Always Enough

Burnt Rice

2012-01-12T06:14:00.000+02:00

Last night we had fish and rice for dinner. I guess I had the electric burner on a little high, because the rice got a bit scorched and stuck to the bottom of the pot. The rest of it was fine, so we just scooped off the top and, after I put away the rest of the edible leftovers, I unceremoniously dumped the burnt bits into the trash.

Then I had a sudden flashback to another meal of fish and rice, a couple years ago and thousands of miles away from here.

In Mozambique we helped a vibrant jail ministry in our town, lots of prisoners turned to God to transform their lives and many came out as completely new men. A visitor from the States had been particularly touched by this ministry, and he helped fund it even after he returned home. One time he decided to send us enough money to make a meal of fish and rice for the entire prison of about 250 inmates, just to bless them. For hours the ministry team stood around two fires, one with a gigantic pot of rice and the other with a comparatively tiny skillet, frying up the mackerel in small batches of a 8-10 at a time. It took forever.

Before you can fully appreciate what this meal meant to the prisoners, let me tell you what their normal fare was. The staple food of much of Africa is a thick cornmeal mush, called xima, pap, massa, ugali, or sudza in various languages around the area where we were living. It didn't have much nutritional value, but it was cheap and filled the belly. At the prison they would add too much water, making it soupier and thus less filling, and throw a couple beans on top. Tiny portions. Once per day. If that were not bad enough, the guards were known to lace the cornmeal with tons of baking soda, which gave the prisoners diarrhea and made them feel weak all the time. That way, even if given an opportunity to escape, they probably wouldn't have the energy to do so. Always hungry. Always sick.

Finally the fish were all fried and we hauled all the food into the prison courtyard. The inmates lined up in a very orderly fashion, like 250 well-trained Oliver Twists, each carrying the item they used for a "bowl". Some had real plastic bowls or plastic containers, but many others had the cut off bottoms of jugs, some just a cup. They patiently waited in line, we served up the food in as large of portions as we could (and just trusted God to multiply it if we ran low before everyone was fed). Most thanked us with very appreciative smiles. They all quietly walked away and enjoyed their relative feast. It was all so organized and peaceful.

At the end, after the last prisoner walked away with his prized meal, we still had the bit of rice that was burned to the bottom (it's really hard to cook THAT much rice in a pot THAT big over an open fire without some of it getting burnt). Someone mentioned that there was a little bit left over and that they were welcome to have it...

Unlike the Oliver Twists of a few minutes before, no one came up to quietly ask, "Please, can I have more?"

On no. Chaos ensued.

At least 20 of the closest men all trampled over each other, yelled, punched, pushed, shoved, swarmed the pot and fought over those last little bits of burnt, barely edible rice. They were just that hungry. They were just that desperate.

We have no idea how good we have it. We will probably never know what it's like to be that desperate, to be willing to risk a black eye for the same thing I threw in the garbage last night.

"When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required" (Luke 12:47b).

We have been given. So. Much. What are we doing with it?

O Christmas Tree...

2011-11-27T08:02:00.001+02:00

First, some background information. When I was almost 12, myfamily decided to stop celebrating Christmas in the traditional (read:materialistic) way, and take it back to the bare bones of just rememberingChrist’s birth with no additional hullabaloo. My mom might pull out a littlenativity scene for the month of December, but other than that Christmas cameand went just like any other day. While I understood my parents’ reasons forcutting out the stress in buying and greed in getting gifts, losing the holidaystill made me a bit sad. Christmas has always been such a happy time for me, itmakes me think of family gatherings, good will and charity, thinking of others, and that it trulyis a greater blessing to give than to receive. I never really cared about whatI got, but I loved spending lots of time thinking and planning what to give—whenI was a kid these gifts were usually handmade crafts of mine. Now that I ammarried and have a family of my own (and in-laws who celebrate Christmas to aslightly greater degree than my side of the family), I decided to find a happymedium. I don’t want to go overboard and spend hundreds or even thousands ofdollars on Christmas, or make sure my kids get 20 gifts every year, or get stressed about making sure everyone I know gets something,but I do want to bring back some of that sparkle of joy that I always found inthe holiday.

As a brief side note, Jon’s family’s Christmas story is theexact opposite of mine—they didn’t celebrate the holiday for all of his growingup years and then suddenly decided to start when he was a teenager. To compensate, in college he kept notone, not even two, but THREE Christmas trees up in his tiny dorm room all yearround and wore a Santa hat all winter. On our wedding day, one of thoseChristmas trees mysteriously found its way into the backseat of our getawaycar, but I digress. I don’t know what happened to all those trees after we leftthe country in 2007, someone else moved all of our stuff out of our apartmentwhile we were gone.

All that said, I wanted a Christmas tree this year. Afterliving in Africa for the past 3½ years—where it was somewhere between hard andimpossible to find a tree—I wanted to do up my house “right” for a change, andin my mind that includes a tree. Yesterday we stopped in to Lowes to get aflorescent light fixture and I glanced at the real trees; the cheapest they hadin the respectable sizes were $16, which I didn’t think was that bad (I wasexpecting them all to be $40-$60), but Jon didn’t think it was important enoughto spend even that much (we’re a bit the frugal type, you might say). Ireluctantly agreed. Then today I was at Salvation Army…

First I saw a fake tree all set up and on display, but itwasn’t decorated. I asked the guy behind the counter if it was for sale, and hesaid yes. After conferring with another worker, he held up his hand with allfingers out. Five dollars. That was a bit better than $16, but the tree wasmissing a few branches… I kept browsing, and in the back I discovered one ofthose big cow-printed Gateway computer boxes full of that wonderful artificialevergreen—another tree! And this one I wouldn’t have to disassemble to get intothe car, another plus. I searched the box for a price and found none, so when alady with a Salvation Army t-shirt walked by I asked her how much it would be. “Oh,$3 I guess.” Score. I scarfed up the box (along with a couple strings of lightsfor 25 cents each) and was grinning all the way to the checkout. I was almostgiddy as I loaded it up into the car, I really can’t say it enough that thistree. Made. Me. Happy.

When I got home I unloaded it into the hallway and triedsuppressing my grin when telling Jon I got a tree—for only $3! I startedpulling out the branches, noting their color-coded tips… I pulled out quite afew branches… and the base… and the top of the tree… but no trunk to stick allof the branches into. That was nowhere. I knew I should have checked the box atthe store to make sure it had all the parts! So I ended up with this:

A heap of fake tree branches on the couch. I wished at that moment that I had bought the "expensive" $5 tree with a few missing branches. I really didn’t wantto spend any more money on the tree—we are, after all, the frugal sort—so Ilooked around the house for anything that might serve as a tree trunk to holdall those branches up. I eventually rigged up this:

This is the tubes from three rolls of gift wrapping paperstuffed with a tightly rolled strip of cardboard from the box of the fluorescentlight we got at Lowes. Finding all of those elements came very slowly, and withmuch trial and error and finding out that anything less can’t fully support theweight of the branches. So I got to know the awl tool on Jon’s Swiss army knifevery well as I punched many, many holes in the solid cardboard trunk:

Then I started inserting branches:

And voila!

I think it ended up a little shorter, bushier, and a bitflimsier than it would have with the manufacturer’s trunk, but I was stillmighty pleased with my little tree! Add those lights and a few Chinese knots:

All in all, I’m calling it a frugality fail but an ingenuitywin! Now just to find some more decorations… but cheap ones of course, we are,after all, the frugal sort :-).

Life and Choice

2011-11-22T22:03:00.001+02:00

I don’t really know why I’m writing this post, I’m probablypreaching to the choir as far as my known reader base is concerned. But thetopic of abortion and the recent debates and votes about “personhood” are reallybothering me right now, and keeps burning in my mind and I feel I need to ventit a bit.

People can choose whether to have children or not. Peoplecan choose whether to use birth control or not to prevent getting pregnant.Even if faced with an unplanned, inconvenient pregnancy people can choosewhether to keep the child or let someone else adopt and raise him or her. But Ihave no idea why it is even legal to choose to kill the child.

If I’m annoyed with someone, if they inconvenience my life,that does not give me the right to kill them. If someone at your workplacereally gets on your nerves, that does not give you the legal right to poisontheir coffee. If a student in your class is always disruptive and disrespectful,that does not give you the right to take them outside and shoot them. If yourbaby cries all night and you can’t stand another minute of it, that does notgive you the right to smother them with a pillow. I don’t see anyone picketingfor the legal right to murder people who make your life harder, whether they are children or adult. The publicgets outraged at people like Casey Anthony, and more recently Shelby Dasher,mothers who allegedly killed their already-born children, at least one onaccident when she was drunk. But somehow no one would even bat an eye if thosetwo women had instead soberly chosen to end those children’s lives before they were born.

There is the constant cry of “What about rape and incest?That woman didn’t have a choice to prevent that pregnancy!” and “What if thehealth of the mother is in danger?” Seriously, people? Let’s start with rape.Yes, a terrible crime has been committed. Yes, that woman’s life was probablyshattered. I’m not trying to be insensitive, it truly is a tragedy. But did thebaby commit the crime? No. So why is the baby the one getting the deathsentence? Punish the rapist, not the innocent. Again, if she can’t or doesn’twant to keep the child, adoption is always an option. Even so, statisticallyonly 1% of abortions are women who choose to end their baby’s life because theygot pregnant through rape or incest. One. Percent. Another 6% are from serioushealth risks to the mother should she continue the pregnancy or because the baby was diagnosed with health problems in the womb. Many times evenin the cases of the mother's health being in the balance, she could try to carry the child to viability as opposed tofull-term, and give the baby a fighting chance to live. At 24 weeks, just pasthalfway through a 40-week pregnancy, the baby has a 50% chance of survivalthanks to modern-day medical technology. If the baby doesn’t make it, at leastthe mother tried. So for every 7 babies who die these “justified” deaths, 93are killed for convenience.

Why is it that millions of people think that’s okay to endsomeone else’s life just because they are inconvenient and disrupt your life?How selfish can you be?

Anothercommon line: “It’s my body, so it’s my choice.” Wrong. It’s someone else’s bodywe’re talking about affecting. You are not your mother, you are a separateentity that came about inside your mother. Your baby is not you. He or she isanother new being that has come about inside your body due to choices that youmade. Whether to use or not to use birth control was your choice. If you chosenot to, don’t be surprised if another person suddenly enters your life. Thechild forming inside the mother is not “her body”. It’s a whole new somebody else.

When tallying up members of a household to receive benefitslike Medicaid, the government counts unborn children. They’re people in thehousehold. If a pregnant woman is attacked and injured in such a way that sheloses the child but she lives, it is still counted as murder. They’re people inthe womb. But if that same woman were to walk into an abortion clinic andchoose to end that baby’s life, that’s okay. Then it’s not murder, it’s “freedom of choice”. It’s only a person if she wants it.

How is that okay? Does anyone else see somethinginconsistent here?

By the time a woman even finds out she’s pregnant, there’salready a beating heart. That is life. That heart is made to stop beating whenan abortion is performed. That is death. Usually the purposeful causing of a human lifeto end in death is called murder and it is illegal, immoral, unethical, and justwrong. Most people recognize that. I love the “personhood” movement going on in several states. I’mfrustrated at the response, that it’s not getting the justice it deserves.Babies are people. Small people, but people nonetheless.

Another thing that just makes my heart sad is thinking ofall that lost potential in those lives. Hundreds of famous, successful, creative,noble, honorable, heroic people were unplanned pregnancies. Just think of whatthe world would have lost if their mothers had chosen to end their lives.Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Alexander Hamilton, and Eva Peron are just a handfulof people who were born outside of wedlock, unplanned, inconvenient to theirmothers. Oh, but what they have offered the world! Now think of the abortionclinic in your town, killing the next great inventor who might haverevolutionized transportation. The next great doctor who might have found acure for cancer. The next great leader who might have transformed a society. It’ssick. So much potential is being snuffed out before it can even begin.

Save the trees. Save the baby seals. Save the whales. Savethe endangered beetles. But kill your children. Is something wrong here?

//end rant

Happy Birthday

2011-11-14T22:00:00.000+02:00

Today is my 12^th birthday as aChristian. I remember November 14, 1999 like it was yesterday…

I grew up in a Christian family, read my Bible, prayed, wentto church, even lived on the mission field for 2 years, but never knew Godpersonally all that time. It was all empty religion: no faith, no relationship.It was similar for my older brother until his girlfriend’s fervent faith helpedhim realize just how shallow his own belief in God was, and he knew he wantedmore. He committed to a deeper walk with God and a life of serving him and wasbaptized in a river near our home.

