When we arrived in Tete some two years ago, we were shocked by the low level of education of so many in this part of Mozambique. People fell sick and died from diseases that were easily prevented, but even the most basic knowledge of sanitation was often missing. Few people in our churches owned Bibles and even fewer actually read them on a regular basis. Many of our church leaders seemed ignorant of the well-known Bible stories and a number of leaders had clearly compromised their Christian witness through promiscuity and witchcraft. In all of our churches we had only one pastor who had any measure of theological training and he sadly died within one month of our arriving. All in all, it was a far cry from our previous experience in Zimbabwe where the church is mature and the people know how to look after themselves.

One of the key planks to our ministry here has been in the provision of training. This has included large conferences, correspondence courses, children's clubs and weekly Bible studies, often with a medical component bolted on. But it is our monthly leadership seminars that have arguably had the biggest effect in producing lasting change. A few days ago saw our most recent seminar at which 73 delegates participated in a very full and varied day of training. Here then is a overview of some of what went on.

Holy Communion
The day's seminar kicked off at 9am with registration and the payment of an admission charge of 20 meticais (40p) to cover the cost of lunch. There was a time of singing followed by Holy Communion, celebrated by the pastor of one of our village churches. When Ray Cotter was with us recently, he was delighted that we broke bread together on the Sunday morning, noting that this seems to be a sacrament rarely practised by pentecostal churches in this part of Africa. Ray was quite correct in his observation - pentecostal churches here tend to focus on loud congregational singing, preaching and praying for the sick, but for reasons that we have never quite fathomed the Lord's Supper is rarely celebrated. When we first arrived here, only one of our churches ever celebrated Holy Communion and that only one a year at Easter. Recognising this as a serious omission, we taught our people and thereafter made it a rule that the Lord's Supper should be held at least once a month, a practice that the vast majority of our churches have now adopted. But to keep this right at the forefront of people's minds, I ask a different person every seminar to lead us in the sacrament.

Funerals
Is it permissible to remove your shoes when entering a cemetery? Should one offer prayers to the dead? Is it contrary to the Bible to leave a jug of water on the path when walking away from a fresh grave? These were some of the questions addressed by Pastor Jolinho, one of the members of our executive, in the next part of our seminar. African traditional belief teaches that when a man dies his spirit remains in the homestead and that, unless his spirit is sufficiently honoured, it may cause sickness and various disasters among the living. As Christians we teach that these funeral practices are at best mere superstitions, at worst a participation in the worship of demons. There's a great deal of confusion as to which are admissible, so we were grateful to Jolinho for his many years of pastoral experience.

Day of the Harvest
We spent a good part of last year teaching on the importance of tithing. Church offerings in this part of Africa tend to consist of a pile of the lowest denomination coins. In general this is not a case of the proverbial widow's mite - people have other money that they could give but everyone else gives the minimum possible, so this becomes the rule. For several months I spoke on tithing everywhere I went and I also wrote a study booklet in Portuguese that most of our leaders have since worked through. Then in June last year we held our first Day of the Harvest, at which time we expected each of our church leaders to hand in a 50kg sack of maize from their recent harvest. Although a few churches boycotted this initiative - and a few even left Elim because they weren't prepared to teach on tithing - most of our churches took part and as a result they have enjoyed having extra funds in their coffers. This year we have extended the scheme to include ordinary church members so Araujo, our national treasurer, was tasked to explain the new system at this most recent seminar. He explained that each church would be set a target for the number of sacks of maize they should bring in, with our larger churches being expected to contribute proportionally more. Araujo then went on to distribute empty sacks to each of our congregations that people can fill with maize and hand in at this year's Day of the Harvest.

Preaching
For the past few months I have been including a section on structured preaching in these seminars. It came as quite a surprise when I discovered that most of our preachers spend no time whatsoever in sermon preparation - they simply open their Bibles and begin commenting on a particular passage, before turning to yet another verse once they have run out of things to say. In an attempt to address this, we have been looking together at the importance of prior sermon preparation and working through a number of structured exercises. I wish that I could say that this has been going well but the reality is most of our people never even finished their primary school education. Accordingly their study skills are limited and even when I split people into small groups, a lot of them still have blank answer sheets by the end. I seriously struggle with the difficulty of teaching people to study a passage of Scripture when some of them are barely literate. But a minority is benefiting from these exercises and for their sakes I press on.

Lunch
Why is it that wherever you go in the world you can buy coca-cola? It's certainly the case here in Mozambique. Our lunch consisted of a plate of rice and beans, accompanied by a reasonably well chilled bottle of Coke or Fanta. A number of women had spent their morning slaving over wood fires to ensure that we had food in our bellies.

