It was a good discussion and fun to see them so invested in the study. On a side note, our lives here include a lot of interruptions. Part way through the Titus recitations, the land lord from our old rental house pulled into town and I had to run over to meet briefly with him to turn over the keys (see previous newsletters!)

That afternoon Rachel had arranged to take the truck to go help her friend Gracinta bring in a bunch of harvested, dried cassava root from her farm way outside of town. Gracinta had asked for the ride for her cassava as a favor; they had agreed that Gracinta would go out in the morning to load it all up into sacks, and that Rachel would show up at two in the afternoon to bring Gracinta and her cassava back into town together. However, at eleven am Gracinta’s daughter showed up at our house saying “my mother is waiting for you.” Katie was napping well in her crib so Rachel went ahead and left to go pick up Gracinta and also visit another friend Delfina who was sick. On the way out of town, however, Rachel passed Gracinta and her huge sacks of cassava riding in the back of a truck coming into town. While waiting on the side of the road by her farm Gracinta had gotten worried that Rachel had forgotten (even though it was still three hours before the agreed upon time!), and so had flagged down a passing truck and gotten in with her huge load, knowing that the driver would charge her a lot for the lift. When the driver saw the situation – that it was a white woman who was the friend coming to get Gracinta, he immediately doubled his price. Thankfully, where they had met in the road, and where they had unloaded her sacks of cassava, was right next to another believer’s home who they both know well and who had come to join in the discussion. Rachel thought it would be smart if she went away for awhile, so she left and went to visit the friend who was sick and came back a few minutes later. The angry driver was gone by this point, and Rachel and Gracinta and Madalena discussed the situation. Since Rachel had helped Gracinta with money to buy sacks, the church was going to pay Gracinta’s debt to the truck driver, and Gracinta would donate large bundles of grass to the church as they are redoing a roof. Thankfully not all our afternoons are that complicated!

Sunday morning Rachel was sick so she stayed home with Katie and I took Abby and Ellie with me to worship in Chiure. We left about 7am and took the men from both Chiure and Chipembe with us – the Chiure group to go back home and the Chipembe group to visit an area that most of them had not been to before. We discussed scriptures from Luke 18 on Jesus’ parables of the persistent widow and the humble tax collector/proud Pharisee and how Christ gives us two keys for the life of prayer – perseverance and humility. We talked about how that actually happens in the context of their lives and then after worship we ate a lunch of xima (stiff corn meal mush) and fish (the girls loved it – me, not so much!). Unfortunately throughout the time of worshiping together I kept seeing fleas on Ellie, and then I realized that the little church building we were meeting in was full of them!

Chiure is a long way from Montepuez (it takes over 2 hours each way) and Abby and Ellie did great spending so much time in the car. On the way back I stopped at a vendor and bought some juice and a snack for them. Arriving home around 4pm we soaked our clothes in water to keep the fleas from invading the house, and we each took bucket baths. Sunday night is our family movie night, so we enjoyed watching Kung Fu Panda and eating one of the girls’ favorite meals - hot dogs!

Monday is our family’s day off or Sabbath. We spent the morning at home, played UNO with the girls; I fixed some of our wiring problems in this new rental house, and Rachel worked on a quilting project. Around lunchtime, some of our friends, the Salyers, came over from the village of Balama and we headed to a café in the middle of Montepuez for lunch. All the kids had fun playing on the oddly shaped playground equipment, including the broken down airplane resting in the park while we waited for lunch. In the afternoon we rested at home and received a few visitors.

Tuesday morning I headed north out of town towards the village of Nekwaya, stopping for a few minutes in the village of Kambiri to pick up about eight of them to go on with me to Nekwaya. These churches are about an hour’s walk from each other and worship together frequently. In Nekwaya we sat in the shade of a big mango tree visiting and hearing how everyone was doing. After singing together for a while we discussed scriptures on forgiveness, and then we walked to the house of one of the older church members who has been sick for the past few weeks. After visiting and praying for her, we went back to the mud church building to share a meal together. Several people from that village had asked for a ride back into the city, so about 15 or so of us bounced down the road in the truck dropping off some along the way and picking up others as we go. At one stop we were sad to learn that the son of a church member had died the night before; I had been asked to name this child and had named him after my brother Aaron. So the father and a few of his family members loaded up some food (corn and beans) in our truck to take to the funeral. When we arrived in the village of Namwaciko we heard that they had already buried the toddler so we greeted the family and sat down with the small crowd next to the family’s house for about an hour. After awhile I went inside and greeted and prayed with Aaron’s mom. Then we said our goodbyes and left for Montepuez. After dropping off all my passengers in different parts of town, I made it home in time to help Rachel get the girls bathed and ready for team night at the Smith’s house (every Tuesday night our team gets together for a meal and worship time with the kids). After putting the kids to bed, the adults enjoyed playing a game together.

Every other Wednesday is a team meeting day. So, this morning Jeremy and Chad came over to meet about different ministry decisions, requests, and evaluation of our team goals. After the meeting, we go to eat lunch and to have our accountability time together. Then we head home to be with the kids so the women on the team could have a meal together and their accountability time. So while Rachel spent time with Martha and Amy, I played with Katie, and Abby and Ellie had some of the neighborhood kids over to play. Our water pressure has been poor lately, so when the water started coming out well, our guard and I filled up buckets and jugs in the yard, carrying some into the bathrooms and kitchen.