His decision spurred me on to reflecting on my own faith, orlack thereof. I had actually grown quite mad at God over the years for all theprayers it felt He completely ignored. Any time I asked for something,anything, I seemed to always get the opposite. I prayed for sunshine, I gotrain. I prayed for healing in people, they died. I prayed for the salvation ofsome family members, they still don’t know God to this day. It felt like I didn’tmatter to God, that my requests were unimportant, and I thought He must notlove me very much. I never doubted His existence, I saw Him answer other people’sprayers miraculously. I just thought He loved everyone in the world… except me.

When my brother made that step, I finally decided to startreading the Bible as though it just mightapply to me personally. It wasn’t a textbook to whizz through for a test, itwas a letter from God directly to me. In that light, I read the Gospel of Lukeand tried to picture myself there amid the crowd, watching Jesus heal, hearingHim teach, feeling Him touch me. The morning of November 14^th I cameto the crucifixion, and it was the first time I ever felt God stir in myspirit. “I did this for you,” Hesaid. Wait, what? Jesus died for me personally,not just “the whole world”? Why? What was so special about me? Why would theGod of the universe send His Son to die for me? “Because I love you,” Heresponded.

Could it be true? Did He love me after all? I went outsidefor a walk to pray. We lived out in the country, and I found a hill in a fieldto try to talk to God, really talk to Him for the first time. I sat down nextto a small thorn bush on top of that hill, with thorns about 2”-3” long. Itmade me think of the crown of thorns pressed onto Jesus’ head right before Hedied. For me. I was suddenly overcome with memories of my sins, times I hadlied, stolen, been hateful and mean, names I had called my siblings, and Iwept. Those thorns and nails that pierced Him were my sins. I deserved thatpunishment, but He took it for me. I cried for a couple hours straight as allthe ugly low points of my life replayed like a tape right before my eyes. “All of that is forgiven. I love you,”God repeated to my soul.

Forgiveness washed over me in a tangible way. My heart feltlighter, a new joy entered me that I had never experienced before. I knew thenthat there was no turning back.

I walked back to the house in a daze, found my dad, andtried to explain to him what had happened. We talked for a long time, then Itold him I really wanted to be baptized too. We all piled into the van for asecond trip down to that same river, and we waded in. Yes, it was the middle ofNovember, and yes, it was very cold. I didn’t care. I wanted all those sins Ihad seen flash before me earlier to be washed away downstream, it didn’t matterif my flesh was uncomfortable, my spirit wanted to be free!

I remember that on the way back home, the family sang theold hymn “I have decided”, and it was so true. To this day, exactly 12 yearslater, it is still true.

I have decided tofollow Jesus

No turning back, no turningback

The cross before me,the world behind me

No turning back, no turningback

Though none go withme, still I will follow

No turning back, no turningback

Failure and Regret

2011-11-14T12:00:00.000+02:00

Caution: You might have a different view of me after readingthis post.

When I was growing up, I would probably name my biggest fearas the fear of failure. I hated, hatedfailing at anything. I remember one time my mom told me I had forgotten a choreand I cried. I had failed as a good daughter. I remember the first “F” I got ona test in Bible College and I cried. I had failed as a student. I rememberbreaking one of the biggest rules in my mission organization when I was on ashort-term trip, and I cried. I had failed as a short-term missionary.

For a long time, whenever I even heard the word “failure” I wouldcringe. I remember the first time I heard the song “Invitation Fountain”, wherethere’s a line that says:

All who have failed

All who are broken

Come to the Rock

Come to the Fountain

I was bawling uncontrollably.

All that seems petty now in light of my more recent failureson the mission field in Mozambique. I have so many regrets; I so wish I couldturn back the clock and do it all over again.

Missions is about relationships. I didn’t make any closefriends. Missions is about compassion. I hardened my heart. Missions is aboutgenerosity. I grew stingy. Missions is about forgiveness. I grew bitter.

I’ll never forget one little girl I turned away. Every weekwe went shopping in Beira, the biggest city close to us. I got so sick ofbeggars coming up to me in the streets, I would get approached dozens of timesevery day, on every street, at every stop. Of course they often targeted mejust because I’m white, and after a while I hardened myself to where I nevergave anything to anyone. Ever.

Then there was that one little girl, probably 8-9 years old,trying to sell little packets of peanuts for 1 met each (about 3 cents). Shecame up to me asking, begging me to buy just one packet of peanuts from her.She followed me all the way down that bock, across the street, and to thecorner where I waited for several minutes for my ride to come pick me up. Allthe while she kept asking, asking, asking me to buy some peanuts. I didn’t wantany peanuts, and I just wanted her to go away. She wasn’t “my ministry area”. Ikept telling her no, but she kept insisting.

I don’t remember what her face looked like, maybe because Inever even looked at her. But I remember her voice. It haunts me to this day.

“Please miss? Just one met? Please?”

“No. And I’m not going to change my answer,” I said firmly.She hung her head and walked away sad.

I could have easily afforded to give her 100 mets ($3), thatwould have made her day. I could have asked her name, if she had a family or ahome, if she wanted me to buy her lunch. I could have shown her compassion andlove, like Jesus would have, but instead I brushed her aside. I joined thecountless others in her life that said she was worthless.

Oh, how I wish I could find that little girl again andapologize and help her in any way possible, to tell her she is the daughter of a King, to show her His love. She was just one of the manytreasures, so dear to the Father’s heart, that I ignored, but she is the one Iremember the best. She was so desperate, and I was so mean.

Near the end of our time in Mozambique, I started a newministry that specifically looked for beggars to help and bless them, to givethem food and pray for them. It was partly me trying to make up for my failures,but it was so little, and so late. In our 3 years there, I feel I failedprobably 90% of the opportunities God gave me to be a beacon of light, hope,and love. Instead, I became hard, bitter, and cruel. All I can hope now is thatI learned from those mistakes, and that I won’t make them again.

I’m probably not a “goody-two-shoes” missionary, or evenChristian, in your eyes anymore. That’s okay. I don’t mind you knowing thetruth about me, that I’m not perfect, and that I fail. A lot. All the time. Ido try to learn from those failures now rather than just wail about them, butthey are still there, glaring like ugly flashing neon signs when I look into mypast.

“Then he will say tothose on his left, ‘Depart from me... ForI was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave menothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I neededclothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did notlook after me.’

“They also will answer,‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothesor sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘TrulyI tell you, whatever you did not do forone of the least of these, you did not do for me’” (Matt 25:41-45).

Jesus came up to me begging. I turned Him away.

Where God Can Be Found

2011-11-13T10:39:00.000+02:00

A few weeks ago I had a conversation with our Muslimhousemate on the topic of God’s omnipresence. He believed that God iseverywhere… except for places that are unclean and therefore unworthy of Him. Itgot me thinking of the filthy, dirty, smelly, horrendous places I’ve been whereGod’s presence was still clearly evident, and I told him about them. About thelittle church built in the middle of a garbage dump in Mozambique, where thepeople live in the dump because they have no other home, and they sort throughthe trash every day and try to find a few cents worth of treasures because theyhave no other job, and how the people in that little church loved the God whovalued even them. “For where two or threegather together as my followers, I am there among them” (Matt 18:20). Trueto His promise, He was definitely present there where those dump-dwellersgathered as His followers. There, in the filth, the stench, the flies, and thesmoke (from the burning trash heap), the omnipresent and accessible God waspresent and loving the worship coming from the voices of the “least of these”.

Okay, said my Muslim friend, but a bathroom? Surely the pureand holy God is not fully present in a bathroom. Such a place is unworthy ofHim.

I told him about my old pastor, an ex-Marine who had apowerful encounter with God that completely changed his life… while he kneltweeping on his bathroom floor. Even there, God met with him.

It made me think about how we are God’s dwelling place: “For we are the temple of the living God.As God said: “I will live in them and walk among them. I will be their God, andthey will be my people” (2Cor 6:16). The pure, holy, sinless God chooses tolive in me, an imperfect, struggling, sinful being. While that prompts me toendeavor to make myself more holy and worthy, at the same time it comforts meto know I don’t have to be perfect before He will meet with me. He meets mewhere I am, in my filth, sin, selfishness, pride, judgmental spirit, He seeseverything He hates in me… but somehow He still loves me. He still chooses to dwell in me, and asks that I abide in Himso that I can draw new life from Him and change the way I am. I don’t have tobe pure before He’ll come to me. When He comes, He makes me pure.

So where can God be found? Everywhere. Absolutely everywhere.

I can never escapefrom your Spirit!
      I can never get away from your presence!
If I go up toheaven, you are there;
      ifI go down to the grave, you are there.
If I ride the wingsof the morning,
      ifI dwell by the farthest oceans,
even there yourhand will guide me,
      andyour strength will support me.
I could ask thedarkness to hide me
      andthe light around me to become night—
but even in darkness I cannot hide from you.
   Toyou the night shines as bright as day.
      Darknessand light are the same to you

(Psa 139:7-12).

Life, Death, and Hope

2011-11-12T22:51:00.001+02:00

I was so excited my heart was pounding and my hands wereshaking as I held the pregnancy test and waited for its result to appear. Inthe allotted ten seconds I watched it slowly… slowly… show a plus sign! It was5 in the morning, and there was no way I was going to be able to go back tosleep!

Positive!

Children are a giftfrom the Lord; they are a reward from him (Psa 127:3).

Ever since Kyran, our first, was born, I have felt likesomething—more accurately, someone—wasmissing. Our little family didn’t quite feel… complete. I was happy and content, Jonis a wonderful husband, Kyran is a great kid, but it still felt like there wasa gaping hole that needed to be filled. I couldn’t wait to have another kid.

Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and donot hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matt19:14).

This was our chance. After enduring a pregnancy in athird-world country, I decided even though I experienced an enormous amount ofgrace that if given a choice I wouldn’t go through that again. We do want to endup back on the mission field someday, and it could be in an underdevelopedcountry again, but for a season we are enjoying the conveniences, foods,vitamins, and medical care that I couldn’t get during my first pregnancy. Sincewe’re planning on being here for a couple years, the timing seemed perfect tous.

Trust in the Lord with all yourheart; do not depend on your own understanding (Prov 3:5).

The day after I got the positive pregnancy test, Jon’sparents and grandmother just “happened” to come down to spend a day with us atmy parents’ house. Jon’s grandmother lives in New York and we hadn’t seen herin over a year, and both sets of parents only get together maybe once or twice per year, so it was really special that everyonewas in one place just in time to announce our good news. My due date wasMothers Day, 2012, how perfect was that? It was everything I wanted, dreamed of,and prayed for; I would get to have a winter pregnancy with a great littleinternal heater to keep me warm (I’m such a wimp when it comes to cold weather)and a spring birth before it got hot and miserable in the summer. Everything—I meaneverything—was perfect.

“My thoughts arenothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything youcould imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, somy ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than yourthoughts” (Isa 55:8-9).

I already had so many hopes and dreams for that little lifebudding inside of me, I pretty much went around with a permanent grin for weeks.Even though I wasn’t showing yet, I was already caressing my abdomen, loving onthe new person I so looked forward to meeting. I pictured a second little childrunning around the playground with Kyran. The fact that our family had alreadygrown was a constant reality to me, and almost all that I could think about.

You saw me before Iwas born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment waslaid out before a single day had passed (Psa 139:16).

Then, just before I was to be seven weeks along, I startedbleeding. Something went wrong, and the baby died and left my body. Everythingwasn’t perfect after all, and I was crushed. All those dreams I had socarefully built up came tumbling down around me. When it was all over, I had todeal with that constant disappointment day after day. I fought back tearsnearly every time I saw a baby or a pregnant lady.

Yet I still dare tohope when I remember this: The faithful love of the Lord neverends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; hismercies begin afresh each morning. I say to myself, “The Lord is myinheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!” (Lam 3:21-24).

Jon and I began to question whether this really was a goodtime to try or if God was saying it wasn’t His timing for us to have anotherkid right now. We took some time out to pray, and we both feel He’s said goahead. This week we went to a worship event at church, and as I was praying Isaw a picture of Jesus giving me a tiny baby, just big enough to fit in myhands. I still have hope. God’s mercies truly are new every morning. That doesn’tmean yesterday didn’t happen, it’s still there in my past and still a littlepainful, but God is still faithful. He will turn the ashes of my dreams intosomething beautiful, in His time.

The Spirit of theSovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me… to comfort allwho mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow onthem a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy insteadof mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair(Isa 61:1-3).

