We flew from Belfast on 3rd January, escaping the freezing weather of our beloved islands just before the coldest spell hit. An exhausting 30 hours later we were met in Blantyre by Jackie Griffiths, one of the Elim missionaries in Malawi. Unfortunately, of the six bags we had checked in, only three managed to come on the same plane as us, and one of those was badly ripped. We thank God that NOTHING was missing from the bag. The other bags arrived two days later - thankfully intact - and the damaged bag was later repaired at the expense of Air Malawi. We truly thank God for bringing us and our luggage safely back to Africa.

Our anticipated two week stay in the Elim guest house in Malawi turned into almost a month as housing in Tete proved to be even more difficult to find than we had anticipated. Three times Gregory undertook the long trip down to Tete in order to recover our residence permits, search for a house and then get our furniture shifted from the container into the house. Meantime I stayed in Blantyre with the boys. We started to re-establish some kind of routine with home schooling after the term's break from that discipline during our time in Northern Ireland. I continue to thank God that the boys are so responsive and keen to learn which makes home school very much more pleasant than it might be! The second time of separation was particularly taxing. Gregory had a very hard time looking for accommodation, with many hopeful leads turning into dead ends. Daniel became unwell with a high fever and signs suggestive of pneumonia, which was rather scary at a time when Gregory was away and I had no transport. However, God turned that very much for our good as I was put back in touch with a Christian doctor who was in medical school with me and is now working in Blantyre. He and his wife later invited us for Sunday tea, and we all very much enjoyed renewing an old friendship. Furthermore, after alerting a number of people to pray for Daniel, he went to bed, slept soundly and woke up the next morning TOTALLY BETTER! His words were, "Well, I knew God would heal me but I didn't expect it to be that fast!"

The trials were not over though as Gregory had a minor road accident on his return, hitting a pedestrian who stepped into the road in front of him. He was going very slowly and the man only suffered slight bruising, but the police insisted on having him checked out at the local clinic, and then taking statements at the police station. Being foreigners we always feel more vulnerable in these situations, and we were concerned about the possibility of Gregory having his licence confiscated, or even being held overnight. However, since God had so categorically demonstrated his power that very morning in healing Daniel, we were determined that this incident also would end in victory, and prayed accordingly. Sure enough Gregory was eventually allowed to continue his journey with no untoward consequences other than arriving late and exhausted.

Finally last Friday Gregory picked us up from Blantyre and we moved into our new home. It is a wonderful provision at a time when housing in Tete is in extremely short supply and rents have gone through the roof in the past year. Of course the lounge resembled a junk yard with boxes piled high in no particular order. Some items had also been carried in a tropical downpour and got wet on the back of the lorry. I seriously thought I would not be cooking in my own kitchen before Monday. However God has put us in a lovely church family. Those of you who have been following our news for a while will remember we helped Philippa when she was in gaol in 2007, and helped Jane during her pregnancy last March by donating blood to her. When Philippa heard about our predicament she called Jane and the two of them were at our house at 8 a.m. on Saturday morning. I don't know how they located the boxes of kitchen utensils in the middle of the boxes of books, car parts, computer leads, clothing, bedding and school equipment. All I know is that they worked tirelessly all morning cleaning and organising all the kitchen equipment and I managed to cook lunch on Saturday in my own kitchen! As I type this we are still surrounded by boxes, partly because the house has no shelving and we are waiting on a carpenter to fit shelves before we unpack properly. However, the chaos is now under control and we are already starting to feel at home here. The house is not as spacious as our previous one, but is perfectly adequate for what we need. There is also a profusion of fruit trees in the back garden which Daniel, our resident monkey, is particularly delighted by!

Last Sunday we attended the international church that we planted in Tete, although we had advised them that we would not be leading the service or preaching. We wanted to see how things had been going in our absence. We were overjoyed by what we saw and heard. The worship was lead by a group who were united and had clearly practised together. The midweek prayer groups have not only continued but have expanded from two to four meetings a week. The preaching was biblically sound and encouraging. Most of the people who were in attendance when we left are still there, along with a good number of new faces. The Sunday school is still functioning with about a dozen children. And the bilingual format has been preserved so that the church is still solidly multi-cultural. We had been concerned that the Zimbabweans (who are in the majority) might have taken such a strong lead that we would come back to an exclusively English speaking church with no Mozambican members left. But the leaders took seriously the need to include everyone, and have continued to translate between English and Portuguese. In addition to all this we saw signs of tremendous growth in confidence, spiritual authority, and even translation skills in all of our key church members. My Bible reading yesterday was in 1 Cor 3 where it says, "I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who makes things grow." It gives us a profound sense of humility to witness how the Lord has made his church grow without us!

Over the coming days we will meet with our national executive, and with the leaders of our own congregation to get reports of the past 6 months and, together with them, to seek direction for the coming year. Our desire is increasingly to see the local people take more of a lead in church governance with ourselves having an advisory role. We also want to build a church building in Tete city so that we can move out of the rented classroom. And we hope to set up some new initiatives, in particular training young people in evangelism and sending them out to plant churches. In all that we do we need to stay close to the Lord of the harvest and listen to His guidance.

Grace to you

Sharon and Gregory Kane
Elim International Missions