On Thursday morning I had to go to our team’s land to resolve a problem. Our guard dog had snuck through the bamboo fence and eaten a neighbor’s duck, and the neighbor was upset and wanted to meet with us about it. One of the guards and I walked over to her house to try and resolve the issue. We visited for a long time, talking about her poor health and then finally settled down to the business of negotiating the price of her duck. After paying for the duck, she started sharing about how impressed she was with the way the churches we work with handle funerals. An uncle of hers had died earlier this year, and she shared how hard it was on the family when they had to provide a huge meal and money gift for the local religious official in order to have a proper burial. She asked us why the churches we worship with don’t require payment and a huge meal for burial services. We talked about how the book of James says that true religion is to care for orphans and widows in their distress, so we see funerals as a time to show love to people who are suffering, not as a time to add to people’s suffering. She shared that she was interested in following Jesus, but that since her whole family was MusIim it would be difficult. We talked for a while longer and then she asked some questions about spirit possession and whether followers of Jesus could keep doing divination. At the end of our conversation I gave her a copy of the Scriptures we have in Makua-Metto and prayed for her to get well. Walking back to the land, the guard and I talked about how amazing God is that he can turn something bad and inconvenient, like a dog eating a neighbor’s duck, into an open door for someone to see the Kingdom of God come near.

Every Thursday afternoon Rachel joins a group of women in town who meet together for fellowship and to study the scriptures together. This year they are going through the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew’s Gospel, which has been really rewarding to walk through together. Rachel is one of five or six who take turns reading the section in Makua and facilitating the discussion.

On Friday morning, I took the motorcycle out to the village of Nkororo. The church there has been struggling over the past year because the leader, Victorino, whose house the church has met at since the beginning has fallen back into drunkenness and now his marriage is falling apart. During the Bible study a couple of us counseled him again that he needs to leave the alcohol behind because it is destroying his life, his family and the church, and Victorino promised that this struggle was now behind him. I told them that since we had finished the section of studies we had been doing, I wouldn’t be coming for a while until some of this church’s outstanding issues had been resolved. (Please pray for the church in Nkororo!) On my way home I stopped in a couple of other villages along the way visiting with friends and church members. After arriving home I sprayed our yard for ticks and fleas (it has been really bad this year), while Rachel received the blind and the lame that come by every Friday for some food or a gift. While I was in the middle of spraying the yard one of our friends, Maissi, came by asking for help. One of his wife’s relatives had just died out in a village and he asked if I could bring the body into town to be buried near their family. So about an hour later we drove about 40 minutes down a dirt road to the village of Unidade. Arriving at the village in the dark, we loaded the body in the back of the truck and drove back to town. As the truck pulled up to Maissi’s house all the women passengers started wailing and the family assembled at the house began to cry as well. We took the body into the house where it would be prepared for burial the next day. After paying my respects I said goodbye and left for home. Arriving home, we ate together, and the power went out for about half an hour, but came on in time for game night with the girls.

We hope this week-long glimpse has helped you picture what life and work here is like. We love and miss you all and appreciate your support and your prayers!

October 2010 Update

Greetings again from warm sunny Mozambique!

Our tropical “winter” has ended, and our temperatures are rising, and for the last week or so about once every couple of hours you can find Alan proclaiming “wow, it’s HOT!” Just to clarify, he’s not complaining, but describing the awe we feel knowing that it really is 95 degrees in the house at that moment. It seems like every year it always takes our bodies a few weeks to adjust to the heat at the beginning, so we’re waiting for our sweat glands to kick in…

Right after our last newsletter the national women’s conference for Churches of Christ was held here in Montepuez. About 150 women from multiple provinces and multiple churches gathered together for three days to study and learn together. Discussion topics ranged from loving your husband, teaching your children, building each other up instead of tearing down, not living in fear, and loving God and loving others. The conference went well, though we were a bit worn out by the end!

Unfortunately the non-profit chicken business had to be closed. There were a number of factors that made it difficult to stay in the black – being far away from our source of feed, chicken mites infestations, and too few clients. That has definitely been a disappointment, but it has also been somewhat of a relief since it was frustrating to try to keep it afloat over the last few months. For now our team is keeping the guards employed at full salary to guard the land. We did another sustainable agriculture seminar just this past Friday and had good participation, and we have another one scheduled for Balama next weekend. Our prayer is that a more sustainable method of farming can help communities in this area cope with problems like poor soil and low rainfall to make the land more productive, therefore increasing the food production for their families. For fun we also proposed a contest that whichever seminar participant produces the most crops from his or her farm will get a bicycle!

This year we’ve been going through the Sermon on the Mount in the weekly women’s study group, which has been great. Also, Alan just wrapped up his Titus study with church leaders from Montepuez and Chiure. Alan and 10 other men memorized (some or all of) Paul’s letter to Titus. It was a great experience and we celebrated by having a party here at our house a few weeks ago. We enjoyed generous portions of goat meat and rice and cokes! It was encouraging to hear what they learned throughout the study and what they felt like they needed to do to put it into practice.

Our August was busy and stressful! We found out in July that we’d be moving in August, so we adjusted our schedules and tried to do our part to be ready. Alan had to rearrange his plans in different villages, and I squeezed a month’s worth of homeschooling into a couple weeks. It’s been a long time since we moved, and our family has grown a lot since then… so we found out moving is hard work! The landlord of our new rental house was having trouble moving his things out of the house according to our original agreed-upon day, which meant our move-in date got moved back several times, but we were finally able to move into the new rental house at the end of August.