Evangelism
Our church in Moatize doesn't have any electricity. I wanted to show a short video clip after lunch, so I brought along my portable generator and hooked this up to my laptop, data projector and  loudspeaker. Shortly afterwards, a fascinated crowd of men and women watched footage of our Easter passion play. As I explained to the gathered delegates, part of our work as missionaries is to introduce new and effective ideas. Street drama is an excellent way of reaching out with the good news of Jesus Christ, but for many of our church leaders the only model of evangelism they have ever seen has been through straight preaching. Hopefully the sight of the crowds that followed our Easter players will have persuaded them that there is more than one way to share the gospel.

Attitude and Reputation
The last teaching of the day was a straight forward talk on integrity in ministry. I began by reminding our leaders that Mozambicans have a terrible reputation among their regional neighbours for being thieves. Part of the reason for this is that the Bible has been freely taught in schools in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi, whereas in Mozambique it has been made illegal to do. Accordingly a generation has grown up here that is ignorant even of the Ten Commandments. I went on in my talk to recount some of the times that we have been robbed by 'respectable' church leaders who turned out to be wolves in sheep's clothing. It is a sad fact of life here that some people become church leaders in order to be able to appeal for material assistance from passing missionaries. After explaining what the Bible says about such false teachers, I changed the mood by recounting four very positive stories about local people who have impressed us with their dedication and willingness to serve. This led into a time of worship and prayer as we searched our own hearts and prayed for one another to have godly and sacrificial attitudes to service.

Giving and Receiving of Money
In order to allow as many of our leaders as possible to attend these seminars, I make a promise to reimburse their travel costs. So as soon as the meeting ends, a horde of people descended on a beleaguered Mario to demand their bus fares. However a good number also came to see me to part with rather to receive their monies. I recently experimented with printing a number of t-shirts that have the name of our church on them and a picture of an oasis. [Elim was the name of an oasis in the desert that Moses and the people of Israel passed through on their way out of Egypt.] The first batch of t-shirts sold out ever so quickly, so I went back to the print shop and ordered another 25 shirts in a choice of blue or yellow. By the end of this seminar these were also sold out or spoken for. It's exciting to see how far our people have come - two years ago I would have had cries of complaint that I wasn't handing out the shirts for free. Instead they were clearly proud to belong to Elim and prepared to dig deep in their wallets to pick up a shirt before someone else did!

Please Pray

Ray Cotter's visit went very well - even if we did get our car stuck in a hole halfway across a river and spend the rest of the day extricating it! Thank God for his blessings Thank God for the growing maturity within many of our churches and leaders Pray that this year's Day of the Harvest on the 15th June would be well supported and that our churches would reap the rich benefits that come from trusting God in the area of tithing Pray that we would see new evangelistic outreaches. Pray that our leaders would be creative and engaging as they proclaim the good news of salvation in Christ Pray that our people would be truly godly, willing to serve God and to serve others for the sake of the Kingdom There is much to do as we begin to make preparations for our furlough. Our goods have to go into storage, duties have to be handed over, and we need to find somewhere to live while we are back in the UK. Please pray that everything would fall into place.

We are due to leave Mozambique on the 09 July to spend six months back in the UK. We will spend July and the first part of August in England and Wales, visiting a number of churches and catching up with friends. Thereafter we will move to N. Ireland where we will be stationed at the Elim church in Lisburn. We look forward to seeing many of you during this time.

Grace to you

Gregory and Sharon Kane

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Sharon's 'Joke of the Month'

* High Tech Irish *

After having dug to a depth of 10 meters last year, Scottish scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 100 years and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network more than 100 years ago.

Not to be outdone by the Scots, in the weeks that followed, English scientists dug to a depth of 20 meters, and shortly after, headlines in the UK newspapers read: 'English archaeologists have found traces of 200 year old copper wire and have concluded that their ancestors already had a broadband communications network a hundred years earlier than the Scots.'

One week later, 'The Kerryman,' an Irish newsletter, reported the following: 'After digging as deep as 30 meters in peat bog near Tralee, Paddy O'Droll, a self taught archaeologist, reported that he found absolutely nothing. Paddy has therefore concluded that 300 years ago Ireland had already gone wireless.'

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Gregory's 'Quote of the Month'

* DL Moody on Evangelism *

"I look upon the world as a wrecked vessel.
God has given me a lifeboat and said to me,
'Moody, save all you can'"