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Sharon's Turn to write
The Apostle John wrote, "I have no greater joy than to
hear that my children are walking in the truth." It is
the joy of a parent whose children walk in the ways in which
they were raised. It is the joy of a pastor whose church
members live in holiness and truth. And it is the joy of a
missionary who sees national leaders standing for what is
right and good. I have had a good dose of that joy recently.
This month I set aside two Saturdays for HIV seminars. The
first was held in Matundo, the high density area of Tete
city where Pastor Cafuliza leads the local congregation. The
second was in the bush and took the place of our regular
month-end seminar there. In total we reached 100 people with
this vital teaching. The programme each time began with an
overview of the disease. This was not prolonged as it soon
became clear that there was already a good understanding
about AIDS and how it is spread. However the incidence of
HIV in Mozambique is rising year on year, so obviously there
is a big gap between understanding and behaviour. Hence we
spent the large part of the day teaching about Christian
marriage. Both Gregory and I have been over this ground many
times, he teaching men and I teaching women. What was so
exciting this time around was that both seminars had a
mixture of men and women in roughly equal numbers.
Those who have no experience of African culture will find it
hard to appreciate the force of this, but for us it is a
major breakthrough. Traditionally such intimate matters as
marriage and family values are not discussed in mixed
groups. Furthermore, husbands and wives do not talk together
about their inner feelings or about what happens in the
bedroom. Many homes are in total chaos because of this lack
of communication. In this part of the world men are
generally expected to have many sexual partners, wives are
powerless to challenge their promiscuity, and the church is
often lacking in confidence to speak forcefully about such
issues. We believe that opening the channels of
communication between husbands and wives is a large part of
the solution to the AIDS crisis. I was rather apprehensive
setting out deliberately to cross such a boundary. Would the
people be offended? Would they be too shy to contribute to
the discussions? However, to my great delight they threw
themselves into the day with gusto. We split them into
groups (still mixed sex) and tasked them to come up with
things husbands and wives could do together to strengthen
their friendship, ways they could show love and respect,
ways to say "I'm sorry", and reasons why passion dies in a
marriage. In one sense I was not bothered what answers I got
back; the exciting thing was that they were talking. I hope
that over the coming year or so we can build on this
foundation and begin to see a real change in family life.
But beyond all of that was a greater joy, which was to see
Pastor Cafuliza speaking boldly in his own right about
marriage and fidelity. He often interprets for us from
Portuguese into Nyungue, and long ago lost his embarrassment
in talking about the subject. But there is a huge difference
between interpreting for the missionary - in which case you
can 'hide' behind him or her - and standing up and preaching
your own message. Joao has clearly got hold of what the
Bible says about God's standards and is willing to proclaim
them with a passion. I was thrilled to listen to this
teaching being delivered by a local man, and have confidence
that when it comes time for us to move on, he will continue
to teach accurately and with conviction.
We thank you for your prayers for Josiah sitting his two O
level examinations. He sat the final paper on 1st June. He
seems to have done well and we are not anxious about the
results. We were particularly impressed by his behaviour in
his second RE paper. It was scheduled to last one hour but
there were other students sitting longer papers at the time
and the invigilators wrote Josiah's allowed time as 120
minutes rather than the actual 60. At the end of the first
hour he stopped writing, attracted the attention of the
supervisor, pointed out the error and handed in his work.
His comment to me when I met him from the exam was, "It
seemed even worse to cheat in an RE paper than any other!"
On the practical side of the ministry, the church members in
Moatize are rejoicing in the recent improvements made to
their church site. We have a large, well built church there
on a huge plot of land. However, the use of the church was
greatly restricted by lack of municipal utilities. Some time
ago the Elim church in Portadown, Northern Ireland made a
generous donation so that the church could be connected to
the water and electricity supplies. One of the church
deacons took responsibility for coordinating this with the
local authorities. The water was connected during our
furlough and just this month the electrification was
completed also. These facilities will make a big difference
to the church, allowing them to plant a garden, helping in
catering for large gatherings, facilitating in showing
Christian films, and enabling meetings to be held at night.
Pastoral life is not all joy, as many of you well know. We
learned this month that the child of one of our pastors has
contracted HIV from a contaminated blood transfusion which
he received a year or so ago. The child needed this because
he became anaemic following a bad dose of malaria.
Thankfully the availability of anti-retroviral drugs has
changed the picture of HIV, in that it is now possible to
live many healthy years even with the virus. The child
started on ARVs this week, and we are hoping he will respond
well. Nevertheless it is a great sadness to the parents, and
we can only sit with them in their pain.