Trying to officially hand over the keys to the landlord of the old house was more difficult, however. To make a very long story short, it turns out he had never had the most recent contract officially registered at the appropriate government office (like he said he would and we had trusted him to do), so he was trying to hold us to terms of an old contract and threatening to take us to court if we didn’t do everything he wanted. Unfortunately, justice in this area often can have more to do with who you’re related to or how much money you have to bribe someone, so going to court is not a wise option. We realized the smartest option was to try to give him what he wanted (paint the inside of the house, leave the hot water heaters that were ours) so we could be out of that relationship as quickly as possible.

We are very grateful for the new rental house, mainly for being a peaceful place that has allowed us to leave the old house and landlord, and especially since there really aren’t many ready-to-move-in houses here in Montepuez. As a comparison, some things about the new house are a little nicer than the old one (nicer floors and a better paint job), while other things are a step back from where we were before (back to no grass in the yard and no running water!). We’re working on our water situation to cope with the ongoing drought, but mostly we’re relieved to have moved and be feeling “at home” again.

Our agreement with our new landlord is for one year, so we are still fundraising to build a house on the team land. So far $4,800 has been contributed towards the goal of $30,000 – we would love for you to prayerfully consider giving to this need! If a house is built with donated funds it will not be ours when we leave Mozambique someday but belong to the ministry. If you can give to this need, funds can be sent to Donelson Church of Christ, 2706 Old Lebanon Road, Nashville, TN 37214. Checks should be made out to Donelson Church of Christ and a note should be included that the gift is for construction in Mozambique. Please keep us in your prayers!

We are also asking for your prayers for RAIN. The past two years have had very low rainfall during the annual “rainy” season, and as a result the water table is very low. Many wells have gone dry these last two years, and people talk about how “everyone is thirsty.” Please join us in praying for a good, wet rainy season (December through March), enough for the rice to grow but not to the point of destructive flooding.

We were so happy to receive our teammates the Smiths back in early September from their furlough in the States, so we were finally able to meet baby Micah! Abby has started back to school (second grade!) with Luke and Andrew Smith with Martha as their teacher, and I’ll be teaching about one week a month. Katie Joy is growing well and babbling constantly to join in with her talkative sisters, Abby has lost her two front top teeth, and Ellie is learning to read and really enjoying our new puppy Yoder.

As we close, please join with us in praying for these desires:

· For the Kingdom of God to come here in our area!

· For a good rainy season

· For God to provide the funds for house construction

May God give you peace,

Rachel and Alan and the girls

PS – for those of you who’ve asked what our lives are like on a daily basis, we have another “week in the life” newsletter/blogpost coming up soon!

interns and meetings and moving, oh my!

Hi again from northern Mozambique!  We have been keeping a busy pace the last few months, and have been reminded how much having a small baby affects day-to-day life (including newsletter frequency!)… so if you’ve wondered why you haven’t heard from us, Katie Joy is the culprit – and quite a cute little culprit if I do say so myself!  Katie is six months old and growing well and frequently rewards our goofy attempts to make her laugh with chuckles and gummy grins with two tiny teeth at the bottom.

In April and May Alan started memorizing Titus with a few groups of our more mature leaders in four different churches.  Right now there are about ten who are memorizing and another ten or so who are participating regularly.  It has been fun seeing them internalize the Word of God in Portuguese, Makua, or Swahili, and wrestle together with what the scriptures are saying.  It has been a challenge for Alan to memorize scripture along with them in another language!  Alan has also been teaching through our basic church curriculum in the villages of Nekwaya, Kambiri and Nkororo.  We’ve been studying about overcoming temptation, how to study the Bible, prayer, fasting, and church leadership.  In order to save money on gas and try to make our car last longer Alan bought a motorcycle and has been using it on about of his trips out to the nearby villages that we work with.  Also in April the weekly women’s study group here in town started up again after the harvest.

Our teammates the Smiths went to the States to have a baby and go on furlough in April, and May 15 we were excited to hear of the arrival of Micah Timothy Smith!  We know they’re having a lot of fun being loved on and blessed by so many sweet folks stateside, but we’ll be really excited to have them back here with us first week of September.

At the beginning of June we received eight Harding students for a six-week missions internship.  Together with the Westerholms we hosted them in our homes and showed them what are lives and work are like here in Mozambique.  The internship is for students who think they might be called to foreign missions, and is specifically not a campaign, but more like an apprenticeship or job-shadowing.  For six weeks they went wherever we went, learned some Makua and Portuguese (and some of the frustrations of language learning!), ate strange foods and spent nights in villages with Mozambican families.  Part of the internship includes a survey trip to another area to see what the needs are and what kind of servants are needed there; this year Alan and Chad took them to another province to see the area of the Makua-Xirima people.  We enjoyed having the interns here with us, getting to know them and being blessed by their fellowship – we put them on a plane Sunday in Pemba, and it was hard to see them go!

This weekend is the national women’s conference for Churches of Christ, and this year it is here in Montepuez!  In a day or so women will be arriving from other provinces farther south, and the study and teaching times will begin on Thursday.  Some women from another province will be planning the program – I have been informed that I will be teaching some but not yet informed as to when or what topic! =)  Please pray that the weekend will be full of listening and learning together about life with God in his kingdom.

