Fun at work!

Last week one of the translation teams (for Macua) left Bethel to move to their new Remote Translation Office. It was a bittersweet goodbye since many of these friends have been here at Bethel for years. One of the translators is named Castro and his wife, Ancha, worked in the kitchen with me. Of course, the kitchen crew had a little going away party for her. Here we all are.

Here is Ancha and her husband Castro.

Here is Cremildo, Abilio and Alita. Cremildo apparently thought his "special" stance was noteworthy. And Abilio thought his 'sandals with socks while working in a kitchen' was noteworthy. Anything for a picture! 

Now. Let me just warn you. This is the single most fantastic video I have captured during our entire stay here. Sorry that some of it is shaky, but it is worth it. There is a traditional song that is sung in Tsonga or Tshangana (not sure which) when someone is leaving home. The sisters insisted I should preface the video by saying that this was outside of the work day so that you won't get the impression that they're a bunch of goof-offs. That is one thing I've noticed about the brothers and sisters here. They take their jobs very seriously and consider it a great privilege to be at Bethel. They are almost hesitant to show a smile or giggle for fear that you won't think they're serious. But the fact is, this was a fantastic peak into the warm love and joy that these brothers and sisters share. Enjoy!

Praia

Hello! Sorry its been a while since we have blogged. Time seems to fly by awfully fast here. Its hard to believe we only have a little over 2 weeks left. We're glad that we've made the most of our time here, yet there still seems to be so many things left that we wanted to do! 

On our way to "lala"

Fortunately, one of those things was go to a beach that was a tad nicer than the one across the street from Bethel i.e. not covered with trash. Last weekend a brother in our hall asked if we would like to go with him and his family to a beach. We enthusiastically agreed! I've decided I'm calling this beach "lala" because when we asked Joao Paulo (the brother who brought us) where the beach was, he said its "la la" which means sort of "over there." There's no official name for the site I guess, and I honestly have no idea how he even found the beach in the first place. Its in the middle of nowhere.  You literally drive down a road for a while, then keep driving down the dirt road, full of "ondas" which are like huge waves of speed bumps in a pothole filled dirt road (not a ride for those who suffer from motion sickness). Then you take a right down a smaller dirt road, through a village, then through a field, through some bushes and all of a sudden you're on the beach! 

This beach was unlike any I've been to before. Peaceful and serene do not even begin to fully capture the calm that surrounds you. We were the only people on the beach for a few hours. Around noon time a bunch of women came on the beach who were there to meet the fishermen coming in on their boats. The women take the fish, crabs, or shrimp that the fishermen have caught and haul it into town to sell. We stuck around for a while to choose our dinner. 

Fishermen coming in to sell their catch

Ian's first clam

In the meantime we were digging for clams on the beach and were fairly successful as a group (I only found 1 or 2, but I'm pretty sure that is relative to the effort I put into digging for them. Clam digging. Not my thing). We gathered maybe 1lb or so on our own and then bought another 3lbs from one of the women. We call these clams, but they tasted more like mussels to me. Their shells were really thick though and they did look like clams. Either way they were the most delicious clams/mussels I've ever had! 

This is the lady we bought the rest of the clams from.
Cutest baby on her back.

While "shopping" around for our fish/crabs, we saw some interesting catches. One fishermen had a huge eel, about 6-7' long which he was repeatedly bashing against his boat to kill it. Interesting. There were all kinds of big fish the fishermen were offering, but I thought this little boy had the most interesting catch. 

He was playing with it in the water like it was a toy boat or something. Poor fish :( 

We decided on some crabs. I suppose we could have caught about 5 bazillion little crabs on the beach, because there were that many. I kid you not. Check out this video. If you look towards the horizon you will see them. They were EVERYWHERE. Fortunately they seemed to scatter and run once you stepped in their general direction. Still, I was not a fan. 

However, I was glad that I had not come face to face or toe to pincher with any of these slightly larger crabs we planned to eat... 

Lucas (Joao Paulo's son) had his own catch he carried around. 


All in all it was a great morning. We headed out to cook up our fresh catches. However, Joao Paulo decided he had a hankering for chicken and french fries instead. To our surprise we stopped at Costa do Sol on our way home. Its a sort of famous restaurant right on the beach. You can tell its sort of famous because I've never seen so many foreigners in one place here! I am quite glad we did because it was a fantastic meal. Sangria,  salad, calamari, and a massive plate of fish, shrimp, lobster and french fries. 

Needless to say we were all stuffed by the time we left. Fortunately we were past the biggest "waves" in the road, otherwise that would not have been such a pleasant drive back! 


We went back to their house and had crepes with honey and cinnamon for dessert. Then we watched Happy Feet 2 together. It was great. 


Since we were so stuffed from the restaurant, the family insisted we come back Tuesday after meeting to eat all the clams and crab we had bought. 

That was a fun night. We ate the most delicious clams ever and listened to fardo music. I think I forgot to mention this family is from Portugal. Joao Paulo works for a European company that has various branches around the world. When he heard they were considering a Mozambique office, he and his wife and son volunteered to be sent here. They've been here about a year and love it. There are quite a few families in our congregation who have moved here from Portugal in order to help in the field ministry. They are a great asset to the congregation. 


After all that talk about food I'm starving! Hope everyone has a great weekend. More later!