One of the members of our city church lost her job in a hair
salon this week because she refused to work on Sundays, to
lie to customers or to offer sexual favours to influential
men. Not only was she fired, but neither has she been paid
her final salary. We were encouraged when she said that the
teaching in church recently had strengthened her to do what
was right. Just two weeks ago Gregory preached on the Sermon
on the Mount. The verses, "You can not serve God and Money",
and "Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you
and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me"
were a timely source of strength to her.
I would like to close with a comment about finance. The cost
of living in Mozambique has risen by almost 50% in the four
years that we have been here. Taken together with the recent
devaluation of Sterling, it became clear that we could no
longer continue to live and minister with the budget that we
were working to. Accordingly our HQ has reviewed our budget
and granted us an increase in funding. Clearly if they are
to afford this increased level of support on an ongoing
basis, we need to increase the amount of money being
contributed to our support fund. For this reason we are
asking that you consider prayerfully whether the Lord would
have you support us financially. Should you decide to do so,
the details of how to send the money are outlined in the
Downloads section of this web site. We are very grateful to
the many churches and individuals who already give to us
whether regularly or occasionally. We also greatly value
those of you who support us in prayer and who encourage us
by keeping in touch, but are not able to contribute
financially due to commitments to other areas of the Lord's
work.
Grace to you
Sharon and Gregory Kane
Elim International Missions
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Prayer Requests |
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- Keep on praying for our
health, protection and safety as a family. We never take
this for granted.
- Continue to pray that I
will be granted permission to work as a doctor. It seems
I have now finally sent all the documents required for
the complex process to go forward. Please pray that the
application will be considered favourably.
- On 24 June we are
expecting a team of six people from Northern Ireland to
join us for ten days. Pray for them as they prepare to
come here. Pray that they will remain safe and in good
health during their stay, and that their visit would be
beneficial to them and to the Elim churches here.
- Give thanks for the
excellent two days of HIV training that Joao Cafuliza
and I ran during May. Pray moreover for lasting change
in the lives of those who attended.
- Pray for our church
members to remain strong in the very real and severe
trials of life that they are often called to undergo.
- Over the next couple of
months I plan to organise a further project of mosquito
net distribution, targeting different villages from
those we reached last year. This program takes on new
significance when we consider that using a bed net has
the potential not only to protect against malaria, but
also to some extent against HIV. Pray for the logistics
of this project to run smoothly and that it will be a
real blessing to the rural communities.
- I have started a weekly
Portuguese Bible study among the women in our
international city church. Pray that it will be well
attended and that the women will be strengthened in
their faith and will in turn reach out to their friends
and family.
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Sharon's Joke of
the Month |
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Speeding Juggler
A young man was pulled over by the Mississippi State Police
for speeding. The officer stepped out of his patrol car,
adjusted his sunglasses, and swaggered up to the young man's
window. "What chew driving so fast for boy? You going to a
fahhr? Let me see your license, boy." The young man handed
over his license.
Then the officer noticed that the back seat of the car was
full of large knives. The officer said, "Tell me boy, why
you got them knives on that there back seat?" The young man
replied, "Well sir, I'm a juggler." The officer spat some
tobacco juice and then he said, "A juggler; well you don't
say. Boy, put cha hands on the trunk of yer car; you going
to jail!"
The young man pleaded with the officer not to take him to
jail. He offered to prove to the officer that he was a
juggler by way of demonstration. He said, "You can even hold
me at gunpoint while I juggle for you." The officer
reluctantly allowed him to prove his point while he held him
at gunpoint.
Two miles down the road at Joe's Tavern, Billy Bub was
drinking it up with Jerry Lee Jones. Billy Bub soon left and
got into his old, rusty pickup truck. He proceeded down the
road trying his best to stay on the right side. All of a
sudden Billy Bub spotted the most unbelievable sight of his
life! He drove to the nearest phone booth and dialed the
number for Joe's Tavern and asked for his buddy, Jerry Lee.
When Jerry Lee got on the phone, Billy Bub said, "Whatever
you do when you leave that tavern, don't go north on route
109. The state police are giving a sobriety test that nobody
can pass!" |
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Gregory's Quote of
the Month |
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"You just need to be a flea against
injustice. Enough committed fleas biting strategically can make even
the biggest dog uncomfortable and transform even the biggest
nation."
- Marian Wright Edelman |
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