For a couple months the non-profit chicken business was doing okay – producing enough eggs to meet salaries and buy more chicken feed, but over the last couple months it has really struggled because of a lack of egg production due to sickness and poor quality feed.  Being so far away from our supplier has hurt us more than we expected and we’ll be meeting next week to figure whether the project should continue or not.  It has provided a good salary for three employees for almost a year and a half now, but lately it has been more trouble than it is worth.  Please pray for us to make a wise decision.

Many of you will remember our difficulties with our landlord last year;  there was a lot of unkind and irrational behavior on his part (not honoring previous agreements, demanding a 60% increase in rent or he would kick us out).  In the end, though, he knew he wasn’t going to find another tenant to give him what he wanted, and he accepted a reasonable solution.  Because of his behavior and unreasonable nature, we have been praying for a year now for God to provide us a place to live, whatever that might look like, so we would be able to get out of this relationship.  Our contract with him runs September 1 through August 31, and he called again a few weeks ago.  We were expecting a repeat performance of last year’s behavior, but thankfully that has not been the case.  He said he got a loan from the bank and he wants to use it to improve his three properties, including this house.  He wants us out of this house so he can fix it up and bring in twice what we are paying in rent right now.  So we have written up a contract with the owner of another house around the block – we hope to sign it and pay him by the end of the week.  The new house is really the only one this end of town ready to move in – and the toilets aren’t yet connected to a septic system and it doesn’t have running water 24 hours a day.  The new house also shares one wall with a bar – it is common in Mozambican construction to cut whatever corners you can to save money.  When the owner of the new house built his bar, he used the west-facing wall of the house to be the east wall of the bar.  This means that the second window of the master bedroom and the window of the second bathroom look directly into the bar.  Obviously we’ll be renting out the bar space as storage and the owner will move his beverage business with him to his other house. 

So we are fundraising to build a house on our team land.  We have an estimated construction budget of $30,000.  In the past some people have asked us what financial needs they could help with – now is the time!  If you are interested in helping with this need, funds can be sent to Donelson Church of Christ, 2706 Old Lebanon Rd, Nashville, TN 37214.  Checks should be made out to Donelson Church of Christ, and please include a note clearly stating that the funds are for construction in Mozambique.  If the house is built with donated funds, it will not belong to us when we leave Mozambique someday, but instead belong to the ministry and be used for ministry purposes.

On the family front, Alan and I celebrated ten years of marriage in May, and we’re ready to go for the next ten!  Abby has been doing well with her school subjects, though she’s looking forward to having Luke and Andrew Smith back in class with her.  Ellie has started reading words with short-vowel sounds and is so proud of herself!  They are both so so sweet with Katie Joy, talking to her constantly and picking up all the toys she drops on the floor.  We’ve been a little sick recently - we’re coming into a nasty season for allergies as the mango trees start pollinating and many people start burning their fields.  In addition, we’re feeling a little overwhelmed adding moving to a new house to our month of August – it looks like it will be a crazy month!

As we wrap up, we ask you to join us in praying for the following:

· For the Kingdom of God to come here in northern Mozambique

· For our health

· For funds to build a house on the team land

Love in Christ,

Rachel, Alan, and the girls

back home in Mozambique

Hello once again from Mozambique!

We are home!  Transitioning back to Mozambique after an absence isn’t always easy, and coming back with a new baby adds its own special challenges, but with God’s grace we are here!  Katie travelled really well on the long plane ride (actually all three girls did wonderful!), and though we had a few hassles with our luggage not being checked all the way to Pemba, we and all our luggage made it to Pemba intact and at the same time.  Abby and Ellie were waking in the middle of the night for several days - it seems to take about a week to be completely over jet lag.  Our house had been empty (and our fridge and freezer as well!) the whole time we were gone, but our teammates came over to clean before we arrived and also provided meals for over a week, which is a HUGE blessing!

We were so richly blessed by our time with treasured family and friends in the States.  Thank you all for blessing us and helping us welcome Katie Joy into the world while we were with you.  We live a strange double life; we miss our Mozambican home and friends when we are in the States, and we miss our stateside family and friends when we are here.  Whatever we may have given up, God has richly blessed us with loving community to welcome us wherever we land.

Getting settled and getting our lives started up again takes some time here.  Since our teammates the Smiths were leaving for travel to South Africa and the States for furlough, anything we wanted to do as a whole team we had to get done in 2 and a half weeks.  So we had two major meetings to participate in right after our arrival.  First, our teammates hosted a meeting of different missionaries and NGO workers in the southern part of our province to share experiences, ideas, and encouragement to understand how to more effectively bless the Makua-Metto.  Then the next weekend our team met with almost 80 church leaders here in Montepuez.  Chad, Jeremy and Alan shared the information gathered from last year’s church growth study looking at the way the churches of Christ in Cabo Delgado have grown (from 350 members in 2006 to around 1000 members at the end of 2009).  They assessed together (“where are we”) and worked on forming a vision together for the future (“where do we want to go?”).  Just a few days after that meeting, the Smiths left to begin their travels.

