Oct 2006
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Sharon's Turn to Write
I opened my diary to review the past
month, and the entry on 1st September reads, "The day we found
the mouse that has been eating our peanuts, and watched our cockerel
eat a snake in the garden." Life in Mozambique may be
frustrating and challenging at times, but it is not dull!We are delighted to report that we finally have our own furniture which has been stored in Zimbabwe for the past two and a half years. We got clearance from the Zimbabwean authorities early in September. The following week Gregory travelled down, brought the goods back in a lorry belonging to the Elim High school in Zimbabwe (with the school's driver), accompanied the lorry back to Zimbabwe and then brought our car back. The whole exercise took more than a week, and was fraught with delays and arguments with corrupt officials from start to finish. Nevertheless Gregory and the goods ultimately arrived home safely for which we are very grateful. It was not an easy time either for me and the boys. That week there was a serious break down at the hydro-electric plant which supplies our power. This took more than a week to fix. The city borrowed electricity from other locations in Mozambique but the voltage was low and the supply erratic. The worst aspect of this was that the municipality could not pump water into the water tower so we had no water supply to our house for the entire week. Our night guard was fetching us water from a public tap in 20 litre (5 gallon) containers on the back of his bicycle. Then to cap it all Samuel went down with fever and vomiting 3 days before Gregory was back... it wasn't fun! But we got through it by the grace of God and the prayers of many of you. I was continually challenged by the instruction "Do not be anxious for anything, but in everything with prayer and supplication make your requests known to God." I made the requests known; not being anxious was far more difficult. As mentioned in our last newsletter we held our conference on the last weekend of September. While we were working in Zimbabwe we started to learn the meaning of celebration. In this regard working in Mozambique is very similar. The people love to gather together and have hours of lively worship and preaching. There doesn't need to be a reason to gather (this was not a business session) except to be together. The gathering started on Friday evening and went on until Sunday lunchtime. The churches brought contributions of maize meal, we donated money to buy animals for the meat, and the women took turns to cook. The meetings were held at Samoa, an hour's drive from Tete. We declined to stay up all night, but many of the people did just that. We invited our landlord to be the guest speaker on the Friday night. He is a senior deacon in the AoG church. Gregory accompanied him and he gave an inspirational message about being filled with the Holy Spirit to do the Lord's work. He also spoke about how the AoG organises itself, trains its pastors and funds its church activities and social programmes. The AoG was started in Mozambique in 1926, has a strong network of churches nationwide, and is almost entirely self-supporting. This is an encouraging and inspirational model for Elim as a young church in the nation, and our people came away from the evening with new ideas to pursue. We both spent the entire day on Saturday at the conference. Gregory preached twice. The first message was on the centrality and importance of the Bible, and he ran a Bible quiz on the life of Jesus which the people greatly enjoyed. As we expected, the Bible knowledge was poor but with so many people present there was always someone who knew the answer, so we avoided total embarrassment. His second talk was on Christian maturity and included yet another explanation of the importance of tithing in obedience to the Lord and to finance the work of the church. In between his two talks I gave a presentation on infant health, covering nutrition and hygiene. In the West this would be a peculiar choice for a national church conference. However, here all of life, including physical health, is seen as essentially spiritual, and it is taken for granted that the church has a right to address these issues. Added to that the need for such instruction is vast. One in five children dies before their fifth birthday, mostly from totally preventable or easily treatable causes such as malnutrition, diarrhoea, malaria, chest infections and vaccine-preventable disease. As time goes on I want to increase the health education part of my work. My vision is that the church should be an agent of healing and blessing in the community. But that can only happen when the church members themselves understand these things. The talk was well received, and we had very positive feedback afterwards, despite the fact that a violent storm blew up half way through and we all wondered if the roof was going to blow away! Thankfully it passed without causing significant damage. Sunday morning saw us back at Samoa for the final lap. Gregory preached again, basing his message on Hebrews 12 :1-3. He knew that many of the people had been awake all night and would be dozing off by this stage in the proceedings. Therefore he had 3 men running on the spot at the front, weighed down by heavy loads, or with their legs tied together with ropes. Each one symbolised a particular snare in the Christian walk: laziness, greed, or fear of the ancestral spirits. The message certainly kept people awake and there was a good response with around forty people responding to the altar call inviting people to repent. Finally about 3 p.m. the meeting was over, lunch was eaten and people started to head for home. We still don't quite know how to judge the weekend, since we were never sure what the purpose was in the first place! Certainly people enjoyed themselves, we heard no grumbles, and there was a greater sense of togetherness by the end. We would like to see fruit in changed lives and more mature churches, but only with time will we be able to judge whether or not those goals are being realised. We thank you once more for standing with us in prayer. We are constantly aware of the enormity of the task facing us, and we know that it is only by God's grace and presence that we are standing.
Grace to you Sharon and Gregory Kane _______________________ Sharon's 'Joke of the Month' * Proverbs *
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