So here I am. Writing.

2011-11-12T17:42:00.001+02:00

It was the summer of 2008. Jon and I were attending the IrisHarvest School of Missions in Pemba, Mozambique. Shara was one of themissionaries working closely with Rolland and Heidi Baker, a young lady whoalways dressed and made up her face like a princess, even in the middle ofAfrica. She taught many of the sessions at the school and she had a powerful prophetic gift, so she would often pick people out ofthe crowd and give them words as she heard from God. One of those times, shesingled me out. “Carla, I see a huge quill pen behind you, I think you’resupposed to write.” I know she said more than that, but that’s all I rememberand that was the gist of it.

So here I am. Writing.

At some other point that same trip, we were in South Africarenewing our visas and we attended a worship/prayer night at the guest housewhere we were staying. A man we had never met before (and whose name I don’teven remember) said he also saw a picture of me, but he saw me as a giantpencil. He thought I should be writing.

So here I am. Writing.

It’s taken 3½ years to even start trying to obey those wordsgiven to me; I never knew what to write before. Still, I think somehow my experiences aresupposed to teach, encourage, or challenge others somehow, some way.

So here I am. Writing.

I have several friends whose blogs I follow consistently andfrequently find myself edified and challenged, so I figured this was a goodmedium for trying to do the same.

So here I am. Writing.

January-April in Dondo... Sheesh, did we go that long without an update?!

2011-04-19T16:02:00.006+02:00

Hello everyone! Sorry it’s been a while since we have written, life is busy, and life in Africa is no exception!

We have the great pleasure of my (Carla’s) sister, Zhenya, visiting us until we return to the States! It has been so good having her and her friend, Janie, helping us out. We picked them up in South Africa, and there are some amazing ways God intervened in our time there so I’d like to share the testimonies! So we first went to the capital city of Maputo to visit our friends at the Iris base there. From there Jon took a bus to Johannesburg to meet the girls and another friend at the airport on one day and I took a bus the next day to Nelspruit, a town just across the border where we often get our visas renewed. We met up in Nelspruit at about 11:30, and from there tried to find the Mozambican embassy (since we had always been given a ride to it in the past we weren’t exactly sure how to get there). It took us a while to find it, which was a little nerve-racking because we knew that all visa applications have to be dropped off before 12:00 noon. We arrived at about 11:55 but they still let us come in and fill out the forms, and there was also a discrepancy between our applications and our letters of invitation, but they accepted us and gave us the kind of visa we asked for! If you knew how unreasonable that embassy has been toward us in the past, you would understand how big a miracle that was that we A) were able to apply even though we were late, B) got the right kind of visa, and C) were processed within the same day!

God’s provision didn’t stop there, on the next day we were trying to return to Mozambique and met a few roadblocks… Jon had rented a car in Jo’burg and thought that the rental place where he could drop it off was on the same block as the bus stop, so he dropped us off with just a few minutes before our bus was supposed to leave, was going to give the car back then walk down to meet back up with us. But… then he found out the car rental place moved all the way across town 2 years ago and they hadn’t updated their information on the website. It’s a pretty big town, and he figured by the time he found the place, turned the car back in and had it inspected, found a taxi, and got back to us our bus would have long ago come and gone. All of us at the stop were praying our bus would come late, so Jon took the car back, and a guy at the rental place felt bad about his situation so he offered to give Jon a ride back to the bus stop. Jon got back to us about an hour after our bus was *supposed* to have left, and just as we prayed, it was late! He got on with us and we all journeyed back to Mozambique together.

Things back in Dondo are going pretty well, the new preschool is running smoothly with about 50 children attending. It’s great fun having a younger set of kids on base, as most of the boys in our children’s center are 10-20.

The new church building construction is finally underway। The foundation is laid and the first few layers of cement blocks are already making their way up. The new structure is being built around the old one, which will still provide a roof over the church services while the new one is going up.

Jon is still giving his filming and computer classes, which are going well. The guys in the class are enjoying making DVDs of evangelism outreaches and selling them, then the people who buy them have been showing them to their neighbors, so the gospel goes out over and over in this new creative medium. One sad thing was we had 2 camcorders (our personal one and one for the base we planned on leaving behind), but both of them mysteriously broke a few weeks ago. They are still able to use a regular digital camera to take video, but the sound and picture qualities are considerably lower. We managed to send the camcorders back to the States to get them fixed, and we’re hoping the base one might make its way back before we leave.

Teaching in the Bible School has been a great experience for both of us, we have really enjoyed our class of students who are hungry to learn and eager to follow God. This week is the last week of the term, so we will be giving our final exams and then be done. We won’t be around long enough in the next term to teach again, and now I’m sad I didn’t get involved in the Bible School sooner in our time here.

Kyran turned 1 year old February 28^th, and he is very active, walking and almost running now all over the place! He loves playing outside in the sand, swinging at the new playground, coloring with crayons, reading books, and getting into mischief whenever my back is turned :-). He is quite communicative with a few spoken words, a little bit of sign language, and a lot of pointing and yelling.

We’re very much enjoying Zhenya and Janie around, they have been a blessing in so many ways. They have been helping Jon redesign our website and taking pictures for it (coming soon!), and teaching photography skills to the film class. They help me with my hospitality duties, babysitting Kyran, helping around the house, and providing some great camaraderie :-). They have been able to spend some time in Beira, living with some Mozambican friends of ours, building relationships and really experiencing the culture in a more first-hand nature than even Jon and I have been able to do. They have participated in all of the usual outreaches we have here in Dondo, like praying for the sick in the hospital, preaching in the jail, and visiting the widows we care for, and they also got to visit two other children’s centers, one run by a blind Mozambican pastor and another by a dear friend of ours from Alaska. Overall it has been great having them here!

Our biggest prayer need for now would be that we be able to finish strong. We want to be able to do all God has for us to finish and accomplish before we head out. Most of our last month here I will be busy coordinating outreaches and work projects for the biggest short-term team we’ve ever had (29 people!) who arrive later this week. I’m really looking forward to working with them, I’m expecting them to be a big blessing to us and the base. For Jon, it will be a busy last month of trying to wrap up all of the classes he’s teaching and passing on all of his responsibilities to those who are staying. Speaking of which, that’s another prayer request, that more missionaries would join the work here in Dondo. Our leaders have been looking for replacements for us for some time now, but they haven’t found anyone qualified or willing to come here. So please pray for more workers!

God bless,

~Carla, Jon, and Kyran Reinagel

News from Moz... and some important information

2011-01-29T09:11:00.004+02:00

Hello All!

First of all, we want to thank all of you who have supported, encouraged, and prayed for us over the years that we have been serving here in Mozambique. All of you are an indispensable part of our work, and we want you to know how grateful we are. As our partners in this mission we want to tell you that God is bringing a close to the Dondo chapter of our life. We have been praying about this for some time, and when we originally signed up to work with Iris we committed to 2 years in Dondo which will be up soon. We will be flying home to Missouri at the end of May, and at this point we don't really know what will come after that. In fact, the only thing we know is that we will be leaving! International missions is still very much on our hearts, so we don't plan to be in the States indefinitely, but we felt it was time for another season of training and learning. Our time here has taught us many things, and we realized we are woefully under-equipped for the ministry God has called us to. We might go back to school for graduate studies, we might learn how to do church planting by joining a young church, we might join an inner-city ministry in some metropolis somewhere... right now the options seem endless and God seems to be playing His cards close. Our hearts are fully given to ministry and the gospel, especially in foreign countries, and we plan on being back on the field in a couple years. Anyway, we thought you all deserved to know this ahead of time, and please be praying for us to finish strong here.

And now, on to the news! There are some places where it seems like the only thing that is constant is change. Dondo is one of those places. Here are some of the recent and upcoming changes (with a few pics):

Tielson and Michelle, the Brazilian couple who joined us in Dec 2009, left this month. They felt God was calling them back to Brazil to help resurrect a fallen church, so they don't plan to return to Mozambique at this point. Those of us who are left have had to pick up the slack and take on their responsibilities, which is a sizable amount of work. For Jon, he has had to take back on being in charge of the maintenance crew, evangelism, and transportation, and another missionary, Julie, has begun working more with the local church. Please pray for Julie, as she is finding her new responsibilities a little heavy for her right now, pray that she'll be able to know what she *really* needs to take on, what can be delegated to others, and that she will be able to find joy, peace, and rest even in the midst of the whirlwind.

Our new preschool opened up this week! There are now about 50 little 3-5 year-olds on base every morning, and boy are they cute in their little white uniform t-shirts and tiny backpacks! Most of them are the children of our workers or church members, and the parents are all excited to have this opportunity for their kids to get a head-start on schooling. The educational system in Mozambique is really lacking: too many students, not enough teachers, not enough teacher training, and too much corruption basically sums up the schools here. To have this chance to get some education before even entering the schools is a big deal for these kids. This is another project of Julie's, though most of her work was just in getting it set up, registering the school with the government, preparing the classrooms, buying all the supplies, etc. Now we're hoping it becomes less stressful for her as she can take a more background role and leave it in the hands of the two Mozambican preschool teachers.

Our new preschool students at the opening ceremony of the school!

Jon and I have both begun teaching classes in the Bible School for the first time. That has gone very well so far, my class is called "Our Relationship with God", which has been a great subject. I really pray my students come away from school here with more than just a head knowledge of the Bible, but a personal relationship with the Author of Life! Jon's class is about the attributes of Christ, and even in his first class he had a number of great questions and topics, where students were wanting to know how to separate the truth about Jesus as presented in Bible from the the teachings of cults. We both enjoy teaching, and right now I'm wondering why I didn't start sooner!

Me with my class of Bible students! Yes, I have to wear a white lab coat as my teaching uniform. Yes, it is very hot.

Jon has also started teaching some classes on how to take video and pictures and put together DVDs. We bought a camera for the base that he has been teaching a few people how to use, and twice a week they get together to see what they have filmed/photographed and learn how to do it better. He hopes the church will be able to use this as a small business venture, recording weddings, conferences, sermons, worship concerts, and events and then selling copies of the DVDs.

Jon converts our dining room into a classroom for his film/photography/computer class.

We will be welcoming back two missionaries this week, Calli, who was here Dec 2009-June 2010 and is coming back long-term, and Laura, who was here Jan-Mar 2010 and this time is coming for 6 months. Surprisingly enough, they'll be arriving in Dondo on the same flight this Saturday!

Calli works with the kids, and we are all excited to have her back! She's a fun Texas girl with a lot of spunk and really loves the boys here.

Laura is an artist from the same suburb of St. Louis as Jon's parents, and is a good friend of Jon's mom. She wants to start up an art school and will also probably teach in the Bible School.

Kyran is still a much-loved member of the base. He's 11 months old now, hard to believe he's so close to his first birthday! He can stand on his own for a little while, but he hasn't started taking steps yet. Pretty soon I'll have to do a more thorough job of baby-proofing the house as he gets more mobile! It has been very hot here, and almost every day he spends some time outside splashing in water basins to cool off. He still has some heat rash in spite of all I do to try to keep him cool, but as the weather gets rainier I hope it will be a little less ridiculously hot. (I know, it's strange to be talking about our heat while most of the people reading this are experiencing snow and ice!)

"Uh, Mom? Do you think we could get a bigger kiddie pool?" Kyran sharing his water basin with a friend!

Speaking of the rain though, please do pray that the weather predictions don't come to pass that this may be the worst flooding Mozambique has experienced in 10 years. The floods in 2000 were devastating, and the La Niña weather patterns this year are threatening a repeat of that. It has already started hitting other parts of the world, and is expected to arrive on our coasts as well. So far only a few of the main rivers in Mozambique have exceeded their banks, but it is supposed to get worse next month. Please pray for lives to be spared and crops not to fail as a result of the rains this year!

Well, that's about all we have to report for now. Thanks again for your prayers, please keep them up.

Love and blessings,
~Carla, Jon, and Kyran Reinagel

Giving Thanks

2010-11-20T09:59:00.003+02:00

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays, it really is good to be given a reminder to stop and think about all the ways my life is ridiculously blessed. Don't get me wrong, we do have hardships galore here, but that just makes it all the more necessary to occasionally step back and view the big picture and focus on the positive things instead of the negative ones. Jon said he'll write an update later about the news and things going on here in the past month-and-a-half since our last e-mail, but I feel like just talking about some of the things I'm thankful for…

First of all, I'm thankful for my wonderful husband and all the adventures we get to share. It's been a wild 3½ years of marriage so far, and I'm so glad to be blessed with a godly, humble, servant-hearted, talented, resourceful, and fun man to share all of life's experiences with me :-)

I am thankful for our precious little boy, Kyran, who has turned out to be the perfect little missionary baby. He sleeps well, eats whatever is put in front of him, travels without much complaining, and is very outgoing and loves giving people his biggest grins to brighten their day. Couldn't have asked for better! (I'm also extremely grateful for the healthy pregnancy and birth I had with him!)