Our house also takes some time getting back into shape.  For starters, it took the telephone company several days to start up our internet access again, but even once it was restarted we couldn’t use it anyway because there was a lot of lightning damage all over town from a big thunderstorm the first week we were back, and it took the phone company a long time to make it to our street for repairs.  We’re going on four weeks back in the country, and our phone line and internet were just fully functional a couple days ago!  Our plumbing and water situation has needed attention, too.  It took three weeks to get running water in the house again, and we only just now have toilets that flush.  We just returned from a trip 5 hours south to Nampula for 4-6 months’ worth of groceries (meat, cheese, butter), household supplies (toilet paper and bug spray), and hardware (to repair all our broken and leaky plumbing).

We are looking forward to an unusual year here in Montepuez – not strange, but different from our “usual.”  We are actually “alone” (only in an expatriate, English-speaking sense) in that both of our teammates are gone at the moment – the Smiths for vacation and then on to furlough and childbirth in the States to return in September, and the Westerholms for three weeks of travel to meetings, vacation, and car repair.  We will host interns again from Harding University for six weeks in June and July, and Abby will be schooling without the Smiths boys while they are gone.  Also, in the next few months we will begin prayerfully fundraising to build a house due to our landlord’s increasingly unreasonable behavior over the last few years.

We are happy to be home, though, and enjoying seeing our Mozambican friends we missed for three months.  They have all enjoyed meeting Katie Joy and talking about how big she is, how much hair she has, and how she isn’t a boy like the doctor in Nampula predicted last year!  The harvest is underway and nearly over, and so the women’s study group is ready to start up again, and I am very much looking forward to that.

Before leaving Mozambique in December, Alan wrote a letter and read it to the churches that he consistently works with thanking God for the ways that the churches have grown over the last few years.  He asked them to do three main things: keep studying the commands of Jesus, obey what they are learning and share it with their family and friends, and take a portion of whatever offering they receive each week and give it to someone in their community who is in need.  In the letter, Alan shared that with the growing number of churches and leaders he needs to focus on those that are serious about living the kingdom life, and that after our return from the states he would be working with those communities that were doing those kinds of things.  So, in the next few weeks we’ll be visiting the eight churches in the Mirate area as well as others to see how they are doing and to continue working on leadership training and church planting.

The non-profit business has been busy with chickens and sustainable agriculture projects.  The 100 chickens are still young and have started laying eggs but haven’t reached full capacity yet.  As of right now we’re having trouble supporting the three Mozambican employees of this project.  We’re hoping that once the layers produce at full capacity the business will be self-sustainable and that we’ll be able to use any additional income to support additional projects.  We planted a big plot of beans using a sustainable agricultural method that we’re hoping will catch on with others and we’re looking forward to harvesting that in a couple months so we can testify to this method’s effectiveness.  Last year, we did one sustainable agriculture seminar that was very well received and this year we would like to do more.  If you’re interested in helping with these projects, please contact us and we’ll send you some more information. 

We invite you to pray with us:

· For us to stay in a posture of listening to God’s Spirit

· For our health, especially Katie Joy as she grows

· For adjusting to life and responsibilities in Mozambique with a new baby

· For God’s kingdom to come in this area, and for church leaders to have that vision

· For Katie’s Mozambican Residence documents to be approved without hassle

With much love,

Rachel, Alan, Abby, Ellie, and Katie Joy

Katie Joy

We’re happy to announce the birth of Katherine Joy Howell.  Katie was born on January 19th at 5:55pm.  She weighed 8 pounds and 14 ounces and was 20.5”.  We had some drama surrounding her birth.  We had planned on doing a home birth at Papa and Nana’s house (Larry and Evelyn Wilson’s), just like our birth experience for Ellie.  But Katie’s head was in a funny position and the midwife said we should go to the hospital.  A couple of hours later our new baby was born.  We were also surprised that this baby was a girl.  An Doctor in Mozambique had used an ultrasound to tell us we were having a boy.  Abby and Ellie are excited and getting used to the fact that they have a new baby sister…and I’m getting used to the fact that I’m seriously outnumbered! 

We’ll be in the US until the beginning of March getting Katie’s documents together and wrapping up doctor and dentist visits for the family.  Thanks for keeping us in your prayers.

Peace,

Alan    

We're safely back in the United States getting ready for the birth of what we are told will be a baby boy! He's due in the middle of January and we can't wait to meet him.

We met with our midwife again today. She came and visited with us at Larry and Evelyn Wilson's house. Rachel's parents have graciously agreed to let us do a home birth again (Ellie was born in their room!). As we talked about our birth plan, I was impressed again with the craft of midwifery. Check out this blog that makes some great observations about what we can learn from midwives about ministry.

Peace,
Alan

Greetings from northern Mozambique!

It is hard for us to imagine that most of the people reading this are experiencing cold weather right now! For those of us in this part of the southern hemisphere, our temperatures have been climbing, we’ve been sweating, guzzling water, and eating ripe mangoes around the clock. We’re also getting ready for the rainy season – it has rained a couple of times already and many of our friends have been busy working in their farms. Please join us in praying for the rain – asking God to send plentiful rains for a good harvest, but not too much that the fields flood and crops are lost.

Speaking of prayer, thank you to all of you who joined us in praying for peaceful elections here in Mozambique last month! This was only Mozambique’s fourth general election and it went smoothly. You might remember that it was in the context of an election year (2004) that rumors were started locally that we were political spies working for the minority political party, which resulted in us living in exile in another province for over a year. The atmosphere was much more peaceful and mellow this time around, and we are so thankful that they dialed down the rhetoric and that there was no violence.