The 14th Class of Bible School for Single Brothers in Mozambiqe

Last weekend, the 14th class of the Bible School for Single Brothers graduated with much rejoicing. Many traveled to Maputo for the joyous occasion, including family members of the graduates from all over the country as well as missionaries and those in the traveling work. On this special day, it would be the first time that each graduate would receive an assignment during the graduation program. The graduates were anxiously anticipating their new assignments as revealed by their serious faces.

The graduation program was quite moving and was followed by a reception staged in the branch's garage. Hors d'ouvres were served and the graduates treated the guests to more spirited singing of two kingdom songs (video at the end). All of the brothers and sisters were filled with such joy on this special occasion--they were laughing non-stop, they were posing for pictures, passing babies around and playing with children.

The graduation reception in the branch garage

Sheri and I with Marcelénio and Mesaque (Meshach)
They sat at our table for morning worship during the school

Sheri with Francisco Coana

Sheri with Eluisa from Brazil

Here are the graduates singing at the reception:

Polana Cimento

Our congregation that we were assigned to is called Polana Cimento. Its in the city and is a double kingdom hall (1 hall upstairs, 1 downstairs). There is also a missionary home right behind the kingdom hall.

I wanted to share some of the pictures of the friends in our congregation. 

Some of the kids from the hall.
4 of them are bible students and come to the meeting on their own and always comment...without their parents!

This is Charles and Stefanie.
They are missionaries here from France originally.
They've only been here for about 8 months, but they love it.

This is Nora getting ready to leave.
All the moms carry their babies in a long piece of material called a  kapulani.
They use it for many things...a baby carrier, a blanket, a skirt, a towel, a hat...whatever they need at the moment!

Here's another mom and baby, front carrying :) There are lots of babies in our hall!

This is Gabe and Karen Dries.
They've been here (from Patterson) about 1 year and  a half.
They give us a ride to all the meetings and field service.

Here I am with all the foreign sisters in our hall.
Left to Right: Stefanie (France), Maria (NY), Karen (CT), Suzanne (Portugal)

Walter and Maria.
He was one of the instructors for EBIS (Bible school for single brothers)

Casimiro e outro irmao que nao me lembro o nome! 

That's all I have for now. We had the graduation for EBIS yesterday and we took about a million pictures so I will try to put those up later this week.

9 Years Later...

Not to get all mushy and sentimental, but seriously, who would've thought 9 years ago we'd be celebrating our wedding anniversary here in Mozambique? Definitely not me!

At any rate, in a funny coincidence, one of the other American couples here has the exact same anniversary as us! Same day, same year! Weird huh? We thought we could go out to dinner together or something but then we realized we're all either broke and/or without transportation. So instead, Ian and I had dinner in our room. Fortunately for us, it was Matapa for dinner, which I love (its a very traditional Mozambiquan dish made with shredded squash leaves with coconut milk and crushed peanuts, served over jasmine rice). So that was fun. Plus one of the other sisters heard it was our anniversary and dropped off a little card and a bottle of beer and some cashews. So sweet of her.


In other news... I started working in the accounting department this week. Right now I'm basically just doing a lot of data entry type stuff that had gotten rather back logged. One of the things I did was enter all the congregation contributions for the past couple of months. Since the internet is not necessarily familiar or accessible to all in the country, nearly all of the congregations make a bank transfer to the branch, then send a copy of their deposit slip and their form indicating the allocation for each fund (i.e. Kingdom Hall construction, Worldwide Work, special funds like Assembly hall projects, etc.). Then we enter this information into Admin2000 (an enterprise management software designed by some brothers that pretty much all the branches now use to manage basically everything from accounting to scheduling haircuts) and match the electronic bank transfers with each congregation's contribution. In fact some congregations still send in cash if they don't have access to make a bank deposit or transfer. 


Something about handling all those handwritten forms made me feel especially close to the brothers all over the country. Just seeing the forms and knowing what it took for them to get to me here was kind of touching. Plus, just imagining what a sacrifice it is for the brothers to make the small contributions that they do. This really helps to reinforce the appreciation I have for the Kingdom Hall construction assistance arrangement for the poorer countries. Literally some congregations are only able to contribute a very very small amount (we're talking $10 or $20 USD) each month, which would never allow them to be able to fund construction or maintenance of a KH on their own. Its just so loving and wise of Jehovah to arrange for all of our brothers and sisters around the world to have a dignified place of worship, no matter what their economic circumstances.


I asked one of the accounting brothers if the forms all come in the mail and he kind of looked at me strangely and was like, 'well, I guess they could send them by mail. I never have used the mail here, but I know we have a mail system.' So apparently the way they send in the forms is through the monthly literature delivery route (a rota) that the brothers make from the branch here in Maputo to the rest of the country. Once a month a truck loaded with literature is driven from the South Africa branch to the Mozambique branch (about an 8-10 hour ride). The truck is unloaded and then re-sorted and re-loaded onto smaller trucks to make the monthly literature deliveries throughout the country. Its pretty amazing actually. The brothers said the trip usually takes anywhere from 5-8 days, depending on which route they are assigned to. The brothers along the route are waiting patiently for the deliveries each month in designated places along the way. Sometimes they end up waiting hours and hours, but they won't leave and miss their delivery!


Anyhoo, we miss everyone back home. Can't believe our time here is already half way through! Time is definitely flying by, but we can't wait to see everyone again. Love to you all!