Speaking of health, I'm very thankful that all of us have stayed relatively healthy. We've had the occasional cold, but none of us have gotten malaria or any of the other horrendous things you can catch here.

On that same note, I'm very thankful for the ability to video-chat with said family! I can't imagine doing mission work "back in the day" when mail had to be sent by ship and might take 3 months to get to us… I love that now we can even see each other's faces and our parents can watch their grandson growing up.

I am thankful for our parents and siblings who encourage us in our work and keep us sane :-). It would be so much harder to have a family that disapproved of our crazy lifestyle, so the prayers and support are so appreciated.

I am thankful for all of the people and churches back home who support us and pray for us. We couldn't be here without you guys!

I am thankful for the way God has provided for our every need, even when we've stepped out on blind faith so many times.

I am thankful for the friendships I have with the other missionaries on the base. We have so many good times with them, and they are life-savers in taking on responsibilities that were too hard or stressful for us last year, so that has made this year much better. We have started doing a missionary dinner night once a week, and those are great times of fellowshipping and praying together.

I'm thankful we don't need to leave the country every single month this year…

I am thankful for Domingas, the sweet young lady who washes our laundry. I had to do all of our laundry by hand the first year we were here, so I really appreciate the help and the friendship as we get to chat a bit whenever she comes over to do the wash (and she is thankful for having a job, it's definitely a win-win situation!)

I am thankful for our nice house on the mission base. When we originally imagined life in Africa we thought we'd be living in a mud hut with a dirt floor and an outhouse, but we have a great concrete house with tile floors and an indoor bathroom (with a HOT shower no less!), and it's even bigger than the place where Jon and I lived when we first got married :-).

I am thankful for all the cloth diapers people donated to us after Kyran was born. To use disposables here would probably double our living expenses!

I am thankful that even though there are only 5 big grocery stores in the whole country of Mozambique, we're close to one of them! There are lots of niceties we could do without, but it is, well, nice to have them. Speaking of which, I'm also thankful that said grocery store has turkeys, and that we'll get to buy and cook one for our Thanksgiving feast this week! Even though we're the only Americans on the base, we still wanted to celebrate with all the other missionaries, so we're going to introduce them to our traditions and have a good time :-).

What are you thankful for?

What? September is over already?

2010-10-05T22:23:00.001+02:00

Hi Everyone!

They aren't kidding when they say time flies! September was a crazy month of travel and busyness, and now things seem to be settling back down into a more normal pace (if there is such a thing as "normal" in Africa...).

As we already mentioned in previous e-mails, Jon went to England to apply for new visas for us, and we got 6-month multiple-entry visas with 3-month entries, which means we still need to leave every 3 months but that is far better than every month like last year! So our next time out will be in December, but we won't have to apply for new visas until March of next year. Considering what we've been through, that's a pretty good feeling :-). Jon's trip was a crazy journey, but he did get to see some old friends of ours while he was in England, so that was good. Kyran and I flew down to Maputo where we were reunited with Jon, then we traveled together to South Africa where we got to rest for a while.

While we were down in South Africa we met up with a friend from college (David Pollack and his mom, Lynn) who were came back to Dondo with us and visited for a week and a half, which was great. It's always so encouraging to have people we know come visit, and it was a good and stretching experience for them too. We made sure they had “The Complete Experience” in visiting Africa! They got to pray for the sick in the hospital, preach in the jail, teach in the Bible School, preach through two translators for church, shop in the biggest and busiest market in Beira, take the crammed public transport minibuses, eat beans and rice, wash laundry by hand, visit people’s homes, go without water and electricity for many hours (or days) at a time, buy fabric in a crowded store and take it to market to have a tailor make outfits, and on Saturday we gave them a break and went to the nicest beach around. Overall it was a blast having them!

I have been able to start back up with my English classes, which have been very well attended. I taught some last year, but quit when we were given responsibility of the whole base and I no longer had the time and energy for it. Now I have a little more free time, and everyone wants to learn, so here we go again!

We are in the process of trying to start up a preschool on base as well, which so far is just in the preparatory stage. We had another visiting team paint the classroom and now we have our construction workers making some tables and seats to go in it. We are also trying to get our clinic up and going. Here's a bit of Dondo history: one of the first directors of the base was a doctor from Holland, and he built a clinic on the base but after he left and there was no medical staff to run it, so it just sat there and we used it for guest housing. Now we're trying to turn it back into a clinic, we're working on getting it registered with the government, and we have a Brazilian doctor who has volunteered to come in two days a week to attend the community until we can find full-time medical staff. It's exciting to see new things popping up!

And of course we can't forget the Kyran update! The little guy turned 7 months at the end of September, and he is getting so big! Thus far he's been a great missionary kid by "eating whatever is put in front of him," whether it's really something edible or not... As of right now he can get up on his hands and knees and rock back and forth; he hasn't fully figured out the motions required for crawling, though I'm sure he will soon!

That's about all the news we have to relate. Prayer requests are as follows:

Please pray for one of our kids, Marcos, who has been very sick for over a month now. He's lost a lot of weight (and he didn't have much to start with), and he's very weak. He has been staying off-base with some relatives for more attention and care, but he doesn't seem to be getting better. With the medical quality what it is we still don't know exactly what's wrong, all I've heard is they've determined he doesn't have HIV, which is good. Just pray for a quick recovery from whatever it is he has.

Please continue to pray for more missionaries to join us, as we are struggling with a skeleton crew again and it's going to get worse soon with some of our people leaving.

Thanks for the prayers!
~Carla, Jon, and Kyran Reinagel

August come and gone

2010-09-05T19:14:00.001+02:00

Hello all!

Thanks to all who have been praying for us, I'll start with a couple testimonies and then move on to what still needs prayer:

The two conferences in July and August were a lot of work, but a huge blessing. About 1,000 people attended the latter, and we had Heidi and Rolland Baker, Marc Dupont, and Georgian Banov as visiting speakers. The spiritual climate over the base shifted during that time, and we can feel a greater peace now than was here before, so praise God for that!

Jon has been able to start up a small Bible study to disciple some of our workers, and I (Carla) have been able to participate in the jail ministry more often, leaving Kyran with the other missionaries (who are all very willing babysitters!). These opportunities have been such a source of life for both of us, they help us stay focused on why we're here in the first place—to make disciples and bring the gospel and hope to the needy. It is such a breath of fresh air from all of our administrative and otherwise "boring" duties! At the last jail ministry outreach that I attended, 12 men gave their lives to Christ, and it was so precious to pray with them leading them to the Lord.

Now the prayer requests… The man taking us to court agreed to "drop" the case… if we pay him a bribe of about $700. We said we wouldn't pay, and now we're waiting to see what will happen. At this point, knowing more about Mozambican law, we know he has almost no chance of winning if the case does proceed to court – praise God! However, it is still a little stressful so please be praying that this situation will finally be resolved. It's so funny to us that we almost didn't come back because of this court case because we heard we could have been thrown into jail, but it's all been just scare tactics. Had we given in to those fears, we would have totally missed out on this year of ministry.

Our visa / residency situation is still up in the air, though we do feel God is leading us to stay in Mozambique longer, so we're sure He'll make it possible somehow. As a last-ditch effort we are going to try and see if we find favor at the embassy in London, England. We have heard they are nicer to missionaries and that the process might actually be cheaper to go through them than to do it here in Mozambique, even including the flight to get there! So Jon is planning to fly to the UK this week, then I will travel with Kyran and meet Jon in South Africa next week (we still need to leave the country too since our current visas are expiring). We found out it is possible to apply for residency at embassies, so we will try that first, but if we don't get it we will see if we can get a one-year visa, which we heard London sometimes grants. Either way, please pray for lots of favor and that whatever the outcome, we get to stay in Mozambique as long as God wants us to be here!

The two missionaries who left definitely left a gaping hole in our staffing, but those of us remaining are doing our best to fill in for them. They might be coming back, but it will be a while even if they do. Please pray especially for our fellow missionary Julie, Jon and I are doing our best to take on what we can but she has been left with a lot of new work that has been a little stressful for her. We also just found out that the "new" Brazilian couple is also planning on leaving in January (they had originally said they would stay for minimum two years, but changed their minds to just one year), and they will leave another huge vacancy as they have been very good with leading the church, Bible school, and evangelism outreaches. Please pray for replacements to come soon!

In other news… I'm back full-swing in my hospitality ministry for the base. The conference time was hectic, with trying to meet the needs of about 50 foreigners in addition to the 1,000 Mozambicans! After that we had a team of 20 for a while, but things have slowed down a bit since then, which is nice. We have a team of 6 here now from South Africa who have been a big blessing, and they love keeping their schedule full so I've been staying on my toes! They have done projects with our kids, put on a leadership seminar for church leaders and pastors, gone on all of our outreach opportunities, and this week they're going to paint the new preschool that we're trying to start up. I enjoy working with these short-term teams, and we're looking forward to the visit of one of our college friends and his mom soon. I also want to start teaching English classes again soon, I did a little last year before we had a million responsibilities dumped on us, and all my former students have been asking me ever since if I would start the classes again. Those times were also a great source of joy for me, so I'm looking forward to getting back into teaching.

Jon has been working on organizing the finances of the base (see paragraph above about "boring duties"), which passed through many people's hands while we were gone and needed some serious reorganizing. Though in the midst of the humdrum paperwork, yesterday the Iris airplane (a little 4-seater Cessna) crashed several hours from us, and Jon went out to the site to help with the crash inspection. The crash miraculously did not kill or seriously hurt the pilot (who was alone in the plane). The propeller had come off in mid-flight while the pilot was just starting his descent to the airport closest to us, and even though it was dark out he still managed to crash land in some trees in such a way that he was able to walk away mostly unhurt, though the plane was demolished. Jon had to drive through rivers and hours of rough riding over terrain that didn't even have a road to find the plane, all along the way stopping to ask locals, "Did you see a plane go down? Where is it?" to get directions. While he was driving back from the wreck site, he picked up a lady who had just been bitten by a deadly mamba snake and took her to the hospital, hopefully in time to get treatment so she may live. Another day in Africa…

Kyran is still growing and is well adjusted to life here. He does great with all the attention he gets, and is flexible enough to roll with whatever our crazy schedule throws at him. He just turned six months old and has started eating solid foods, with bananas being his all-time favorite of what he's tried at this point. He's the perfect missionary kid so far!

Thanks again to all of you who continue to hold us up, and please, well, continue! Also feel free to write us anytime, we love hearing from people back home.

God bless!

~Carla, Jon, and Kyran Reinagel

Standing in the Need of Prayer

2010-08-02T12:02:00.001+02:00

Dear Prayer Warriors,

Wow, these are trying and challenging times. We are being stretched to lengths we didn't know we could reach without breaking. The Dondo base will be losing two of the new missionaries that just joined recently, and we don't know if they'll be coming back. They both worked in the area of the children's center, and we really don't have anyone to replace them now to work with the kids. We shared a "praise report" a little too soon in our last update, the former worker who wanted to take us to court has not dropped the case, and still wants to sue us with the ultimate goal of getting us kicked out of the country. He is also causing it to take much longer than we originally hoped to get our residency status, and in the meantime the government has raised the price for visas by over 300% and for residencies by 1200%. We've always trusted God for our finances, as we still do, but that is still very frustrating. We can't go back to leaving every month like we did last year, now it would be much harder since we have the baby. Our current visa expires in September, and we don't even know if we'll be able to get another one. Because of all these things, we honestly don't know how much longer we'll be able to stay in Mozambique.