At the end of September we participated in a women’s conference that was attended by about 50 women from 16 village churches all over the southern half of our province. The subject up for study and discussion was the ikoma, the initiation ceremonies for girls as a transition from childhood to adulthood. The ceremonies traditionally include many harmful practices (beating, abuse, ridicule, encouragement of sexual promiscuity), and in the past few years several women from the churches have done a Christian ikoma, and many more have expressed interest. We went through several passages of scripture from Deuteronomy, 1 Peter, Ephesians, and 1 Corinthians and discussed how we could redeem the ikoma for God’s kingdom. The weekend was tiring, but fascinating and fun watching women get into debates with each other and ask each other hard questions. I also bumped up against the limits of my Makua-Metto language ability a couple of times: in a room with 50 women and awful acoustics, between 1 and 3 crying babies at any given time, 1 toddler with squeakers in his shoes, and up to 8 women all excitedly talking at once about something they care about… it was hard to follow in those moments! But it was exciting watching our friends think critically about what parts of the ikoma glorify God, and what parts don’t, and discuss how to change those parts and possible implications of making changes to cultural ceremonies. Some of you may remember that we do not yet have the full scriptures in Makua-Metto; for this conference we had several of our Metto friends translate the additional passages we wanted to use – and it made us even more thankful for SIL/Wycliffe and all the hard work they are putting into translating the scriptures!

We’ve kept busy with our regular ministry activities as well. Recently we have been teaching marriage seminars with different clusters of churches in our province. This past weekend, Alan and our teammate Jeremy did two seminars, one with the churches in Nekwaya/Kambiri/Namwaciko, and another with churches in Chipembe/Nkunama/ Nkororo/Nhinawe/Neewara. These seminars are good times of encouragement as we learn what a Christian marriage should be like. It is also fun seeing friends from different villages getting the chance to worship together and enjoy each other’s fellowship. This fellowship was a big blessing especially to the church in Nkunama. One of the founding members of that church died the day before the seminar and when we arrived we went directly to the funeral. There were over 200 people there. Gabriel, the brother who died, was a very quiet old man, and it was surprising to see so many people in attendance. When Alan asked why there was such a big turn-out, the other church members said that the village of Nkunama wanted to see what the church would do. Funerals are very significant in this culture, and it was important that the church do a good job of taking Gabriel through this “last ceremony.”

We have continued doing leadership training and discipleship groups in Montepuez, Chiure, and in the villages north of town. Since Alan’s trip to Rwanda we have adopted a simpler, more reproducible method of studying the scriptures (called “Discovery Bible Study” by some), and our Mozambican friends have easily picked it up. Alan has encouraged different churches to work through the commands of Jesus with this method when they study together. He has spent a lot of time lately talking about the importance of trusting Jesus and living the life here in this world that he has called us to live – he really means for us to live out the Sermon on the Mount, for example. In addition, Alan has been studying with a group of folks in the village of Nhinawe that is interested in becoming a church. They have recently started studying through some of the key stories in the book of Genesis; please pray for this new contact point.

A few weeks ago we hosted a sustainable agriculture seminar on our land and were pleased with the turnout! We had almost 60 participants even though we were only able to give about a week's notice; this included representatives there from 15 or so villages and a number of men and women who live here in town. Even though there was not enough time to implement all the ideas before the rainy season, we decided to go ahead and have an initial seminar to introduce some of the concepts. We talked about not burning fields (a huge problem here), planting at the right time, planting with proper spacing, making a "blanket" of leaves and grass to help conserve rainwater, how to make compost, etc. Our project manager (running the non-profit chicken business), Domingos, did an incredible job; he presented it effectively and kept the participation level high. One of the best Mozambican farmers we know was there and he rushed home the next day saying that he was going to try to go ahead and get started this year. Implementing these concepts should drastically increase production. A representative from the Mozambican department of agriculture attended as well, liked what he saw and heard, and encouraged us to keep doing these seminars. The seminar was hosted on the land our team purchased earlier this year. In addition to housing the non-profit chicken business, we’re in the beginning stages of developing the land: planting some crops, and clearing brush and making improvements to get ready for more agriculture and possible construction next year.

We have about 3 weeks left until we leave for the States, and it feels like there is a lot left to do to get ready. Our baby is due mid-January, and I have been feeling well, trying to stay cool in this heat! Due to the poor state of healthcare in Mozambique we will be having the baby in the US, but we’ll be returning to Mozambique the first week of March. Last month, we were able to do an ultrasound in the city of Nampula, about 5 hours away, and the doctor told us that we are having a baby boy! He said he was about 90% sure, but due to our track record, we aren’t sure we’ll believe it completely until the little guy makes his appearance in January.

Our prayer requests:
• for the kingdom of God to come among the Makua-Metto
• for the non-profit business and future development of the team’s land
• for safe travel to the US on December 12th
• for the safe birth of our baby in January
• for a good rain this year leading to an abundant harvest in Mozambique

Thanks for keeping up with us and participating in this work,

Alan, Rachel, Abby, Ellie and baby Howell

Alan's solution (?) to global poverty

A few weeks ago Rachel sparked a lively conversation on Facebook. She posted a link to an article by Michael Moore on capitalism and poverty and religion. In response to that conversation, I put some thoughts together about poverty and wanted to post it here on the blog and see if there are any takers to continue the discussion.

