Easter week and week end

It has been an interesting and different week for us with a new training of trainers from the OMS pastors and a 4 day weekend. Rachel and I started a training series with 16 OMS Mozambican pastors who are becoming facilitators for the MAI microenterprise course we teach for WR volunteers. It meets Tuesday, Thursday mornings and all day Saturday. This week we both did Tuesday and Saturday, with Rachel doing Thursday all by herself. It was interesting to watch her teach with a real sense of purpose and enjoyment about what she was doing. We talked about it later and she said that she is really feeling comfortable in these trainings and it is something she is having fun doing. Generally she doesn’t like standing up in front of people and speaking, but sitting down and sharing is much easier for her to do.

I went out to Chokwe and the chicken raising communities to provide the necessities and assistance to the various groups and persons working with the small businesses. I am really starting to want to find someone who can take over the details of helping coordinate the groups, the various supply issues and payment schedules. We are looking to build in one more community, but need to find some way to transport materials as the trailer we used last time is fully occupied until mid May. There is a bigger truck that could be made available, but we would have to hire a driver as you need a different license to drive each kind of vehicle here.

We had Friday off of office work, but I had to go to Manhica as we were starting the second house there and I wanted to deliver some feed and check out the technical guy, letting him do the training and I would observe. Well the chicks never did arrive as I left at 11 am to get back to Maputo by noon. It seems the chick delivery guy is not into communication and if he does communicate he is not wanting to tell you how late he is really going to be in arriving at your location, so everybody loses a lot of time waiting around for him to arrive.

The reason I was trying to get back to Maputo was to try to get an 8 year-old orphan out of the dump where he has lived all his life. One of the people we know helps with an orphanage and said they would be willing to talk to the child and see what they could do. When I finally got ahold of him, he said he couldn’t come out to the dump just then as he had to deal with a personal situation regarding his house. It seems the landlord had promised his flat to someone else and he had to get out at the end of the month. Something I guess you can do here if you want to get a renter out.

We got up at 5 am on Sunday morning to go to an Easter sunrise service. It was nice to meet people there and the sermon was good, plus we did get to see the sun rise. Afterwards, we went home and had some breakfast and Rachel started cooking for a guest at lunch. Sarah Welch is here from Cedar Springs Church in Knoxville and we wanted to make sure she didn’t spend Easter lunch alone. Well, I took a walk down to the corner store to get some eggs for the banana cake and coming back in I smelled plastic burning in the stairway. Hope it isn’t our kitchen I thought. After I arrived in the appt Rachel said, “hey why isn’t the stove getting hot? Why do the lights go out when I start the toaster?” HMM! Not a good sign! After messing around with the circuit breakers a few times, we gave up and stuck everything in the fridge and went to church.

Since we couldn’t cook at home, and had been invited out to meet a couple that is working in Tete, we took Sarah with us and went to a new restaurant. Rachel and I got a dish for two and we brought some extra home. The trouble was there was still no power. Rachel took some perishables down to the neighbors just below (the Neilson’s) and we got Hans involved trying to troubleshoot our electrical system. He ended up knowing that there was another panel that you could open and find some fuses that were in-line before two other boxes and the electric meter. When we looked there we found the problem. Someone before us had just jumpered the fuse system with #12 copper wires. One of these wires had started to burn on one end and with the heat had started to melt the plastic. It was pretty well fried, but for now we could only clean the wire, re-jump it and go get some real fuses tomorrow. No hot water or stove until I get that fixed. At least we have light and computer. Somehow I thought I should be able to get away from home repairs by being a renter. No such luck in Mozambique.

Speaking of computers, it seems that our Net Cabo network has changed systems without telling the users and we have had no internet since Tuesday. If you get this you will know we can communicate with the rest of the world again. Vonage has not been working the last two weeks as well. Just when you thought it might be working, think again. Sorry, we had hoped to call on Easter and hear some of your voices.

To end on a more positive note, we watched a great video from Crag Hill on leadership this week. It really is appropriate for where leadership issues are at WR right now and helped explain potential direction for the future. There is a possibility we can help bring the Family Foundations ministries here to Mozambique. Please pray with us for wisdom, discernment and implementation of this possibility.

Well, Rachel thinks I am writing an epistle, so I guess it is time to stop. Love you all,

Steve and Rachel