In the midst of all this, the other day I found my dusty copy of The Message Bible translation on the shelf. I started reading the Sermon on the Mount, and was struck by the phrasing of some familiar sayings reworded:

"You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule." Matthew 5:3

"Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes" Matthew 6:34

Well, that says it pretty plainly. Another source of comfort recently has been a Newsboys song that goes:

You are the Author of knowledge

You can redeem what's been done

You hold the present and all that's to come

Until Your everlasting Kingdom

Lord, I don't know where all this is going

Or how it all works out

Lead me to peace that is past understanding

A peace beyond all doubt

You are the God of tomorrow

Turning the darkness to dawn

Lifting the hopeless with hope to go on

You are the Rock of our salvation

Lord, we don't know where all this is going

Or how it all works out

Lead us to peace that is past understanding

A peace beyond all doubt

A peace beyond all doubt—that's what we need prayer for right now. That and guidance, with all these doors seeming to close it's hard to know if it is Satan closing the doors—meaning we should fight to break them down and stay in Dondo—or if it is God closing the doors—meaning we should move on. We don't want to give up too quickly if the war is against the devil, but we don't want to fight God either. We have no idea where to go from here or when or what the next season of our lives will be. We've always lived day-to-day on God's guidance, never knowing much in advance. Still, it would be nice for us to know the next step, so pray God will reveal at least that much to us. In the meantime, we are working on living in today and continuing to minister and serve, while trying not to think too much or worry about tomorrow, as Jesus said in Matthew 6:34.

Anyway, moving on to other news. We just finished the first conference, put on by the Vineyard church, and it was such a blessing. Since we attend a Vineyard in the States, it felt even more like a family reunion (of course, we're family with the whole Body of Christ from all denominations, but this still was a little special), and it was great spending time with the pastors who came to preach and minister at the conference. In addition to powerful messages, they were also able to speak a lot of wisdom to us personally, and we were very blessed by their time here. The second conference is with Iris Ministries, and it is coming up August 11-14. In the last update I already shared some specific prayer requests regarding that conference, so I won't go over it again, but please do PRAY!

Random testimony: We had a friend from the UK visiting for a few weeks, and one day she went to the hospital for our ministry there, and she was able to pray for a paralyzed man who regained feeling and movement in his legs! Praise God for that!

Kyran is doing well, though he's been fighting a cold for a few weeks now. He's still the celebrity of the base, and is such a source of joy. He's strong enough to sit up by himself, though he's still working on balance.

Thanks again for praying for us, keep it up!

~Carla, Jon, and Kyran Reinagel

July Update

2010-07-15T21:51:00.000+02:00

Hello everyone!

We have been back for 4 weeks now, and it’s been a whirlwind. After only 2 weeks in Dondo we left for Pemba, one of the main Iris Ministries bases in the north of Mozambique, for a leadership conference. It was a great experience, we got to hear our organization’s leaders express their heart and vision for the ministry and clarify direction for all the bases, listen to some great teachings, and meet the leaders from Iris bases all over the world and see the different works they are doing and hear their testimonies. We were also able to meet with our leaders and clarify some questions and miscommunications that had happened, which was so needed. On that note, please do pray for our communication, as it seems to be frequently under serious spiritual attack, with misunderstandings happening constantly. Somehow important information is always being warped; between missionaries, between missionaries and Mozambicans, between us and our leaders, everywhere. It causes lots of confusion and hurt and damage, and we really need prayer that it will stop. Overall the trip was a very beneficial time and well worth the two day journey over rough roads with a baby in the car (Kyran did great both ways!).

We have two conferences coming up that we are preparing for now. The first will be fairly small, with about 150-200 people attending, while the second will be huge, closer to 2,000-4,000 people. The base is all a flurry of activity getting ready—building fences and latrines and bath houses, fixing up visitor housing, planning for meals and clean up teams, and dozens of other details in preparation. Please pray that all the preparations will go smoothly, but more than that pray that lives will be changed at the conferences. The last time a conference was held in Dondo, God showed up in a powerful way and many people were touched. We want to see Him move like that here again! In our updates we try to share more of the positive things and testimonies, but Dondo truly is held in a powerful grip of darkness that we are constantly warring against. We are surrounded by witchcraft, animism, Islam, prostitution, theft, lying, and violence in our town, and even within the churches of Dondo there is lots of fighting, jealousy, sin, and slander. Satan has had a foothold here for a long time, and it feels spiritually darker than most places we have been. We know that God is so much greater, but we need lots of diligent prayer to change the atmosphere here—to break down the stronghold that has been established for far too long.

One praise report is that it we haven’t been taken to court yet and the possibilities of that happening are getting smaller and smaller. While we were in the states, we were given an order to appear in court over a dispute with one of our workers. When the judge found out we weren’t in the states, he told the prosecuting worker to wait until we got back to bring charges against us, but he hasn’t yet. Thank God for that!

Thank you for your prayers,

~Carla, Jon, and Kyran Reinagel

Heading back soon

2010-06-04T20:35:00.001+02:00

Well, it has been a very long time since we sent out an update, so I guess it's time for one, ey?

Since coming back to the States we have visited: Kansas City, St. Louis (multiple times), Ohio, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Iowa, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Kansas (and Jon will be going to Arkansas soon). Kyran is 3 months old and has already been to 16 states! We were very blessed in each case that we were able to see friends and family, fellowship and share about our work, receive prayer and support, and overall get refilled before going back to Mozambique. Speaking of which, we head back in just two weeks--June 15th. Many thanks to all of you who invited us to speak at your churches, who opened up your homes for us to stay, and who continue to hold us up in prayer as we prepare to go back!

It is so much fun watching Kyran grow, develop, learn, and figure out his world. He already knows it involves a lot of sitting in the car seat! He is a very healthy, happy, intelligent little baby who loves to study the things around him (especially ceiling fans and light fixtures), he enjoys books and bath time, and he's almost to the point of being able to sit up by himself! He's also a good sleeper, which is a mercy for his parents :-).

I love bath time!!!

Kyran Jay, 3 months old

Please do pray for us in these last few weeks, as we are facing a number of difficulties:

1. We still don't have our visas to get back into the country, we have been waiting for several months to receive letters from Iris in Mozambique but communication has been very difficult and now we are very close to leaving and we still don't have what we need to apply for the visas. Please pray that all gets sorted out very quickly, and that we have favor with the embassy and get GOOD visas this time!

2. Shortly before we left Mozambique we had to fire a worker who was very corrupt (who also is involved in the government, about the equivalent of a state senator in the US), but now he is suing us for $8,000 for "tarnishing his reputation". Jon has to go to court soon after we get back to Mozambique. The ex-worker is friends with the judge, and in Africa connections often trump justice, so please pray that by a miracle we can win the court case.

3. Our co-director and best friend, Pastor Abel, resigned from Iris, so we won't be working with him anymore. That was very sad news. Please pray that we will still be able to do our work without him, as he was such an integral part of our daily life.

4. Please also pray for traveling mercies on our trip back. It's a long, difficult journey for anyone, and now we get to do it with an infant, so pray Kyran does as well with planes as he does with cars!

Thanks again for your prayers, they do change things!
~Carla, Jon, and Kyran Reinagel

December in Dondo... and coming home soon!

2010-01-04T21:41:00.004+02:00

We hope you all had great Christmas and New Year celebrations! I finally figured out how to put pictures into my e-mails, so I hope you all enjoy this episode :-).

We had a busy month of December, and were blessed to have our team increase by even more than we had planned for! Right after the Iris mission school ended in early December, a couple from the States (Jason and Susan) and a lady from England (Isla) visited the base and all three decided to help us out! Jason and Susan are only staying short-term but will be taking Jon’s and my place as directors/finances/administration while we’re gone on furlough, which is a HUGE blessing! Isla went home to set everything in order and will be back in March/April to stay long-term, and will be helping our missionary Julie with the village-based orphan-care project. So our Dondo family is still growing! Thank you all who were praying for that, we were blessed beyond our imagination. The other new missionaries that we WERE planning on coming have been settling into their new roles very well, and it looks like they’ll be a great balance of talents and abilities to bless this place. The new girls from the States and Canada (Calli and Becky) are taking over the orphanage, and they are doing a great job connecting with the kids even though they don’t speak much Portuguese yet—but boy, the kids sure are learning English quickly! The Brazilian couple (Tatielson and Michele) will provide leadership for the church and Bible school, and their heart to disciple the pastors is amazing. It has been a busy month of training each of them up in their new roles, passing on all the responsibilities and answering the hundreds of questions that come up, but they are all doing an amazing job. Please pray for team dynamics between all of them, as right now none of the missionaries are bilingual (the Americans/Canadian/British only speak English and the Brazilians only speak Portuguese), so they will need a lot of divine help to facilitate unity and fellowship between each other. And also pray for quick language-learning ability!

Our Dondo family! (Plus some short-term missionaries and minus some kids who were visiting family for the holidays and minus one missionary who wasn't around at picture time, Julie). If you're interested: L-R Back row: Tatielson, Rui, Mariano, Chimuaza, Ron, Florentino (in the hat), Zacarias, Domingos A, Tony, Jon, Luis, Manuel, Jossias, Calli, Carla. Middle row: Jason, Nelson, Domingos C, Zito, Minezes, Joanel, Vito, Jan. Front row: Susan, Michele, Jose, Becky, Joao, David, Samuel, Ashlee.

Christmas was a busy time, Social Services (the branch of the government that deals with orphanages among other things) wanted to put on a big Christmas program for several orphanages in the Dondo area, and we were picked to host it! We had about 150 kids plus several of the local and national Social Services officials and even the mayor of Dondo! We did games with the kids, and then after a few worship songs, a short message, and the obligatory formalities, served a chicken dinner. I was impressed and touched that all the head officials and important people came down from the table of honor to personally serve the kids first before any of them ate, that was very contrary to the way things usually happen with people of their position!

That program took place a couple days before Christmas, so then on Christmas day we were able to have a more intimate family gathering with just our base—the missionaries, kids, and some visitors. We read the Christmas story out of Luke and Tatielson and Jon shared a bit about it, trying to make the message we’ve heard multiple times have new and personal meaning. It truly is amazing to think of God’s Master Plan to Save Planet Earth—have the Creator of the universe take on a physical, created body and be born as a baby in a smelly animal stable to an unknown, poor girl who everyone assumes has been immoral, and then to grow up as a normal human and die a criminal’s death. I’m sure none of us would have thought of that if we were trying to come up with a Master Plan! It is also a challenge to us to lay aside whatever we think is important and humble ourselves as far as necessary to connect with other people in order to show them love (Phil 2:5-8 and 1Cor 9:19-22). After that we shared communion together, remembering not just Christ’s birth but also His purpose for coming: to save us and to bring unity—unity across barriers of culture, race, age, and anything else that tries to divide and separate us. Then we had a great lunch and gave the kids some simple gifts, it was a good day.

Samuel reading the Christmas story from Luke.

Jossias opening his present! He's one of our brightest students, so he was happy to get the nice notebook :-).

It was interesting being in a culture that celebrates Christmas, but doesn’t really know why. Because of the Portuguese Catholic influence, it became a holiday on the calendar, but it’s more just considered a “Family Day”, and most people have no idea what it’s about. Shops have holiday decorations, fake trees, strings of lights that play “Jingle Bells”, and Santa hats, and families will have a chicken dinner and maybe give their kids gifts… but so few people know its origin as a holiday to remember the moment when God became man and dwelt among us. This year we were very busy with the official programs, training new missionaries, and getting ready to go on furlough, so we didn’t get much chance to share a lot with people about why we celebrate Christmas. Next year I hope to do more.

One of our kids, Minezes, in a Santa hat. We're glad he gets the chance to learn the REAL meaning of Christmas and not just the holiday hype!

Our New Years celebration was also good, we had a great time of worship and a powerful message from a visiting Brazilian missionary, then set off fireworks and had a campfire complete with marshmallows (which, yes, you can buy in Africa!). It’s crazy to think of all that has happened with us over the course of this last year, all the ups, downs, victories, frustrations, joys, sorrows, changes, stresses, improvements, setbacks… We have changed so much we hardly feel like the same people that came to Mozambique in January 2009. Now at the end of a year we are barely limping up to the finish line that will be our much-needed break. Please do pray for us in these last few days, it seems like every day a new big thing comes up that we need to resolve before we can go, and Jon especially is getting pretty discouraged by all of them. One of the biggest needs right now is we gave our passports to the Immigration office to *finally* get our residency status right before leaving, but the process is taking longer than they said (surprise!), and now we have less than a week to get our passports back before we’re flying out, and they’re still not done. PLEASE pray that they will finish VERY soon so that we don’t have to change our tickets or anything crazy like that.

Speaking of tickets, right now our travel plans are to fly to Maputo on the 9th and spend a few days at another Iris base (Zimpeto), then take a bus to Johannesburg, South Africa, to catch our flight home on the 13th. Please pray for safe, comfortable travel for us—at least as comfortable as a 7½ month-pregnant lady can be on looooong bus rides and flights! We are so looking forward to being with family and friends again, and hopefully we will be able to see most of you who receive these updates! We are also looking forward to the time of rest and refreshing, the arrival of the Little Reinagel (March 2 due date coming up fast!), attending the weddings of some dear friends, and the good food :-) (if we visit you, please don’t serve beans and rice… please). We already have our return tickets set for June 15^th, so if you want to see us make sure you contact us before then and we’d love to get together with as many people as possible on this break!

