Josiah came back for half-term, Samuel fell sick with malaria, we had another wedding, Sharon's third mosquito net distribution was a disaster, Samuel got better, Gregory put the finishing touches to this year's promotional DVD, we screened the Jesus movie to an enormous crowd deep in the bush, people in our church donated blood, Daniel's happy because his Dad's taken over the youth work at our International church, and Gregory's gearing up for a month-long evangelists' training programme. Phew, I'm exhausted even thinking about it.

If you want to, you can jump straight on to Sharon's Joke of the Month . But if you can spare a few minutes, I would really like to unpack some of the above. We value the prayers of our friends and supporters (not to mention their emails!) and we believe that specific, targeted prayer is more effective in the long term.

Okay, so the bride is allowed to be late to her own wedding. But what about the minister who has to run the service? Or how about the family of the bride and groom? The last time we organised a wedding at our International church in Tete, everyone was more or less on time except for the bride who rolled in an hour and a half after the advertised start. So on the occasion of our church treasurer, Stephen's wedding, I was assured by him that his fiancée would be no more than 30 minutes late. Unfortunately I awoke on the morning to find that our car had a flat tyre. We then hit the congested Tete bridge at just the wrong time and spent 40 minutes sitting in a queue waiting to be allowed to cross. Yet when we finally arrived, a mere ten minutes before the start time, there were no more than five people in the church, and two of those were the decorators!

The wedding eventually passed off smoothly. Stephen pitched up after about an hour or so and his bride turned up another twenty minutes later. Various guests and family members trickled in while we worshipped God and then moved on to the wedding vows. People were still arriving after the guest preacher had finished speaking but by the time the food was ready to be served the place was packed. Stephen and Emilia seemed very satisfied with their special day and you can see a lovely snapshot of the happy couple on the photos page of this website. But there's just one little thing that I can't get out of my head. We have another wedding scheduled for December and I can't help but wonder what would happen if I was to aim to arrive a couple of hours late!

Sharon wrote last month about her mosquito net programme and a lot of people have since visited our YouTube channel at http://uk.youtube.com/user/ElimMoz to watch the video we posted there. Since then she organised with our church leaders to visit Chinheche, a rural community that's perched on the side of a mountain, and to distribute our remaining nets among the most vulnerable in that community. A date was set and the village chief actioned to prepare a list of names. Yet when we arrived, we were stunned to discover that no one was waiting for us. The pastor confirmed that he had spoken with the local chief and he thought that everything was organised. And yet it transpired that the chief hadn't informed a soul about our visit. After a long wait, the whole sorry tale came out: the village chief was appointed by the ruling political party; our Elim pastor happens to support a different party; and with the elections coming up, the chief didn't want anyone to think that they were receiving mosquito nets from the opposition. It's a crying shame when party politics gets in the way of keeping people alive but that's the reality of life here. So, scratch Chinheche, we'll try again somewhere else!

Of course saving lives doesn't have to depend on funds from rich donors in foreign countries. The New Testament is full of examples of ordinary people making a difference within their own communities, sometimes even in the face of gruelling poverty. The reality of our Christian faith has to be demonstrated through tangible acts of kindness. That's why we invited the blood bank from the hospital to visit our International church one Sunday in October. There is a chronic shortage of blood throughout Tete province and tragically far too many people die for lack of a blood transfusion. So we were keen to repeat the blood donation session that we ran last year and to encourage our church members to save the life of a stranger. Sharon taught for a couple of Sundays about giving blood and our people were ready and willing. But on the actual day the official from the blood bank turned up with a bunch of trainees and then promptly disappeared, leaving them in charge. One of these young men was tasked to give a speech about what would happen and it soon became obvious that he didn't really know his facts. By the end of his talk, he had scared off most of our congregation with his horror stories about how dangerous it was to give blood. Afterwards, even though Sharon and Stephen were first in the queue, it was obvious that we had lost our momentum. In the end 13 of our people gave blood, which is still good, but we had been hoping for more like 30. Nevertheless we made a stand and our people responded. Our Saviour gave freely of his life to rescue each of us from sin. Giving blood to save the life of a stranger seems a fitting thing to do in return.

Thank God, our children normally enjoy excellent health. Yet last month Samuel succumbed to malaria and the speed of his decline scared us silly. We all sleep under mosquito nets and our children take a weekly tablet that's meant to reduce the likelihood of their contracting what is a very common illness in this part of the world. This is the first time that Samuel has had malaria and the wee fella's body took some time to work out how to fight the sickness. He wouldn't eat or drink; any fluids we got down him were quickly vomited back; and he was so miserable and lethargic, he just wanted to sleep all day long. And yet once he began to get better, he was soon dancing and chattering as if he had never been ill in the first place!

And then there's Josiah, our non-resident teenager who's away at boarding school and who's slowly learning that it's a good idea to communicate once in a while. We broke him out of school for half-term week and it was good to have him around the house again. He seems to have adjusted well to the routine of boarding school, has made a few friends and is running a weekly Bible study for a group of younger boy boarders. What I found most interesting was the number of changes Josiah observed in the month and a half that he had been away. I know that we keep ourselves busy down here, but I didn't think that our lives were quite that frenetic! By the way our boys now have their own YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/MozKaneBoys

With November upon us, I am busy, busy, busy with an evangelists' training school that's running every morning for the duration of this month. I've been promoting this for some time now and I was really quite anxious about how many people would be willing to commit to such a long programme. This morning was exhausting but tremendously satisfying and I can't wait to see what happens tomorrow! It's a funny thing about church life in Mozambique but there isn't a great deal of evangelism that goes on. In fact quite a lot of so-called church growth is simply congregations swapping one denominational name for another. And it's not all that unusual to discover that several of your church leaders (never mind their congregations!) have never actually been born again. That's why Sharon and I put so much time and effort into evangelism, preaching the gospel ourselves and equipping others to proclaim that same message with boldness, imagination and clear understanding.   

Grace to you

Gregory and Sharon Kane
Elim International Missions

• Thank God that the new church plants in Missão Pedro and Capirizanje are going well. Pray for Samuel and Araujo as they head up these new ventures
• Pray for Josiah as he returns to school. He's somewhat swamped with coursework as he has more than one term's worth to catch up
• We give thanks that our Samuel recovered from his bout of malaria. Pray that we might all enjoy good health
• Pray for God's blessing on Stephen and Emilia as they start their married life together
• Gregory has taken over responsibility for the youth group at our International Church. Subsequent meetings have gone well and the young people have been active in evangelism and in attending various seminars. Pray that some other adults would rally round Gregory, so that in time he had hand on this responsibility to others
• Pray for the evangelists' training school that it would be effective in training and releasing evangelists. Pray that Gregory would have the stamina he needs to get through this very busy month