Choices, and Hope.

Personally, I don't like too many choices. When there are too many good things to choose from, it's hard to decide on just one. Which is why I had to smile when I saw the first-ever food menu posted at the intensive seminar this week. Now that's a good menu! Straightforward. I also liked that someone was considerate, creative about the content, and went to the effort to write it up.

Translation: SBF (Faith Bible Seminary): Menu/Notice Board

Lunch (but actually means "Breakfast", in Mozambique terminology)

*Pina Bread, Large (baked with firewood in a clay oven in Pina, a neighboring community).
*Sri Lanka Tea (not from a neighboring community. Not even from a neighboring country!)

Big Lunch ( Mozambique terminology for "Lunch")
*Pemba Beans (Not a neighboring community, just further north in Moz.)
*Baue Rice (also from further north)
*Quelimane Orange Juice (large city further north in Moz)

As you can see, there's not many choices. But in rural Mozambique, where hunger is rife...especially now as rains are just arriving and crops still being planted--people are just happy for whatever food is available at all.

So, the dust has been flying (figuratively speaking, since it's currently raining) here this week with the busyness of seminar plus us trying to organize the many, many last minute things we need to get done before we leave on Thursday.

Dwight sharing in the general session in the NEW general sessions room.

Attentive listeners.

After a week of intensive class time and learning,

certificates are handed out to those completing their course(s).

Today, these leaders all head back to their homes. For some, this means a 2 day ride in very cramped, overloaded vans. Many of them are from rural areas where living conditions difficult, and there is hunger. As they study however, they become better equipped to address these issues and help bring hope to their churches and communities. Hope is a wonderful thing to share!

And speaking of which, I need to share another thing that made me (all of us) smile this week. One of our partnering churches (Fort McMurray Gospel Assembly, in Canada) found a very creative way to celebrate this Christmas and share hope with people in Mozambique.

For donations made toward Unique Christmas Gifts,
cards with those gift items were hung on beautifully lit Christmas trees in the church lobby.

This gets my vote for "Most beautiful Christmas Tree, 2011".

Before I end this post, I need to share one more item on the "choices" topic. I was busy organizing my little medications/camp bedding store room here in our house yesterday and when went to fling a pillow on the top of an already very high pile, something strange caught my eye. So I got up on a chair and to my dismay, at the very top I discovered this extensive and craftily spun spider web. It even has an entry tunnel and all. Ni-i-ice. I shudder to think of the size/shape/look of that spider. I dislike spiders more than I dislike too many choices.

So right now especially, I don't like my choices. Do I get rid of him with a:

*Broom?
*High-powered vacuum?
*Can of Baygon?
Shoe clobbering session?

Just too many "good" choices there...

May you have hope, and only good things to choose from this holiday season.

But mostly, Hope.

On Pause

It’s that funny time of year where the busyness of life gets put on a longish pause for Christmas celebrations. If Christmas falls mid-week, it tends feels like a weekend, which is a bonus because you still get the weekend anyway. If Christmas falls on a weekend there's still a bit of a bonus because then things start unwinding from Thursday onward. So either way, Christmas creates a pause in most people's routine.

The "Christmas pause” lends itself well to taking stock of the past year’s (and years’) events. I always find myself comparing where we are now to where we were a year ago, 5 years ago, and so on. This year, the reminiscing drove me to scan some old black and white photos of some of my childhood Christmases.

They say that many things throughout our lives are measured by our first experiences with them. I'd say that is also true of Christmases.

Here’s a photo of one of the earliest Christmases I remember, set in the beautiful coastal mountain range in B.C., Canada.

(My brother, my sister, and me...with my first medical bag :))

The air was fresh, the snow—perfect snowman/snowball quality, and the smell of wood smoke often hung in the air from some or other home’s fireplace. THAT…has been a tall order for subsequent Christmases to meet, especially considering most of them have been spent in the tropics. Snow and snowballs are a bit of a rarity here!

But the wonderful thing about Christmas is that it is not only celebrated on the outside. It is celebrated on the inside, in one’s heart, as well. And while I find that my earliest Christmas may have the upper hand when measured on the outside, on the inside, each and every subsequent Christmas has been celebrated with a much deeper appreciation for the Child who was given to us whose name is: Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

Since the week has been put on pause for the last few days, I’ll post a few photos of some of our pre-pause and mid-pause moments.

Tony and Leila, friends from Maputo, came to spend a few days here last week.

Leila enjoying a few moments with the ladies and children at the mission's grinding mill (below), located by the school and new clinic.

While showing them around, we popped in and checked progress on the mission school's health post.

Pindurai, one of our sponsored students who has an artistic flair, busy painting the walls.

While on the veranda one night last week, I discovered a most beautiful sky just waiting to be photographed. I didn’t even come close to capturing its awesomeness, but here are some of my humble attempts.

Above photo: part of Orion at the top and the moon peeping through the trees at the bottom.