Many thanks again to all of you who so faithfully lift us up in prayer, please keep it up in these last few days. This will be our last update this side of the Atlantic, next time we write it will be from home!

Blessings to you all as you start a fresh, new year!

~Carla, Jon, and Baby Reinagel

...And the obligatory pregnant profile picture, taken Christmas week at 7 months along!

November in a Nutshell

2009-12-07T07:38:00.002+02:00

Hello All,

Wow, time flies. Already another whole month has passed since our last update, so I guess it’s time to write another one!

November was a month full of variety: good, bad, and ugly. Some of the good included another kids’ camp that we put on, some of the bad included the death of a youth who grew up in the center, and some of the ugly included a good deal of sickness with almost all the missionaries :-P. But God is faithful through it all!

The kids’ camp was another great success, this time some of our own youth were the leaders and we invited kids from other orphanages and churches to participate, and they had a great time! This camp we really focused on the Father heart of God, and helping them find their identity in Him. For this group of kids, most of whose fathers are absent, or abusive, it is so important for them to know God is not like their earthly father and He wants so much for them to know He loves them. The kids who visited from other centers were also really blessed, and when they left they were asking when the next camp will be! There was also a great time where we split up the boys and girls and talked about purity and relationships, and a lot of the kids received inner healing for their pasts and were equipped for better futures.

Another good thing this month is there has been a huge shift in the attitude of the Mozambican leadership on the base. It all seemed to start when Jon was really struggling with insomnia—he couldn’t sleep at all at night, usually only getting tired enough to go to bed around 5 or 6 in the morning (so he would have to sleep half the day to make up for it). It was very frustrating, and in one meeting he asked the Mozambican leaders to pray for him to be able to sleep better at night, and by being vulnerable about this weakness it seemed like the others opened up more as well, and there seemed to be a shift in the atmosphere as there has been a lot more cooperation and less complaining, more prayer and less pressure, more gratitude and less griping, and ever since then it just feels like a healthier family working together. One Sunday the provincial pastor even got up in front of the church and encouraged everyone to be praying for the missionaries and just blessed us, which really means a lot to us because this base in particular has a long history of bad attitudes toward leadership and especially missionaries. It’s hard to express how huge this testimony is, but trust me, some spiritual stronghold has broken over Dondo and we are seeing, hearing, and feeling victories that are very encouraging. It’s not as obvious as a crippled person receiving physical healing and suddenly being able to walk, but it is just as powerful.

Yet another testimony is we have new missionaries! Thanks to all who were praying, last update only one was confirmed and three were tentative, but now two are already here and the other two coming next week! We were thrilled to welcome back a girl from Canada who volunteered here 3 months earlier this year, and a lady from Texas who has a heart to work with our kids. We also have 3 short-term missionaries with us now, the boyfriend of one of the long-term girls and a great couple from Montana who are here for a few months. We are really blessed.

While I’m on a roll with good stories, I got to have an ultrasound this month! The baby is very healthy, growing normally, kicking a lot, and we got to find out it’s a boy! It was exciting to see him, now just to get Jon and me to agree on a name… Being able to do the ultrasound was basically a miracle in itself—an American doctor friend called us in to let us know a German OB doctor was donating a new ultrasound machine to the medical university where he worked, and he wanted to learn how to use it but needed a test subject :-). Boy, was I happy to volunteer! The due date is March 2nd, and as of now I’m about 2/3rds of the way there.

While it was tough being away from our families for Thanksgiving, we were able to celebrate here as the missionary family. We each contributed a few traditional foods (made the best we could with numerous substitutions), and we even found a turkey! We truly are thankful to be blessed as a team here, life is so much easier when you have great people to work with.

As I mentioned above, one of the sad happenings this month was the death of João Guente, a youth who grew up in the center for several years but had been out of the center for about a year because he got too old to stay here (by law kids need to leave orphanages when they turn 18). He had tuberculosis, and it was so hard watching him grow weaker and thinner as the year went on. Finally he couldn’t even walk or feed himself anymore and was hospitalized, and while he was there one of our missionaries visited him while doing the hospital ministry. She said she was able to talk and pray with him for a long time, and that he repented of his sins and had a very powerful encounter with God. That week he passed away. While it was hard to see him go, it was good to know he’s no longer in pain and we are encouraged that he did have that opportunity to get his heart and relationship with God right first.

Health was also a major struggle last month, in addition to the insomnia Jon had debilitating headaches and eye pain (among other random symptoms), one of the other missionaries had a throat infection and malaria at the same time, and I got a bad cold that lasted several weeks. Thankfully we're all better now--Jon has even been able to sleep normally most nights for over a week now!

Unfortunately we did not get the year-long visa we had been hoping for, but we will be able to stay in the country until we leave in January! November was the first month since April that we didn't have to go out, and we hope we won't have to leave December either. Though this is another testimony as well, of the two new missionaries one got 6-months and the other got a 1-year visa before coming, which will be really helpful! We hope they won't have nearly as many nightmares as we have getting residency status.

In closing, please be praying for:

Good health for the rest of the time we're here. We have a lot to do to train the new missionaries in a very short time and we can't be sick
Grace for the new missionaries coming in, that they will be able to step into their roles and learn the language quickly
Wisdom in a very difficult situation that we need to be able to resolve before we leave
Perseverance and the ability to finish this year strong.

Okay, so my "November in a Nutshell" turned into a pretty big nut... Think coconut :-). We will be back in the United States mid-January until June - if you would like us to come and speak at your church / youth group etc, let us know!

Thanks for your prayers!

~Carla, Jon, and Baby Reinagel

October in Moz

2009-10-30T12:53:00.002+02:00

Dear Friends and Family,

Thank you all for your patience in between our sporadic updates. We are doing well, still living through the roller coaster that is life on the mission field.

In the month of September we were able to go on a vacation that was funded by a very generous friend of Jon's dad, so we went to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe and had a great time of refreshing. Even though we have had to leave every month for our visas, we are often as busy in those times away as we are in Dondo, so they don't really count as breaks, but this trip was amazing. We came back very rested, refocused, and ready to jump into all that life brings here (not to mention, the falls were spectacular!). With our visa situation, we are now in the process of trying to get a 1-year temporary residency visa which would be really nice to have while we work on our official residency status. Please pray that that process goes more quickly and smoothly than all of our previous efforts! We really need to be able to stay longer than a month at a time.

For some unknown reason the crime rates often seem to increase drastically toward the end of the year around here, which has spread some fear but also faith around our community. Our co-director Pastor Abel's home was attacked by a gang of 15 men with machetes, first they broke into another house on his property where some of the 23 orphans he cares for stay, but on finding nothing worth stealing they went on to the main house without hurting anyone. While they were trying to break down the door to the house where Abel, his family, and more orphans sleep he called us asking us to send help, but in the meantime one of the boys from the other house escaped and ran off to alert the police. One of the bandits saw him and chased him with a machete, but the kid managed to run faster and got away! That bandit came back and warned the rest of the gang that the police were on the way, so they all trooped off to attack elsewhere before the police showed up. Another miracle is that they didn't even think to check around the house for another entrance, and there happened to be a back door with a very weak lock that they could have easily kicked in with very little effort. Usually those gangs come in, kill or incapacitate the man of the house and any who might try to get in the way, steal anything of value, then split. Often a number in the gang will also stand guard at all the neighbor's houses and attack them in case anyone were to try to come out and help. Thank God He protected Abel, his family, and the orphans in his care! Ever since he has been so excited to be alive and to know God as his almighty protector, and he shares the testimony to anyone who will listen! In response to his call we did send about 10 of our Bible students to go help, but the bandits were already gone by the time the students got there so they just stood guard around his house for the rest of the night. About an hour later the same night Jon and I were woken up to the sound of gunshots very close to our house, and we found out the same gang had broken into one of our neighbors. At least 2 people were seriously injured by machete wounds, and last we heard they are still in the hospital. A couple days later another gang (or the same ones, we don't know) were trying to break into the house of Lovemore, our translator. He is a very short, quiet, sweet-spirited man who looks like he couldn't hurt a fly if he tried, but somehow he managed to bellow out and yell loud enough to intimidate the thieves so they ran off! We thought that was very out of character for him, but we were glad he thought of it and is still alive!

In addition to those violent crimes taking place all around us, we unfortunately had some of our older kids influenced by an outside youth to help him steal from our center. One night they broke into an uninhabited room in our visitors' center with a machete and stole some mattresses and blankets and threw them over the base wall and into the village, then a couple nights later (while we were still trying to figure out who did it) they stole again, this time a few mattresses from the little boys' room. The next day we caught the outside youth, and in his confession he said who had helped him from the inside. We were very saddened by their actions, and their showing that even after living in a Christian environment for several years their hearts were not changed. Both of the ones involved were some of the first kids taken into the center about 7 years ago, yet they both had long histories of problems like this and after being given dozens of chances and displays of mercy they were still hardened in their ways. Fortunately, both had family members who were willing to take them in. We hope and pray that their families will be a positive influence on them and that they will not continue to pursue a lifestyle of crime. Here in this culture, if a thief is caught by the villagers before the police get there to arrest him, the thief is usually burned alive in their system of mob justice. Even if they get arrested and thrown into jail for a short 1-2 year sentence they often still die in prison because the living conditions are so horrible. Both of these kids, after years of being shown mercy for their behavior, think that stealing things is just a game – please be praying with us that they will learn quickly and turn from their behavior before they are shown the full extent of the world’s idea of justice.

In other news, and on a more positive note, we have a new evangelism team formed of our kids. Ashlee, one of the missionaries here, has been discipling them every week and going out about every other weekend with them and releasing them to be leaders. It's so cool to see the kids leading worship, performing dramas, preaching, and praying for the sick and seeing miracles happen through them! Even the little 7-12 year olds have a place on the team and get to participate in everything. This is really the future of Mozambique--not missionaries, but godly Mozambicans raised up to reach their own people with the gospel!

Mid-September we had a friend from home, Chad, come visit for about a month which was a huge blessing. He helped around the base a lot, and also had some great ministry experiences, visiting churches, going to the hospital and jail, and sharing Bible stories in the marketplace. We were very glad to have him, and he is praying about whether God would have him do more missions work in his future! We were also blessed by the return of a British visitor who came earlier this year, she is always a joy to be with and a help to have around.

A while back some people donated some money specifically for something fun for the kids, so we used it towards a new basketball court! It was a long process that started back in June, clearing out trees and leveling the ground with shovels, but they finally were able to finish it this week! The kids love playing on it every spare minute they have now.

My pregnancy is still going very well, I'm a little over halfway now and have been relatively healthy and the little one is growing daily. I did have a bit of food poisoning a couple weeks ago, but praise God I got over it quickly and with no lasting harm done. We will be arriving in the States January 15 to get ready for the birth in early March. We're not looking forward to the cold weather, but it will be great to be with family for the big event!

We still don't know exactly how the base will fare without any of the experienced long-term missionaries here... We have one new person coming for sure, and 3 others are tentative but waiting on finances, but even if all 4 manage to make it they will all be new people with very little experience and training and it could make for an interesting year. Two of them are Brazilian and don't speak English, the other two are from the States and Canada and don't speak Portuguese... It's a good thing we have a few Mozambicans who speak both and can translate for them! Please be praying for the finances to come in for these missionaries.

Thanks again to all of you who stand in prayer with us, we need every one of you. Keep it up!
~Carla and Jon Reinagel

Ups and Downs...

2009-09-04T14:11:00.001+02:00

Hello to all!
Well, it's about time for the August update, wouldn't you think? We've been thrown for a lot of loops this month, God is faithful through it all though sometimes we still struggle.

The hardest part was losing two loved ones within a week--on August 26 one of our boys on the center, little 11-year-old Domingos, died very suddenly of cerebral malaria, then on August 31 the director of the Bible School, Pastor Amos, was killed in a mini-bus accident on his way here to work. It has been rough dealing with these deaths so close together and comforting the family members of both. Please be praying, especially for the family of Amos (he had 4 kids and had taken in 4 more orphans), and the two little brothers of Domingos. We are comforted that they both knew and loved Jesus, but realizing just how fragile life is definitely gives new urgency to our work here. There have been 20-30 deaths in the family members of our kids and workers since we got here in January, but this is much closer to home.

