Still in Pemba...

Hey Everyone,

Our plans have changed quite a bit. As of Sunday night, we were headed down to the flood relief area. The next day, plans got completely changed. We learned that the government was waiting on our response to the floodwork, and if we started flying in food, they would keep what they had been given by other countries! There are so many twisted politics here... Anyway, after a lot of prayer, the leadership here decided to forego any large scale feeding efforts and focus on evangelism and do what they can through the individual pastorships in the flood regions. We thank God constantly that this year, the government has let other organizations in the country to help the flood relief.

But a lot of good has come out of it already - over the last couple days, the team in the flood relief area has seen over 60 people come to Christ. One lady walked over to the team on her knees, and she left on her feet, completely healed!

For the time being, Carla and I have continued helping out around the base. Most of the time, we work 10-12 hours a day for 6 or 7 days a week. Carla's pretty amazing at organization, sewing, communicating to the Mozambican workers, etc. so she's been working very closely with
the hospitality missionary, trying to streamline the system and get everything set up for the summer months. Over 500 visitors come through Pemba every year, so the hospitality missionaries here are usually way overworked! I've been the IT guy around the base - apparently almost everyone's laptops were acting up in some way but no one knew how to fix them since the last techy missionary left, so I've been running around fixing and/or teaching people how to use computers. And satellite phones. And key cutting machines... Basically anything that the other missionaries don't know much about and I can learn from an hour with the manual. Of course, these things aren't what we came to Africa to do, but we are so glad to be able to serve others in such needed ways! Later this week and next week, the outreaches begin, so we are both very excited about that.

For the last couple days, the entire base went on a 3 day fast for Rolland Baker, the head missionary here. He has been a hospital in America for several months and was not able to talk coherently or walk. On the third day, he was able to talk coherently and even walk around some! However, he needs continued prayer for a full recovery. Every weekday morning, we pray for an hour together with the missionaries. It's been an amazing time, and we see prayer request after prayer request get answered though sometimes it takes a week or two. Anyway, these are our current prayer requests. My mom and people who are squeamish should probably not read the last one...

Praises
Rolland's drastic improvement
Our health - Carla and I haven't been sick in a while
For the amazing friendships we have been able to make with missionaries and Mozambicans
We had $450 eaten by various ATM machines here, and the bank has refunded us for most of that!

Prayer Requests
Rolland's health - please pray for a complete recovery
There's a cyclone heading straight for the flood areas. Please pray that will dissapate instead of making a bad situation worse.
(and the last one) I (Jon) was cutting keys and got a peice of metal lodged in my eye. We got it out 24 hours later, but I'm still in pain and not seeing quite perfectly. Please pray for healing for that.

God Bless!
- Jon and Carla Reinagel