Moon behind the trees to the right, and a few cloud puffs floating by.

Our orphaned klipspringer, who is still with us, goes “on pause” quite often when he needs a break from his busy life of bottle-feeding, grazing, running, jumping and bunting.

He has a fine pair of pointy little horns starting up, so we’re busy devising a scheme to handle the bunting part before we get seriously jabbed! Him bunting is cute, for now, but it won’t be for long.


(If you look closely you can see the one tiny horn poking out above his eye, just to the right of the black diamond on his forehead.)

Last paragraph = eeby jeeby ☺

This is our buggy, spidery time of the year where the difference between a “swept and de-webbed” house and a "buggy, spider webbed" one is measured in mere seconds. All you have to do is turn your back and they get busy moving back inside. And I’m not kidding about that.


Thankfully this one was outside. This guy spun his fabulous web across our driveway during the night. We took the web down for obvious reasons. Sorry big guy :S

That’s it for now. Happy Holidays everyone. I’m going on pause for just a while longer!

Try the berries and get smart

It’s time to update my blog, but it’s hard to be creative today since my brain’s been immersed in “Management Control in Nonprofit Organizations” mode all week. It’s one of the electives I’m doing toward my BN and although it has been informative and highly challenging, it has not been particularly fun. Accounting was not a pre-requisite for this course but it should have been--and I’m no accountant. Every inch of progress I've made so far has been through much stress and hours of researching accounting terms and principles and their application. Ugh!

I’d like to complain about how difficult this course is, but I can’t. My family won’t let me. You see, I home-schooled our kids from Grades 1 and 2 to 12, which gave me plenty of time to hammer certain ideals into their minds, like:

“There are few truly smart people. Some just try harder than others.” Or:

“Math (or whatever) isn’t difficult, it’s just different.” (Paraphrased quote from Saxon Math textbook)

My favourites, which I made up myself, were:

“If you can get a D, then you can get a C. And if you can get a C, then you can get a B. And if you can get a B, then you can get an A.”

But my favourite of all times was:

“If you aspire to be something besides a street-sweeper one day, hit the books. If not, you can get to work on your sweeping skills right now. And, boy, this house could SURE use a good cleaning!” (I have to admit, I could get right into this one. It’s a tough one to cut short. Worked every time, too. Heh, heh.)

These are the kinds of things home-schooling moms use to prod their I’d-rather-be-outside-playing kids along with. And now that our kids are in university, do you think they keep those famous quotes tucked away in their subconscious minds? Nope. If I so much as breathe the word “difficult” in relation to any new concept, I’m reminded by them (and by Dwight who also has this quote well memorized): “It’s not difficult, it’s just different.”

So please bear with me while I try to pull my mind out of “different” long enough to post an entry here.

On Saturday, ASAM (the Mozambique mission) held its annual general meeting where we presented all the reports, budgets, etc. that we had all been working on feverishly for weeks. We decided to hold the meeting at Selva rather than cater it ourselves.


It was a great day. Here’s the board:


On our way to the AGM, we dropped Francisco and Mibia off at Chitundo (about ½ hour away) where they will attend Grade 6. These are among the first orphan children to take this step and that feels like a big stretch to us and their granny (middle) who accompanied them to help them get settled. They were your typical teenagers away from home for the first time—excited!

They will share this new home (that is now even further along and nearly complete) with a caregiver-granny and her own younger orphan grandchildren.

I couldn’t resist getting a photo today of this elderly woman who is doing work-for-food.

She washed up some camp dishes in preparation for visitors we’re expecting in a few weeks, then discovered the berry tree nearby and got tucked into them. I snapped a few photos, which she laughed and clapped her hands at when she saw them. Then we had an interesting little conversation…she spoke local dialect and I spoke Portuguese. We had no clue what the other was saying but we had a great laugh anyway. It’s nice that laughter is universal ☺ She motioned me to the berries on the tree. I’d never tasted these before, but decided to brave the experience since she and others who are familiar with indigenous trees were eating them with no ill-effects. They are a bit tart and taste, well, berryish. I’m calling them “Query Berries” until I can figure out what they are. I'm secretly hoping they'll make me smarter for my course...

Here, another work-for-food lady helps weed the pineapple patch. When I showed her this picture of herself she also laughed and clapped her hands. And again, I laughed along.


This is how pineapples grow. Cute.


Okay, shall we end with a creepy-crawly photo?


There are tons of these in our backyard and I don’t know what they are called either. But don’t worry, I won’t touch them.

Anyway, I should run for now. I still have 2 chapters, one more assignment and a final exam to go, and I really should live up to all those great ideals while I wait for the Query Berry effect to kick in! 

Challenges and scary stuff

Some weeks start off with a bang and then just keep going. This has been one of those!

