Update from Milange, Mozambique

It has been a while since we have had access to the internet, so I have been keeping a journal on the laptop. Here is what I would have been posting to the blog;

Let me give a quick update before we leave for our next venue. We had a really great day yesterday. It was our final day of the seminar and everyone really seemed to enjoy all the things that were presented. They gave words of appreciation and told us we needed to come back again. We are leaving now for Maone where Don will be preaching this morning. Maone is the BIC church center for Malawi. From there we will be going to Mangochi and that is where we will spend the next few days. I am not sure if we will have internet access or not, but if we do I will up date you on all the things happening.

We arrived at Maone and the children were out having Sunday school class. They were singing when we arrived and I think they were singing the song, We are Marching in the Light of God.” We were then taken into the room where they meet for church and there were around 80 people at there. They did a lot of singing and they wanted the group to sing, but we told then we weren’t prepared to sing. Don preached and he did the sermon on Jonathan. It was a wonderful message and the people seemed to receive it well. After the service was over we went outside and everyone came and shook our hands. We then walked around and looked at the new building site where they plan to build the church. After that we were taken back into the Bishop’s house and that is where they served us lunch. We had chicken, beef, rice, nsima, peas & tomatoes, and greens. Ken and Raina then went outside and handed out tootsie rolls. We left Maone and headed for Mangochi. It took us about three hours to get to Mangochi where the Miller’s live. As we were approaching where to turn for the Miller’s we all thought it was an alley and then we realized it was the road we were to turn on. Their house is very nice but we sure had no idea how they found it. When we got there they were having a missionary bible study and then they had tea afterwards. We didn’t realize that they were then going to feed us supper but we had lentil curry and it was very good. We were then taken to our rooms at the SIM guesthouse where we all stayed.

Monday we went to the radio station up the mountain. This FM broadcasting facility has been constructed under a three way partnership between FEBA (Responsible for programming), TWR (Responsible for the transmission), and SABU (South Africa Baptist Union who is responsible for the infrastructure). The station is very well constructed and has two very professionally designed and outfitted studio recording rooms. Another room has been set aside as a technical production room for editing and program production, but is currently not yet outfitted. Amos Siyabu who is the speaker on the Yoa program being recorded in this facility does the editing and production in a separate facility in Mangochi. At the present time the studio is still not licensed and can only act as a relay transmitter for TWR. When they do receive their license they are set up to be able to feed live from the studio to the transmission tower. At this point there is no practical way for The Tide to merge into the existing three way partnership, but there is an obvious need for Yao language Christian media outreach. We had tea and lunch with Keith, Christine, Hannah, Michael, Mary and Baby. Their house was amazing. They were serving with SABU. They had two jack Russell puppies that were absolutely adorable. Mary was their two year old daughter and she was a real handful. I think they didn’t know what to do with her. She seemed to bond with me and we got along really well. I sat on the floor and ate strawberries with her and tried to keep her occupied for as long as I could. She was definitely a feisty little girl and she had no problem fighting with her older brother. We left their house and went to a listeners club meeting.

When we got there we found out the chief wasn’t there, but we went onto the church anyways. It was a Baptist church which we went to. We stood outside for quite some time before we even went inside. We were taking pictures of the children and letting them see the pictures and the children just loved it when we did that. We finally went inside and eventually started the meeting. The women set on one side and the men sat on the other, so Raina and I sat together, but soon after sitting down I felt something biting me. I realized I was sitting near a bunch of ants, so I moved closer to Raina. We were sitting in the church for over two hours. It was actually getting painful, but the meeting finally ended. Amos was the speaker on two radio programs sponsored by FEBA. He was a real talker and didn’t seem to be able finish. I thought he would never stop talking and that is what took so long. He had many people give testimonies about his programs. I was very glad to get back in the van and head for the Millers.

By the time we got back to the Millers the girls had supper ready for us. We had chicken, rice and vegetables. We had cake and tea for dessert and it was all very nice. They also had homemade bread for supper and it was delicious. The Miller girls are amazing at all the cooking they do. We really enjoyed our time with them.

Tuesday morning we got up and went to the Millers for breakfast. After breakfast we went to the market to buy chitenges to bring back to the states. Raina even found a very pretty scarf to buy. We then walked a little further to the vegetable market and we bought bananas, tomatoes, and avacados for the trip to Mozambique. After we were done at the market Don picked us up and took us to see Lake Malawi. We went to Club Makakola and that is where Don and I were in 1994 with Mother and Dan. Dan flew us into club Mak back then. This time we had something to drink, banana bread and Chambo. We wanted the visitors to try some of the local fish and it is called chambo. After we were done looking around there we headed back to Miller’s for lunch. I had told Barb that I liked samosas so she bought some for us for lunch. They were wonderful and we also had split pea soup for lunch and it was delicious. It was a little on the hot side, but it was really good.

After lunch we left there and went out to another village for a Bible study. This is a village that they hold a regular Bible study. They were studying Ephesians and it was totally amazing at their Bible knowledge. We were there for around two hours and again we had a great time. I had a hard time staying awake for a while and I even dropped my papers once. I just had a really hard time staying awake. Part way through the Bible study the chief came. He was a very nice man, but he was also a very serious looking man. He really seemed to like it when I was taking his picture. We showed him the pictures after I took them and he really liked that. When we were leaving the village we took some more pictures of the children and they really liked that. On the way back to the house we stopped and Daud and Don bought some fried goat intestines to eat on the way home. I actually tasted on and it wasn’t that bad, but I didn’t like it the longer I chewed on it. Orville and Don really loved them and chomped them right down. The road out and back from the village was quite rough, but we made it. When we got back from the village we took the Millers out for supper. We went to this little restaurant that didn’t have a whole lot of choices. Most of us had chicken and chips, some had nsima and stew and Barb had chompo and nsima. We asked for cokes but they only had Fanta orange and pineapple. We then wanted to get 8 soft ice creams for dessert but they only had 6. We said that was fine we will share. We went back to Miller’s and said our goodbyes. They were such a wonderful family and we had an amazing time with them.

This morning we left around 7:00 for Mozambique. We were totally amazed when we got to the tea plantations. It was green and beautiful. We took quite a few pictures of the tea plantations and the mountains. It was such a beautiful sight. We ate bananas and cereal bars on the way. Orville shared his fig newton bars with us and I am sure it made my husband quite happy. It didn’t take us that long to get through both borders. On the Mozambique side they did decide to look through most of our suitcases. I was praying we wouldn’t have any trouble and we didn’t. As the guy was looking through our suitcases Youngson walked up and greeted us. We were quite glad to see him.