In other news... We have started hiring some ex-inmates from the prison who got saved during our jail ministry times. It has been great to see their thankfulness at being offered a second chance in life and an opportunity to demonstrate the transformation in their hearts.

In July we mentioned that we would be going to Malawi in hopes of obtaining better visas... well, that turned into quite a headache, as Jon got arrested at the border (all other borders we've been to have private money exchange people and we use them all the time, but apparently at the Malawi border it's illegal and someone turned him in), the car broke down, AND we only got a 1-month visa! So that was a rough trip. Then in August we did South Africa again because our base finally got approval and money to buy a new vehicle (praise God), so Jon went car shopping in Maputo for several days and bought a bush-worthy yet comfortable SUV. It's nice to not be so restricted by lack of transportation! For a while we had NO working vehicles on the base, so we had to borrow the personal car of one of our workers multiple times. So anyway, visas are still a huge inconvenience, so pray with us that NEXT time we can get good ones!

The missionary situation keeps fluctuating, as two of the short-termers have left, one other has come in, a long-termer on furlough returned but will be moving off base soon, and the Brazilian couple that was with us earlier this year will be leaving to plant a base in another province. Their leaving is going to be quite difficult for all of us, especially since almost everyone else won't be here early next year for various reasons! Jon and I are going to have our baby (I'm due early March), one missionary is leaving to get married, one is going on her break, so... that will leave no one on the base for several months unless we get more help in quick! We are in the application process for one lady who is interested in joining us, and one of this year's short-termers may be returning, but we'll still be in a very desperate situation and in need of more missionaries. Please pray with us that God place it on people's hearts to come join us for that critical time period! The need is greatest from January through June of next year (any takers?).

Our children's leader, a very godly Mozambican named Joseph, put on a weekend "camp" for the kids at the end of July that was extremely successful. We invited some really solid youth from another church that we really like to come and be the camp counselors, and many of our kids were deeply impacted. Before the camp, most of them even admitted that they had become completely inoculated to Christianity--they had heard about God so long they had grown immune to the gospel and had never really considered how it affects them personally. One kid even said that he hated church, and every time he was forced to go the message would go in one ear and out the other. But the youth from this other church were able to demonstrate that God can be a real and present friend and father to them, taught them how to pray, and showed them that Christianity isn't as boring as they thought! At the end of the camp they put on an exciting, contemporary worship service that the kids were able to connect with. It has been so touching to see the transformation in many of the kids, even now a month later they are still staying faithful and showing that they were deeply changed. Ones that used to never come to church now don't want to miss a single opportunity to worship and pray! One evidence of the change is in how they are responding to the recent deaths--as they have turned to God and worship almost constantly when they are not in school.

Other kids news... we accepted a new boy into the center in August, a precious 13-year-old named Joanel. He came to the center after church one Sunday and begged us to take him in. His mother had died when he was 6, and his father was an alcoholic who beat him every night, and kicked him out of his home threatening to kill him if he ever came back. We got the police and social welfare involved while we investigated and found the story to be true, and Joanel stayed with one of our workers until the paperwork was complete for him to be accepted in the center. So far we see he has a very sweet spirit, is very humble, thankful, and obedient and never causes problems with the other kids. However, we feel it may not be safe for him to stay in Dondo with his father at large, as he has already come to the center angrily demanding to see Joanel and wanting threatening him even more, but thankfully the guards stopped the father at the gate. Please pray with us that we would know how to keep him safe, and also that he would be able to understand that God wants to be a Father to him but in a way completely different than his earthly father.

In summary... our praises include:
· The transformation in our kids and their newfound love for God
· The opportunity to provide employment for the released prisoners
· Our new car
· That we have stayed reasonably healthy, even in my pregnancy I haven't had any morning sickness
And our prayer requests are:
· Comfort for our kids and the family of the pastor who passed away this week
· Longer visas next time we apply
· More missionaries to help our work here, especially early next year
· That the kids who were changed in the camp would remain strong in their new lifestyle of faith
· That we would have wisdom in how to protect Joanel from his father
Thank you all who pray for us, please keep them up.
~Carla and Jon Reinagel

After the long silence...

2009-07-12T07:04:00.001+02:00

Dear friends,

Sorry it's been a while since our last update, we’ve been busy as ever! Last month we had to leave the country yet again for visa purposes, and this time we went to South Africa because the Zimpeto base had asked us to stay with them for a few days and have Jon work on their computer and internet problems. For him it was almost as much work as he gets in Dondo (if not more!), but for me it was a great time of rest and reconnecting with old friends. For our visas we’ll have to leave yet again next week, but this time we’re going to try Malawi. We’ve heard they give nicer visas that might make it to where we don’t need to leave every 30 days! Please pray that that be the case, as it is very costly and inconvenient to need to leave every single month.

This week in Dondo Jon felt a need to re-shift the base’s whole focus from our petty problems, disagreements, and issues and remember why we’re here in the first place—to seek after God and see His Kingdom come here in Mozambique. For that purpose, we called a day of prayer and fasting as a whole base, just to get together corporately, confess our sins and problems, forgive and ask forgiveness, and worship. It was a precious time as we all gathered in our mud church to seek God’s face. We hope to make that a more regular thing—of laying aside everything and refocusing.

Please do pray for our center, especially our relationships as missionaries with our Mozambican staff. Lately we’ve been having some struggles with cultural and mindset differences that can be very delicate and hard to resolve. We could just use a lot of prayer that we would all be able to see each other as members of the same Body of Christ—different in function, but all equally important to the overall life of the Body. We would also like prayer for wisdom and sensitivity so we don’t accidentally offend them and end up with even more problems! We’ve gotten decently good at the language, but we’re finding out that is only half the battle in communication—the other half is all culture, which takes much longer to learn. For example, Jon was in a meeting on Monday, and he sat through almost two hours of people talking in Portuguese about the fact that we need to respect each other. Half way through the meeting, he told the translator, “I understand their words but there is something I’m not understanding that you’ll need to explain to me later.” Sure enough, the entire conversation was actually about something completely different; we have been centralizing the center expenses and requiring more accountability and the leadership was trying to tell us they felt like we didn’t trust them. However, they never used any examples, and never once mentioned what they were specifically talking about for fear of shaming us.

In other news:
I (Carla) have been able to work a lot more with another missionary, Ashlee, in the area of the kids which has helped a lot. She has been a missionary here for over 3 years, so she knows the kids’ histories and has been an inexpressible help and source of wisdom in dealing with them.

Last update we talked about the new helpers coming to the base, and they truly have been a huge blessing! Travis has taken over evangelism and he does it with so much energy and passion, he's a great help. Becky is helping teach in the Bible school and has started up a hospital ministry that is going very well. Jeff has taken on maintenance and construction on the base, and has fixed tons of problems that have been annoying us for months in addition to heading up a project to build a playground and basketball court. Janet has helped in the area of hospitality, taking some of the load off of my shoulders. Overall it has been great to have this growth in the missionary family, especially since we lost Roberto and Maria Jose (our Brazilian couple) for 2 months going to the mission school in Pemba.

We have had lots of visitors in the past couple months who have blessed us tremendously. They have provided the physical labor to do some of our projects on the base (like digging latrines and building the basketball court and playground—all still in progress), visited churches and other people in the community, ministered to our kids, and blessed the community. We have a Youth With A Mission (YWAM) team here right now that provided an open door to get to know the YWAM ministries in Dondo and Beira, as the team wanted to visit and see what their own organization is doing in this area. We hope to build on this relationship more in the future, as we love crossing denominational and ministerial borders and just working together as fellow Christians with the same mission. In an area strife with denominational fighting and jealousy, it is a huge testimony to see cooperation and community among different groups!

The hospital ministry Becky started has been a source of great encouragement. There have been several times our team has gone in to pray for the sick, share the gospel, give them fruit, and come back the next week to find out they were healed and had been able to leave! This even happened with some people with terminal illnesses, so praise God that He is using us in this way!

I guess the last bit of news from us is that in a few months the Dondo base will have an addition to the family with the coming of an MK (missionary kid)… That’s right, Jon and I are expecting! Still trying to figure out all the logistics involved like where to have the birth, but we’re sure God will show the way. Please be praying for my health during this time, so far I haven’t had much in the way of morning sickness (praise God), but I still need all the prayer I can get.

Thank you all who stand with us so faithfully in prayer. We can feel them from here!
~Carla Reinagel

New Help

2009-05-26T13:57:00.001+02:00

Hello All!

We have been very blessed ever since our last update. The conference we wrote about went very well, even though fewer people showed up than we planned for. That just made it possible to pour more into them, so it's not all bad. Of the group that came to put on the conference, for most of them it was their first experience with missions and a number of them got wrecked for "normal life," so we expect to see some of them again J.

Jon and I had to leave the country again to renew our visas (since we have to leave every month now), so this time we went out to Zimbabwe since that's the closest border to us. We had to do the same thing last year at exactly the same time of year—our anniversary! It was amazing to see the transformation that country has been through since last time we were there. We only went right across the border into Mutare (same as last time), but this time we were not stopped by men with machine guns every kilometer, so it felt a lot safer. Last year the country was experiencing the worst inflation in world history, where a bottle of coke cost $125,000,000 of Zim money! Stores were empty, cars were parked because no one could afford gas, and everyone just seemed miserable. They have since switched over to using US dollars, and we found everything to be quite affordable by our standards. It was also just a great getaway to have a chance to really spend time together, something that has become pretty rare with all of our new responsibilities. On that trip we also got to spend some time with a friend, who has been a missionary all over the world for 28 years and has so much wisdom, experiences, and stories to tell. We learn so much from her every time we get to hang out.

Now we are entering a new season of growing community on the base. We already have one long-term missionary who just returned from furlough (Ashlee, amazing young woman!), and one short-term missionary who will be with us on his summer break from grad school (Travis, incredible guy), and next month we'll be getting 4 more short-termers to help for a few months! We're excited about being able to spread the weight around a bit and have time to go deeper in some areas rather than always having to be shallow in all areas! We also have a good friend from our college (Quinn) visiting for a few weeks right now, and it has been a blast to show him around and watch God stretch and grow him here. We're really excited about all this new help, but now we're just praying for more people to commit to staying long-term…

Do please keep praying for our transportation situation. We do have 2 working big trucks now, but we still need a reliable vehicle 4 wheel drive to be back up and running with all of our ministries. Our mechanic keeps waffling back and forth as to whether or not he thinks it's worth it to fix the Land Rover we wrecked, so we'll keep praying and see where God leads us in this area.

Another prayer request is for our older kids here at the base. According to the government, we cannot keep an 18-year-old in a "children's center" anymore, so we need to find other places for our teens to live when they reach that age. The only problem is by 18 almost none of them have graduated from school, they don't have any job skills, and they're not used to hard labor in the fields like the majority of the subsistence farmers, and so far all the ones who have already left the center are really struggling. We have two of our best and brightest 17-year-olds, Tony and Zacarias, in a trade school in Beira learning to be mechanics, and we're excited that they have that opportunity… but they were being sponsored by a person in Canada who recently stopped helping out. Their rent and school fees and materials are very expensive (about $200 per month total), so please pray that we can get a new sponsor for them to be able to continue going to school there. It'd be ideal to have sponsors for all of the kids once they reach 17 so that we can really provide them with training so that when they leave they'll know they have a future and a hope. I have found some training centers that are much cheaper than Tony and Zacarias' school, but we would still appreciate all the help we can get. Please also pray for wisdom for us leaders of the kids, as walking them through the transition from childhood to adulthood is very difficult and we need all of God's help that we can get to prepare them mentally, emotionally, and spiritually for their life after the orphanage.

Thanks for your prayers and support!

Blessings,

~Carla Reinagel

Surrounded by Angels

2009-04-29T15:24:00.003+02:00

Hello Everyone!

We truly serve a God who protects us against all odds! In our last update we asked for prayer about our visas/residency. We were not able to get our residency status this time, but they gave us the right kind of visa to proceed with the process of getting them, so that’s an answer to prayer. They are multiple-entry visas, which means we need to leave every 30 days and is not the most convenient, but at least it will force us to get away take a break every month so God probably knew what He was doing (surprise!). While we were in South Africa we got to spend some great time with long-time missionary friends who threw a birthday party for Jon! On the trip we also got to visit with pastors Jose and Supressa, who are the national and international directors of Iris Ministries and both amazing Godly men. We also were able to get a lot of things for the Dondo base, like almost 500 Bibles for the Bible School, a table and chairs, bed sheets for the kids (they had just been sleeping on bare mattresses), some computer stuff, and sundry other items. On the way back home we stopped at a small Iris base close to Maputo to spend some time with another missionary friend. More than anyone else he really insisted that we rest and take it easy (something we hadn’t been able to do the rest of the trip), so that was good to relax for a couple days before being thrown back into the battlefield.