On Monday, after devotions, a couple approached the socorristas (health post workers) and I with a sick 1-year-old child. The child had been sick for 6 days already and had been seen both at the health post and the nearest hospital where he was given Tylenol (paracetamol) and worm medicine for “stomach ache”, since that is what the father stated was wrong with him. When I asked the dad what the child’s symptoms were, he said, “He has a stomach ache”. A quick glance at the child told me his problem was more likely a raging pneumonia though. “Does he have a cough too?” I asked the dad. “Oh, yes, he does.” It was a great teaching opportunity, so we did a quick list of his symptoms: fever, rapid respirations, grunting, listlessness, cough.

“What do you think this looks like, guys?” I asked the socorristas.

They thought for a moment, then, “Pneumonia” one of them said tentatively.

“Yep. I think so too. Sometimes you can get thrown off by what someone says, so don’t ever forget use your powers of observation.”

I was glad we could send them on their way with prayer, some good antibiotics, Tylenol syrup and rehydration mix.

Recently, some new drugs (cotrimoxazole (antibiotic), nystatin suspension (antifungal) and albendazole (worm medicine)) have been added to the socorristas’ essential drugs kit which they receive from the health department each month.
They went for an orientation to these new drugs last week, but there was a glitch in the system and the training never happened. They had a quick introduction to them, then were sent back with the meds and told "You have a Canadian nurse there in the bush who can give you very good training on these meds!" Hence, an extra duty was added to my "to do" list and soon, so they could begin to use the new supplies! I had to put a few other jobs on the back burner that day, but it is sure nice to have access to more meds since we deal with such sick people who often don’t have the option of going to bigger hospitals.

As for those items that went on the back burner…well, they sort of stayed there for the remainder of the week because other more urgent needs kept cropping up, like getting photos of the feeding program, a visit to an orphan home, a trip to town to pick up renewed work permits (which weren’t even ready), minor work injuries to treat, and so on. Oh yes, there was another fire on the property this week as well, though I’m glad I didn’t have to go help put it out.

But we’re not ALL about work here. Sometimes we have fun too. I wasn’t sure if these photos of the ongoing weekly darts competition between the guys should go in here under “challenges” or “scary stuff”. Both categories apply, so I’m putting them here at the tail end of the week’s challenges and right before the scarier stuff.

The Dart Challenge

Goal:

To get your darts to go to a very specific section on the dart board. (You need to do this with greater accuracy than your competitors if you expect to walk away with a shiny trophy for the week.)

Game Rules:

1. You have to stand behind the line (drawn with white chalk so you can't possibly miss it).

2. You have to hit the board, accurately--preferably, whilst standing behind the line. (This part really messes with my accuracy. From a foot way, I'm good. Much further though and my wayward darts aren’t healthy for the walls or anything/anyone else nearby. That's why I’m just a spectator.)

Helpful Hints:

1. Intimidate opponents (well, at least the camera) by making faces.


2. Line up that dart in front of your eye just so before throwing it. This increases accuracy.

3. Lean into your throw (to make this effective you will need to stick a foot out behind you for balance).

4. Hold your mouth just right while your dart sails to its rightful target.

Take that fine trophy home. If you didn’t win the trophy, challenge your opponents to another blistering game next week!

Moving along here (long post). For those of you who don’t like creepy crawlies you will want to skip the next few photos. I will, however, be putting cute-kid photos from our feeding program right at the end of this post, so don’t close your eyes for too long.

Scary Stuff:

I found this guy on my kitchen counter (!) the other night when I went to turn off the light before going to bed. Usually I’ll just smack a spider with my shoe if he’s somewhere he shouldn’t be, but this guy was too big to smack. So I grabbed a large glass mug instead to trap him under. The mouth of this glass has a diameter of 3 1/4 inches if that helps place things in perspective.

(A face only a mother could love :()

Once I was finished taking pictures, I had to figure out what to do with him. For some odd reason, I felt rather sorry for him so decided to let him go—in the direction AWAY from Kim’s tent...on the OTHER side of the house.

In the morning I showed one of the local staff the pictures I took. “Oh,” he said, “those spiders bite like crazy! They can even leave their ‘teeth’ in you. Their bite is like the bite of a snake, very painful and you can even die from it.” Nice. Good to know. (Aaaaagggghhhh! I should have killed it!) Here’s hoping he doesn’t find his way back and if he does, that he’ll remember my kindness to him. Of course, I was only kind because I was ignorant, but he doesn’t know that. :)

Okay, it's safe to open your eyes now for the cute kids!

Hamming it up for the camera...

They love having their photos taken, even if only their hands get in the shot!

Faces, well, all the better!
Friends
Fernando the Great Cook
Do they come any cuter than this?
Or this?

"Running water" at Mucombeze Interior Primary School

Preschooler who fell asleep while waiting for lunch. I like the MCEL (cell phone company) sticker on his forehead.
Get me, get me!

Smiling even though his friend is teasingly pulling his sideburns.

That's it!

Tips of the week:

1. Trust your powers of observation.

2. If you observe a large spider, consider killing him.

3. Love people...especially the little ones!

TTYL