1. So, what causes poverty? or Who or what is responsible?

There is a book by Michael Landon called Sweating it Out: What the “Experts” say Causes Poverty, where he looks at the various explanations for poverty. He sees ten of them, but names 4 as the most common reasons cited. He puts them in a quadrant. With two axes representing differing answers to two fundamental questions: (1) is the cause of poverty primarily a way of thinking or a way of acting, and (2) is the cause of poverty located in the poor themselves, or in the society as a whole? So, depending on the answer to these questions, the reason for poverty could be due to

A. Culture of Poverty (Individuals think “poorly”),
B. Economic Ethos (Economic system keeps people thinking “poorly”),
C. Personal Irresponsibility (Individual makes “poor” choices),
or D. Structural Sin (Economic system is unjust).

Now, if this were a multiple choice test, I would like to choose E. “All of the above.” My hunch is that where poverty happens it is usually due to a mixture of these factors. Certainly some people are in a state of poverty mostly due to personal irresponsibility and only a little bit due to structural sin, but others may be in poverty through no fault of their own, they were just born under a failed system and suffer for it. This grid is helpful for me because it reminds me that there are a number of factors in play contributing to poverty.

Maybe we could think of this Jack Bauer-style. A person is bound to a chair about to be interrogated. His ankles have a cable tie that binds his feet to the chair. His hands are tied behind his back with rope. He’s got duck-tape over his mouth and a bandana over his eyes. If we come in and try to liberate him by removing the duck-tape, cable tie and bandana is he better off? Yeah, a little. Is he free? No, not yet. To really address poverty we need to help remove all the barriers: internal and external, personal and structural. Now, we all know that some people don’t want to be free. But that doesn’t mean we are going to say that no one wants to be free.

2. What does God have to say about poverty?

I’ve been thinking about the book of Amos lately. Here was an unlikely prophet – a poor southerner (from Judah), a hick farmer/shepherd who went to the wealthy in the industrialized north (Israel) to share a warning from the Lord. In his most scathing and memorable rebuke he refers to the wealthy women of Israel as the “Cows of Bashan” lounging on their couches asking their husbands to fetch them something else to drink. Whew! What strikes me about this passage is that these women were not doing anything to directly oppress the poor. They went to church…er… temple to worship, they went shopping, but they were probably not out in the field beating slaves or forcing others to carry heavy loads. But, the interesting thing is that even though they were not directly responsible for the economic suffering of others – Amos and God held them accountable. So, what does that mean for us? Huge question.

Another part of this discussion is wealth distribution. We’ve been talking about this in these posts. Rachel may be more optimistic about the government’s ability to redistribute wealth than I am. No matter what we think, though, about the government’s ability to redistribute wealth effectively, it is clear that God has thought a lot about wealth distribution and redistribution. The idea of Jubilee (Leviticus 25) was a central piece of the economic system of ancient Israel. Every 50 years, land that was sold was to be given back to the original owners. God even said that when you sell the land, you need to consider the number of years remaining until the jubilee into your accounting practices. Now, we don’t know if Israel actually practiced this, but it is clear that God wanted to put some checks and balances into place to keep people who experienced a bad crop or a famine or an irresponsible family member from putting them in a situation where the oppressive boot of poverty will be forever on their neck. God told them to clear the books every 50 years in order to not oppress those who fell on hard times.

Now, I’m not saying I think the government could do this well, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he chooses to use imperfect systems to bring about some ideas of his own. He’s done this in the past. In his own day, Habakkuk complained at God for using the pagan Babylonians to accomplish His purposes. He said, “How could You, a just God, use unjust systems and powers like these?” (ABH paraphrase 1:1-4). God replies, “Watch and be amazed, I am going to do something that you wouldn’t believe even if you were told” (ABH paraphrase 1:5). Now, I’m not saying that God wants the US gov’t to redistribute wealth – that would be an ugly and painful process to say the least – but I wouldn’t put it past God to do that, if he feels like “something’s gotta give.” At the end of Habakkuk, we read that in the midst of the confusion of God using unjust systems to bring about justice Habakkuk confesses that he will rejoice in the Lord and be joyful to God his Savior. “The Sovereign Lord is my strength, he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on to the heights” (NIV 3:19). No matter what our Sovereign King is up to and what kind of instruments he chooses to use for his purposes and how it affects us, we will still be able to stand.

3. What should Jesus followers do about poverty? And more specifically, as citizens of a democracy, what responsibilities do we have?

I think that we should use whatever gifts, resources, and talents we have to release those in bondage. I’m thinking about those four causes of poverty: internal and external, personal and structural. On a personal level (external), we can loan or give money to the poor to help them get out from under debt (Jesus said we should do that). On a personal level (internal) we can teach our friends that are poor how to effectively manage money (if we ourselves are good at that ). It is right that Jesus said that “the poor will always be with us.” Sometimes we use that statement as a reason not to do anything, but I think that in the context of that passage (Mark 14), Jesus was saying, “It’s okay to lavish worship on me now, because you’ll still have time to take care of the poor…I want them to always be with you.” Unfortunately my perception is that in our fractured society it has become easier and easier to isolate ourselves from the poor – they are not really with us anymore. We don’t know very many poor people and that makes it difficult for us to help on a personal level.

