I'm a bit of a technology buff - my wife would probably protest at the qualifier "a bit of". But over the years I have collected various pieces of electronic equipment that have proved useful in teaching and evangelism. We had another of our popular movie nights in September when we screened the recent MGM film, "Luther" dubbed into Portuguese. That one was easy to put on because we could use the mains power supply at the school where we show these movies. All I needed was my data projector and laptop, one amplifier/speaker, a second loudspeaker, and a long power cable. September also saw our annual conference in Moatize and I suggested that we screen "The Cross and the Switch-blade" on the Saturday night. This was a little trickier as we don't have electricity at our Moatize church. Thus I had to use a small petrol generator and an even longer set of cables so that people weren't disturbed by the din of the engine. Hundreds of people turned up to these two screenings so it was well worth the effort of lugging all that equipment in and out of the car!

In actual fact I showed one other movie last month, although this was more of an experiment. We have 22 churches in this part of Mozambique and there are a few of the smaller ones that for one reason or another I have never managed to visit. In order to get round these churches before the oncoming rains make the roads impassable, I have arranged a number of church visits for the middle of the week. One recent Tuesday saw me careering down dirt roads and traversing boulder-laden river beds to reach one of these villages. Rather than opt for a conventional church service, I decided to show a 20-minute-long cartoon on the life of the apostle Paul and make this the basis for my subsequent teaching. However the roads were such that my data projector would have shattered into a thousand fragments and the petrol generator would have threatened to turn my vehicle into a fireball. So instead I opted for an old computer monitor, my trusty (and rugged) laptop, one spare car battery, and a power inverter to change the 12V from the battery into 240V to run the monitor. So there we were, miles from anywhere, with 80 people piled into a small church, learning and understanding who Paul was and why the gospel was so important to him. I doubt that any of the children had ever seen a television. Yet through the use of multimedia and technology the Bible came alive to them in a new and gripping way.

We would like to take this opportunity to say a sincere thank-you to those individuals and churches that support us financially and in so doing help to keep us here in Mozambique. The Elim financial year ends in September and I found it interesting to study the figures from our support fund over the past twelve months. What has been personally encouraging is the growth in support from individuals, both in one-off gifts and also in the number of people taking out standing orders. We are also grateful to the churches in Ireland for backing us and enabling us to take on a few projects even beyond our existing budget. If you would like to learn more about how you can support us financially, you can contact the Elim Missions head office. Alternatively you can find further information on the Downloads section of this web site.

The days are ticking down. Not to Christmas, mind you, but to the arrival of our first ever co-worker. Mel Price is an Occupational Therapist and is coming out to work alongside us for six months. Mel is from Hereford but has been attending Cardiff City Temple and is due to arrive on the 17th October. We hope that she will be able to develop our children's ministry, running developmental clinics for mothers and pre-schoolers as well as organising children's Bible clubs for older children. This is going to be quite a tough assignment - Mel will have to cope with enormous language and cultural barriers. She doesn't know anyone here and she doesn't speak either Portuguese or the local African language. Moreover we are about to come into the hottest time of the year with the midday temperature already hitting 40 degrees. But we will do all we can to help Mel make a go of this challenge. We have found a very capable interpreter for her, and the plan is that she will buy a small motorbike or moped so that she is independently mobile.

In these newsletters we try very hard to tell it as it is. As in every walk of life, we have our own share of disappointments and failures. Back in July we mentioned that we planned to start a new congregation in Matundo, a densely populated area within the city of Tete. We appointed an evangelist and he started visiting the area, making contacts with people and looking for a convenient venue to start Sunday meetings. At first everything seemed to go well. But then something changed in the heart of our would-be preacher. He stole a quantity of Bibles and sold them in the market. He visited the woman at whose house we were hoping to hold our meetings and stole from her as well. Thereafter he tried his best to disappear. We eventually tracked him down and recovered some of the property taken, but clearly the reputation of our church was badly damaged. Several months on, we are ready to try again, albeit with a different leader. João Cafuliza, my co-pastor at our international church, has been meeting with people in Matundo and looking for a suitable venue. We hope to have Sunday services and midweek meetings up and running by the end of October.

I would like to end with a reminder about the postal service here. We have previously mentioned that any parcels should be sent by registered or recorded delivery. This does cost a little extra but ensures that the item actually reaches us. Sadly around half of the parcels that are sent unregistered are stolen en route and there is nothing that we can do about this. Letters and magazines seem to be less attractive to thieves and these may be sent as ordinary mail.

Grace to you

Gregory and Sharon Kane
Elim International Missions