Significance??

Many days I continue to wonder what the significance of my being here actually is. As far as doing anything for Mozambique or the people, most days it feels as if it is too big, the need is too great and I am too weak. All these things are true. I can do nothing here. I realize that more and more each day. My ideas of leaving a mark or doing something "significant" has changed drastically. I continue to have to shed my Western mind. I feel the "honeymoon" stage of missions is over. Now, each day, I learn something more about the culture. I am gaining more insight into life here. I see the web of problems and the depth of them. What can I even dream of doing to help?

I have come to realize there are two parts in answering this question. The first is that these feelings of helplessness are a lie from Satan. He is trying to discourage me and make me give up. I will NOT give up. I will persevere through this knowing that I AM here for a purpose and it is God who has called me here. The second answer to this question is that I really can't do anything here. That probably sounds like I am little crazy. Let me explain...to think I can do anything in my own strength is a joke. I can't. I am just now learning about HIV/AIDS and tropical diseases. I know very little about any culture other than my own and I can't even communicate with these people! BUT (here's the good part)...God can do amazing things! If I am called here just to pray that is far more than I can "do" on my own. God can (and is) making changes here.

On Tuesday we went to a town called Nhamatonda where we did training to volunteers who are starting a home-based care program. It was incredible to see how keen they are to learn. Their enthusiasm to serve there community is based on nothing else than a desire to care and love. They have no other motivation to do this than God. It is a desire that has been put on their hearts. The fact that I get to be part of this by training them to care for orphans and patients is significant. God can use them to make a difference for a long time after I leave! I now see that even though I am doing very little- God is doing very much. The most important thing I can do is pray for this new project and the volunteers. God can do something significant with that.

Here they are! Joyful and ready to go be the hands and feet of Jesus!



In the midst of so much heaviness and darkness the simple things are big here. Blowing bubbles for children- such joy!



As we departed they gathered to send us off singing "God go before them and bless their travel..."



Beautiful! Just beautiful! This is significant.

Estamos Juntos

This is my Mozambican family! They have taken Laura and me in like we are their own. Carlos, Pascoa and the girls are so much fun to be with. We spend much time with them. Today I was thinking about them and came to the realization that if nothing else happens in my time here or I learn nothing else, the impact that this couple is having on me will make this whole year worth it. There is much to learn from people who start their day at 3am just to pray for their community. There is also much to learn from a young lady who, when she was 16 yrs old, took in an orphan and has since loved her as her own. It's people like Carlos and Pascoa that are making a difference in Africa. Not only to Africa but also to people from around the world that get to work with them! Bless them!





Here's Laura and me with the girls- Jessica, Nyasha, Tabitha and Dominga.



We all spent yesterday together just having fun. Our friend Carly from Hands at Work South Africa is also here with us for a week. We all drove to this incredible dam and water reserve. We then went swimming in a pool and had a wonderful lunch together. It was a much needed break from the challenges of daily life! We always have so much fun singing, dancing, laughing and playing together. They do all they can to make us feel welcomed, loved and at home. The common Mozambican motto is this: Estamos Juntos, meaning, we are together! We are...we are together! ESTAMOS JUNTOS!

Thanks!

Here are the bales of clothes that we have purchased to distribute to the children. Carlos and the other volunteers have been very excited to purchase and coordinate giving the clothing to the children. This coming Saturday is the usual day when all the orphans gather to have a fun day. This month they'll all leave with new clothes. This is such a blessing. Thank you all who have helped to make this happen so quickly. Things don't often get done so quickly here in Africa. This is a wonderful ministry to be a part of and it is happening only because of your faithfulness. Thank you. A key phrase that Carlos speaks regularly is this..."Wow, that is a powerful ministry!" And I would agree, clothing these children..."This is a POWERFUL MINISTRY!" Thank you so much.

Thank you!