Okay so here is what I think about what to do about poverty on a structural level. I think if we are to take seriously our task to “love our neighbor as ourselves,” then if/when we vote, we need to “look not only to our own interests but also to the interests of others.” So, as we do research and weigh out how to vote on a complex issue like health care, etc., we need to figure out what would really help our neighbor. When Jesus talked about who our neighbor was he told a story about a Samaritan and a Jew – enemies who didn’t give each other the time of day. So, if Jesus really defines who my neighbor is, then I have to vote with a whole host of people in mind including those of different socio-economic statuses and zip codes (even our neighbors outside of the US!).

Ultimately, though I’m personally agnostic about our ability to bring about big, macro-level structural change through “political” means (this is where Rachel and I might differ I think). I’ve been reading a book called The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done so much Ill and So Little Good. It is actually a pretty boring book, but the main point is that big, top down structural solutions to huge economic problems… don’t work. Instead we need to focus on local, small, effective solutions. As more and more local solutions start working and changing things for the better, the big, macro level system will have to change to accommodate it. So, on a practical level, if we work to release people from as many of the four barriers on a personal level (duct tape, rope, cable tie and bandana…) and pray that God will work out the macro stuff, I think he will do it.

Okay…any thoughts or responses?
Am I just copping out by saying that there is not much we can do to bring about structural or macro level change?

Frontier Missions article

Over the past couple years I have been thinking a lot about the atonement - the significance of Jesus' death on the cross. I've been wrestling with what this means and some different ways to approach it, as well as how best to talk about it with my Makua friends. That exploration turned into an article and eventually the International Journal of Frontier Missions decided to publish in their latest issue - which I'm excited about - I've never been published before! If you are interested in checking out the article, you can download a copy from their website International Journal of Frontier Missions.

Peace,
Alan

Putting it into Practice

In August, my teammate Jeremy Smith and I went to a seminar in Rwanda where we learned a lot about Church Planting Movements and what we can do to see them happen among the Makua-Metto. We got to spend time with colleagues from all over the continent and get some advice and insight about this stage of ministry. One of the best things that we learned was a new (or is it a very old?) way to study God’s word. We called it a Discovery Bible Study. It basically has three parts. First, you read the text a few times to get familiar with it (literate people can write down the text as it helps it get into your brain). Second, you put the text into your own words. Third, you talk about what you need to do to obey it. At the conference we turned a piece of paper sideways, folded it into three parts and divided the page into three columns: copying the text, paraphrasing the text, and making “I will…” statements about how to obey what you have learned. At the end of the study you ask who each person will tell what they’ve leaned. While this way of Bible study is great for church planting, it also can work in place of preaching in the church setting. One of the most immediate improvements we’ve seen is in participation. Oftentimes, the nature of preaching and teaching as it is usually done (even when it’s done well) is to make us into passive recipients of the texts instead of forcing us to be active participants with the text. Maybe the difference is like between watching ice skating on television (seeing a religious professional or qualified layperson interpret the text) and actually lacing up some skates and getting out on the ice to skate (having to wrestle with interpreting it myself). By studying in groups each person shares what they hear and how they should obey and by sharing that with the group, the group can help correct and guide the individual if their interpretation or application is unhealthy.

A couple of weeks ago I drove about 4 hours south to be with a cluster of churches in the Namuno district. I spent the night in the village of Masha and when I was asked to speak on Sunday morning I divided the group of about 60 adults into groups of 4 or 5 and asked them to read from Deuteronomy 6. We made sure that each group had someone who could read and I asked them to read the text a few times until they felt like they understood it. My small group seemed to understand it pretty well. I asked for a few volunteers to tell everybody what they heard in the text and a number of people offered up the pieces they understood as we stitched the passage back together in our own words. Then, I asked the groups to meet again and talk about what each person would do to obey the text. When I posed this question to the whole group, one man said he needed to teach God’s word to his children. An older lady stood up and said that she understood that since there is only one God, in order to obey the text she was going to give up divination. A number of us were shocked – divination is a huge problem in our area. Then I asked everyone to talk about who they would share what they learned with. Some said brothers and sisters and friends and one young man said he would share it with his family in another village.

It has also been fun to use this method of Bible study in a small group setting. On Tuesday, I met with about seven people from the church in Nkororo who have wanted to plant a church in the village of Merenge. They have gone there a number of times to visit and I’ve gone with them twice. But the last time we were there, we all left feeling that something wasn’t right. So, after we chatted for a while this week, I asked them to look at Luke 10 with me to check out Jesus’ instructions for his disciples when they were going to new areas. We read through the text a few times and then I asked them to tell me what they heard in the text. Armindo summarized it pretty well, Victorino shared some insights from the leadership meeting last weekend, and a few others chimed in to fill in some holes. Then I asked them what we would need to do to obey Jesus’ instructions to plant a church in Merenge. That kicked off a lively discussion where I said almost nothing for half an hour. As the discussion wore down, I asked them, “So, what are we going to do?” They responded that they would go two-by-two back to the village of Merenge and look for a person of peace who would be the gateway for starting the church there. It was one of the best and most practical Bible studies I have ever led or been a part of and I barely said a word.

One of the best things about this way of doing Bible studies is that the text does the work. We’ve been in Montepuez for about five years now and I’ve been directly involved in planting a handful of churches and a big issue has been reproducibility. Specifically, the way I was teaching and church planting could not be replicated well by our Mozambican friends. This way of teaching and doing Bible study is more “text dependent” and much less “teacher dependent.” It has been fun seeing the work of God’s Word in the presence of His church and I’m excited to see where this will take us.

Peace

Alan