During June to September, we had a constant flow of visitors – Calla and Hetta Botha, Will and Elize Viljoen, Koos and Petro Ritter, Herman and Berdine Smit, Wilhelm Els, Cliff van Dyk and Beulah Greyvenstein all came to visit us. We enjoyed every one of our guests’ input in our daily routine here at Chandame. Early mornings started with devotion en praising the Lord before starting our day.
We went to the farm we received from the government (900 hectares), where we would like to plant maize, soya, potatoes and other vegetables, but the land needs to be deforested before we can start any farming there. We noticed however that the locals here did not replant any trees to replace the trees they felled, and decided to plant 5 trees for every tree that we fell. If we do not do his, Mozambique may one day be without any trees. This shows again that sustainability is a major issue in Africa that needs to be addressed, and we feel privileged to be here to tackle this issue with the locals.
We are also busy building the solar toilets at the clinic, and the ceiling and plumbing are next in line. All the men also helped Jannie with building our bedroom and modifying the kitchen, which will enable us to finally move out of the caravan.
While the visitors were here, Elize and Petro started knitting classes with the women. They enjoyed it very much and I decided to go on with the classes, so every Wednesday Marie Smit from Vila Ulongwe comes over to teach them. They are now busy knitting blocks so they can make handbags. The group’s name is Chisomo, meaning Grace.
At the 14th – 17th of August, we again had our yearly womens’ meeting at Chimwala. The topic this year was: “How to be a witness for the Kingdom of God”. 1,200 women attended the meeting and it was a huge success! All the women went home on Sunday afternoon fIlled with joy and the Holy Spirit!
In September Wilhelm Els visited us again to teach the principles of “Farming God’s Way” to the locals – an easy and inexpensive way to farm sustainably in Africa. The locals began to understand this way of farming. With Wilhelm was Beulah Greyvenstein and Cliff van Dyk. Beulah, a 82 year old lady, had a calling to visit the Mozambique missionaries and pray for them. At the end of her visit she told us she was going to pray for the women of the missionaries – if the women were strong, then their husbands would also be strong. We need lots of prayers here in Mozambique… Thank you to everyone praying for us!!
One of our missions here in Mozambique is to help the missionaries with whatever they needed – especially mechanical work. In September 2014 we went to Jac and Hessie Smit near Chimoi, where Jannie helped to fix all the machinery (like generators, pumps, tractors, digger loader etc) on the farm. They are going to start harvesting their mangoes mid November so everything had to be in order.
Our travelling here was however not without instance. On our way home to Chandame, our bakkie’s alternator broke in the middle of nowhere. We tried to source one, but someone stopped and gave us a second hand alternator. Jannie had to modify it to fix it in our Ford. After four hours we were on our way again. As soon as it started to get dark, our headlights went out, and it was too dark to drive. Jannie again made a plan – he started the small generator at the back of the bakkie so that it could charge the battery, and then we had working lights again.
As we then went further on our way, a big truck drove on our side of the road while busy overtaking another truck, which meant we had to drive off the road to avoid a collision. We made it and satan did not prevent us from going back to Chandame to spread the Word and work amongst the people. Our God is great, strong and mighty and there is nothing that He cannot do!!!
Finally, we would like to thank you again for your prayers, your financial support and all the visitors that were part of our mission – this means so much to us.
Job 19:25 – “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and in the end, He will stand upon the earth”
Love
Jannie & Susan