Muito Obrigada! Muito, muito obrigada!!!! I now have enough money to purchase the bales of clothes that we have asked for for the orphans! I can’t thank you enough or make you realize the impact this is about to have on the community! Thank you for your faithfulness. In the next couple weeks we plan to go purchase the bales of clothes in Chimoio (about 35km from here). I think it will take a few days to organize and arrange all of this. Once the clothes are delivered to the Rubatano center we’ll have to go through them, sort them and organize them for the orphans to come. Once we do this over 600 kids will go home with new clothes! I can’t wait! I will be sure to take pictures of the process and share them as soon as I can. I can hardly imagine what this is going to be like but the volunteers we work with are truly amazing and they’ll make this happen beautifully I am sure.

(Praying for an orphaned family after the volunteers bathed the children in the nearby river)


Before I left to come here a close friend/mentor told me boldly, "Dara, be prepared and available for the Lord to use you however He wills. It may look different than you're expecting. Just be willing to do whatever He asks of you." At the time I thought, "Of course, I am open for anything." Now I see what that meant. I have been gone about 6 months now and things are very different than I imagined they would be. We are still waiting on our nursing licenses to be recognized. This means we are still unable to treat patients. That's where these important words have encouraged me. God has asked me to do different things that I thought I would be doing. We still have hope that our nursing licenses will get cleared "any day now." In the meantime were educating the local volunteers and writing proposals to help Rubatano expand and strengthen the work they are already doing. One of the biggest things that I would like to see happen is for us to find a local Mozambican nurse to start working with the home care volunteers. If this were to happen that nurse could carry the work that Laura and I are meant to be doing. The whole heart of Hands at Work is sustainability. We want to support and encourage the local church and community to take care of their own people. This is so much more effective. We learn this more and more each week. Coming in as an outsider is very challenging. We not only look different and speak different but we don't understand how these people think. One day as we walked through the bush we crossed a small, dirty pool of water. We asked the volunteer we were with if that was the water that the people drink from. "Yes, of course." "Oh, great," I thought, an educational opportunity. So, being the nurses we are, Laura and I started in on the importance of boiling the water (in a clean pot of course)at a rapid boil for at least 2 full minutes. Our volunteer kindly, respectfully listened and then truthfully said, "Okay, good. Right. Yes, but the patients won't listen. They have been drinking this water their whole lives. They aren't going to change now."
"Oh, of course," I thought. Why would they change suddenly when the white girls show up and tell them that the way they are living is all wrong! So, the challenges continue.

Another funny thing is that this is the same volunteer who the other week saw me drinking water on a "cool" African winter morning and said, "You drink water when it is this cold?" (I am sure it was like 65 degrees). I said, "Yes of course! You don't?" He responded, "Sometimes I go one week without drinking water." Ah ha! That explains the headaches! :)
So, with that, please keep praying. Some days are long, some are discouraging, most are overwhelming but thankfully I know a friend who says this..."Come to me, all you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke fits perfectly, and the burden I give you is light." (Matt. 11:28) Thank you Jesus for this promise. I will wake tomorrow and face another day.

No Words

So many things here I can't even portray in words. Each of these pictures has a story. One day I look forward to sharing them with you personally. For now, my words are insignificant but these images have huge significance behind them and they need your prayers. Whatever you feel when looking at them, please pray.

A Few Shots...

I just learned a way to upload pictures more quickly...

This is a picture of one of the families that we did a story on with the film crew. There are 6 children and a mother in this family. Their father died about a year ago. They live in complete desperation, not knowing if they'll have a meal each day. This girl wakes early every day to go gather firewood. One day when we visited she had left at 5am (without any breakfast) and was returning at 1230pm carrying her heavy wood bundle on her head.

This is the youngest child in the family.

I saw this vehicle parked in town the other day- an interesting way to dry fish!

These are Carlos's beautiful children. A few weeks ago we drove to a swimming pool for the day. The girls enjoyed the Twizzlers that had been sent to me in a care package! It was a great way to spend the day away from the heartache of the usual routine.

