Say Cheese...

Updating annual school photos on over 300 children is a bit like a wedding photo shoot, except no one is dressed in white. Thankfully...rural Mozambique is far too dusty to wear white! It also takes us weeks to get photos of all the children.

That's because although the majority of these children attend the mission's school (Grades 1-5), many are sponsored to attend external schools in larger communities so they can pursue higher grades. So there's a fair bit of tripping around to be done by Matthew (field office administrator, below) to get everyone's photo.

"Cheeeeeese...please?"
I can almost hear Matthew saying that to this cute preschooler.

Besides taking, uploading, labeling and resizing a gazillion photos, details like "grade, age, health notes, etc." are also updated. Oh, and the children write letters or draw pictures for their sponsors. The writing and translation of these letters is another big task, but one that can be quite entertaining and rewarding for us as we witness these children growing and developing the skills they will need for life.

This young man is one of our external students.
He's been in our program since he was small and is currently participating in the mechanics course at the mission. (below)

It's been a busy week for me, so I'm a bit sad that I missed out on interpreting. But I'm sure Joao (above, right) enjoyed it!

"Say cheeeeese, little donkey."

Last week, Dwight and I took a day to go pick up a ram (male sheep) in the Serra Choa which is about a 2 hour drive northwest of us. The purpose in getting the ram is to improve the "beefiness" of the mission's current sheep herd.

Dirt road to Serra Choa

Good to see a sign pointing to the local health center.

Loading the ram. He wasn't too impressed with this concept.

Thankfully he was a good passenger and didn't "ram" any windows out.
Helps that Dwight had a pen prepared for him to ride in.

At his new home.

I am including photos of some of our small burn victims receiving their warm, fuzzy blankets at the health post this week. I couldn't be there for the handing out and photo taking, but Celestino (one of the health workers) did a great job!

Beautiful smile, happy mom

Without the participation of everyone involved, both here and abroad, there would be a lot fewer smiles on the ground here.

Thank you, everyone!

Bye for now.

(PS: If you would like more information or if you're interested in school child sponsorship, please email us at sammoff@telus.net.)