Just a bike

The last couple weeks have been full. I have been a lot of places, seen a lot of things and observed the inside scoop of how Christian TV is filmed. There have been a lot of things that have tugged at my heart lately but today we were able to be part of something beautiful.
Yesterday when we were out doing home based care we saw a patient whom we had been told wanted to go to the hospital. This man has recently become a Rubatano patient. He became a patient after his very old sister met us on the dirt road one day. She knew that Rubatano volunteers walked that road on that day and she waited around to catch us. She spoke with the volunteer we were with and we decided to go to the home to see this patient. We walked up and down some hills on the small dirt path to this humble house. There we found a very ill man. He complained of abdominal pain (with a very enlarged spleen), nausea, vomiting, and a cough. Our options were few. We are still unable to give out medications and he lives too far from the clinic/hospital.
Yesterday we saw him and he seemed to have been drastically changing. He is now very thin- very frail. We discussed in-depth with the volunteers what we could do for this man. After much discussion we came up with our best solution. Today we carried out the plan. Three volunteers got up early and went to the man's house with a bike. They then put the very frail grandpa on the back of the bike and pushed the bike down the tiny dirt path to the main road. There we met them and drove him to the hospital. What a sight to see these dedicated volunteers pushing this ill man on their bicycle.
This afternoon we went back to the hospital to pick up the man and his wife. We drove them back to the dirt path where 2 volunteers waited for us. We then positioned our patient on the bike and off he went...pushed back up the hill to his house. It was incredible.
That inspires me. That is dedication. That is beautiful, that is what it means to care for the community. Just imagine…



I have been trying to upload pictures but this is the only one I had luck with so far.
These are some boys we met on a trail after there big hunt.

Bend or Break

This is just a quick note to touch base since it has been awhile. It's a busy but exciting week here. One of our friends from Hands at Work in SA is here with us now (which is great) and we'll pick up 7 more people at the airport tomorrow. There's a Pastor and film crew coming to Mozambique to do some filming of the work that is happening here with the home-care I am working with. They will go back to Canada and make an hour television program to raise awareness, prayer and financial support for Hands at Work and Rubatano in Mozambique. I will be sure to get the information out as to when this will air so you can see where I am and who I work with. It is all very excited.
Leading up to this there has been a lot of planning. As we know, plans are often changing- especially here in Africa. The best bit of advice I received before coming here is this..."You need to be flexible. If you don't bend, you'll break!" We are finding that to be VERY true."
There were 3 major things that we needed to plan before the arrival of our guests. #1: Hotel accommodations, #2: Rental cars, #3: Translators. Well, this is how week started. Last night we found out the hotel gave away our reservations as there was a big group that came and booked all the rooms (after WE had to write a letter requesting reservations and WE had to give the hotel written notice that we wanted to rent rooms. Weird). Then, we found out one of the translators got called to go do some translating in the capital city so she's unavailable. Lastly, one of the rental cars (which we were getting from the hotel) doesn't have insurance on it. Thankfully, God sorted all these issues out and they do have a place to stay (which may be better than the original place), we do have enough vehicles and Carlos did find another translator. So, as of right now, Tuesday evening, we think things are under control. Who knows what tomorrow will bring! Along with everything else I am learning I am also learning to not stress out and to trust that most anything can be worked out. There promises to be many more stories like this...please pray for things to continue to come together and to be a success. More later...

Special Hat

Santos is one of my favorite men here in Mozambique. We first met Santos when he came to South Africa for the Hands at Work Africa conference. Since our initial meeting we have shared many laughs. Although Santos can only speak a few words of English, and my Portuguese is still quite limited, we still manage to get by. The day we showed up to the Rubatano Center and Santos was wearing this hat I laughed so hard. He didn’t realize it was so funny. When I asked him why his hat had a hole in it he first said, “It’s for carrying,” and he took it off, put 2 fingers threw it and swung it in his hand. Later that day I was still laughing about it and he smiled and in his broken English said, “It’s a ‘special’ hat!”
Yes, it is special and I love it!