Little did we know when we left Maputo though just how close the battle would come to us that day! We got on the road in our Land Rover at 3:00am and drove for about 6 hours (1/3 of the total journey) when our driver tried passing a big semi truck. The truck swerved a bit closer to us and our wheels dropped off the road to make room, but then our driver jerked the wheel trying to get the car back on the road, we lost control, smashed into the side of the truck, then went careening off the road! Land Rovers are notoriously top-heavy, and we rolled over very fast (we had been going about 80mph). I was sitting in the front seat and Jon was behind me in the back, which was the side that the car stopped rolling on, so both of us were on the bottom. My barrette was knocked out of my hair from the seat back and my face scraped the ground because the corner of the car was smashed but somehow my head was not crushed between the two! Everyone who has seen the car asks how I’m still alive. Anyway, the driver helped me get out of my seatbelt and we got out through the nonexistent windshield, we were both virtually unharmed. The next trick was getting Jon out, because he was buried by all the boxes of Bibles, cans of gas, and other stuff in the car. We had to roll the car onto its top to pull him out of the broken window, but thank God he was alive. Before the wreck he had been lying down under the plastic chairs, and they protected his head and top half from all the flying stuff. If he had been sitting up, he probably would have been crushed. As it was he still had badly bruised ribs and was having difficulty breathing. A very kind Portuguese businessman stopped when he saw the accident and helped us by giving us a ride to the nearest hospital (about 50 km away) while the driver stayed with the car and stuff. At the hospital they treated our cuts and did an x-ray on Jon to make sure he didn’t break anything. Then the Portuguese man checked us into a hotel, we were so thankful that he took all that time out of his day to help us out. Once Jon had a place to rest, I set out alone to try to get the car and stuff. I asked the hotel management if there were any missionaries in the city, and he sent a young man to take me to a mission base just a few blocks from the hotel. There a very kind Italian missionary jumped in his truck and took me to the crash site. We found the driver had already found some help to get the car upright and on the road, and all the stuff was packed back into it. We loaded the stuff into the other missionary's truck then towed the Land Rover back to the town with the hotel. They let us leave the car on their base until we could get more help, and we unloaded the stuff into our hotel room. Ever since the wreck we had been in contact with Iris missionaries all over the country to see who could help us the easiest, and it turned out to be the Zimpeto people, so they sent up a truck to take Jon back to Maputo. There he was able to get more medical help and then fly home after a few days since he couldn’t really endure the ridiculously bumpy roads to get home. Then we had a big flatbed truck sent down from the Dondo base, onto which we loaded the wrecked car and I finished the journey north with the two drivers. That was a mercifully uneventful trip, minus the two flat tires.

So that was our trip south! We believe we were surrounded by angels the whole time, both invisible ones who protected us in the wreck and visible ones who helped us through every part of resolving things and transporting us all over the place. We learned two major things from the experience: 1) The enemy is not happy with us and is trying to stop our work (a good thing, if he’s not mad at us we're not being very effective), and 2) God is protecting us against all odds (another good thing!).

After we got back we had to flurry around and get ready for a conference that we are now hosting on our base. It’s actually not a conference with Iris, but with our home church denomination (Vineyard), which is just now entering Mozambique to do mission work for the first time. It’s exciting to see and be a part of! The teachings really emphasize bringing not only the Gospel of Salvation (getting people out of hell), but also the Gospel of the Kingdom (discipling people into lives connected to the Father, experiencing His power, living victorious over addiction and oppression, and everything else Jesus preached about the Kingdom of God). It is such a needed teaching, as even our mission organization suffers from being hundreds of miles wide and only an inch deep—people have just the gospel message but we are trying to go deeper and help them see there is so much more to following God!

Thanks again for praying for us! We really can do nothing without prayer covering over here. We’re not just saying the words—we can see daily that prayer changes things, prayer is powerful, and prayer makes a difference. Your prayers have an impact here, all the way around the world. Please keep them up!

For this time, our prayer requests include:
• We need wisdom, and lots of it! As we step into our new roles of leadership we are daily facing many tough decisions and situations that we need God’s guidance to get through. How do you deal with a corrupt person in a way that is still loving them? How do you deal with people you know are lying to you? How do you deal with a complete lack of respect? How do you stop gossip from spreading like disease and destroying lives? For each situation we need lots of God’s help, and to know how to moment-by-moment hear His voice.
• Now we only have 2 working vehicles (we used to have 2 flatbed trucks, the Land Rover, and 2 covered pickups, but now we’re down to 1 flatbed and 1 pickup), so please pray that God will provide us with more working transportation. What we have now is not enough for all the projects and outreaches that we do from the base.

May God bless all of you beyond what you thought possible!

Thankful for LIFE!
~Carla Reinagel

Faith and Favor

2009-04-13T11:08:00.003+02:00

Hello, all!

Thank you all so much who have been so faithful to pray for us during this turbulent time of transition and change. Keep them coming! I'm writing this from Zimpeto, one of the Iris bases close to Maputo, the capital city. We visited this base about 3 times last year, so it is great to see people we know again. We're staying in the visitor's center, where every door has a phrase artfully painted on it, and our room is called "Faith and Favor." As soon as we saw that, we realized how much we need both at this time: we need so much faith that God will pull through for us and favor with the government officials. We are trying to get our residency status in Mozambique, but we had to leave Dondo before we had all the right documents to take to South Africa. Then the lead administrator person we were supposed to meet with here to help us with the process forgot about our appointment and left today for another province. We're praying hard that we can get the necessary paperwork done in South Africa anyway, and quickly, because we really can't extend our stay there. We agreed to host a conference on our base the 27^th through 30^th of this month, so we need to get back around the 20^th to be able to prepare for that! Please join with us in praying for deeper faith and miraculous favor. If all else fails we'll just need to get another visitor's visa and postpone the residency, but that's tough too for other reasons… So yes, please pray!

One thing that's great about visiting here is we've had a chance to talk to a bunch of the weathered missionaries who have tons of experience and advice. It's been so good to sit down with them and just learn. We hope to do even more in South Africa with the missionaries there. We've also learned of a leadership conference that one of the missionaries is trying to put on here in Maputo this year, and it sounds like an exciting opportunity for us to send some of our Dondo leaders to learn.

Some other random news and testimonies…

The Brazilian couple who have come to help us out have been amazing. The husband has a huge heart for evangelism, and has made 2 trips per week that have been very successful. We are in the middle of planting our first church! The wife is a nurse and has a huge heart to help me disciple the kids, which I needed so much.
The team from California blessed us amazingly, they did ministry times with us missionaries, Mozambican leaders, kids, and Bible students, and really poured a lot into everyone. It was so refreshing! They also left a very helpful financial contribution that we will be able to use to make improvements in the kids' area.
Some of the people who have taken advantage of us in the time of transition came back and repented, apologizing for everything and saying they respect us as leaders. This came from just loving them and spending time with them, even when we knew they were stealing from us. God just used that to completely change their hearts!
We have some short-term help coming in soon, so we are very thankful for those prayers! Continue to pray that God would place it on people's hearts to labor in this ripe harvest in Dondo.

Many thanks again for the prayers,

~Carla Reinagel

God is Good!

2009-03-10T19:57:00.001+02:00

God is good! God is so good! When I’m up at 2 am unable to sleep, God is good. When I can’t walk without chest pains, God is good. When we’re tired of seeing so many needs we can’t meet, God is good. When over 20% of our workers are suffering from Malaria, God is good. When our base director is in so much pain from ear aches that she needs laser surgery, God is good. When our mission organization has serious financial cutbacks because of recession, God is still good! Praise God we serve the creator of the universe – not a person who can forget, not a company that could collapse, and not an idea or concept that could be completely insubstantial!

Because of the pain, problems, and about a hundred other things that seem to be going wrong now, I spent most of today in prayer. Towards the end of the day, I was overwhelmed with the fact that God is good! No circumstance or situation can ever take that away! While it may seem like we are surrounded by problems with no way out, that is so short-sighted. In reality, we happen to live in the only place in the universe at the only time that will ever be in rebellion against God.

No one has demonstrated this more clearly to us than Pastor Paulo. The people around the base call him Pastor Sheia, which means Full. It’s a great nickname – he is always filled with the joy of the Lord. There are just some people whose eyes you look into and you see Jesus staring back at you – Pastor Paulo is one of those men. His joy is completely separate from the experiences he faces. We had the opportunity to preach at his church last Sunday (the 1^st), and it was an amazing experience. The church is little more than a roof on top of wooden posts; the gaps filled in with weaved palm branches. The floor was dirt, and the podium was used the rest of the week as the pastor’s dinner table. After almost 4 hours of church, we visited Pastor Paulo’s home. Knowing he has 7 kids of his own and 6 orphans with him, we were shocked. His family lives in a two room house, and only one of the rooms has a roof. The part of his house with a roof is about the size of a large bathroom. His other room is 9 feet by 12 feet – he said that when it rains, his kids sleep in the church on the dirt. He said that life has been especially hard with the short rainy season, and that his two farms (usually the size of a car to the size of a small house – not the big farms we usually think of) were really suffering. If anyone has a right to lack joy, it’s Pastor Paulo and his family. Yet, looking into their eyes, it wasn’t them I felt pity for. It was the people at home who were putting their faith in money or security rather than trusting fully in Jesus that I felt the most sorry for.

We prayed for the weather and made a house visit to a church member who was seriously sick. God graciously granted our prayers, and it rained every day for the week after that visit. The lady we visited it also doing much better, and the church members are all greatly encouraged. God has been showing us that everything needs to be about the Mozambicans and equipping them for service. It doesn’t matter how many buildings we build, how successful our evangelisms are, or whether or not we have hot water (the thing I’ve been battling the last half week) – what matters is equipping, training, and enabling the Mozambicans to minister in areas and to people we could never reach as missionaries.

Prayer Requests:

Please pray that we would be able to keep our eyes on God and see that He is good, no matter the circumstances!

Praise Reports:

The jail ministry is going well, and many of the people in jail are having their lives touched by God.

Carla’s doing excellently with her Portuguese, and I have learned a lot as well.

Carla has been in excellent health.

God Bless!

- Jon (and Carla) Reinagel

Jail Outreach

2009-02-25T19:16:00.001+02:00

Hello, friends, family, and prayer warriors!

God is proving Himself faithful time and again over here, we're settling in to our responsibilities and relationships, and so far most things seem to be going well. We have completely been given authority over the kitchen now, which currently means we need to monitor the meals to make sure the right people are getting food and outside people aren't sneaking in, we need to supervise the workers, and we handle all the finances (though we don't do the shopping trip every week, just once in a while). Problems crop up pretty frequently in the kitchen that seem to stress out the other missionaries, but so far our peace has not been shaken and I'm enjoying getting to know the workers. I've been able to visit 3 of them in their homes and just fellowship, which has been amazing. One time we got to pray with a worker for a long time, and she brought in a girl who lives with her who had a hurt ankle, and after praying she said she felt much better. I eventually want to start Bible studies with the workers and disciple them in their walks with Christ. I've also started teaching English for the base workers, a few community people, and the pastors-in-training in the Bible school. All of the classes so far have been great—I have always loved teaching and it is so much fun to be back in it here. My classes had to start at a pretty basic level—"What is your name?" and the likes, but the people who come are all very excited to learn, and for the first few weeks I was told at least 5 times a day that I was a huge blessing to the base by teaching English.

We also got to have our first short-term visitor as the new hospitality staff on the base, and that was great. She was a lady from England who we actually knew from last time we were in Mozambique, as she visited Pemba at the same time we were there. She was very sweet and helpful, she got to go on the orphan food distribution trip and we took her all around the village, visiting people and introducing her to the people we're getting to know. It was a very positive first experience as the hospitality staff, and we are looking forward to having many more visitors over our time of service here.

Jon has been helping a local pastor, Jose, to build a huge chicken coop to support his family and the 17 orphans he has taken in. Pastor Jose is a sweet old man with very few teeth, but a huge heart. He eventually wants to be able to take care of 70 orphans, and he encourages everyone in his church to take in orphans as well. The chicken coop project is coming along quite nicely, and you can see pictures of the progress on our website (and other new pictures as well: www.jonandcarla.com). Several people in the States (you know who you are J) have donated money to this project, and we are very thankful for that. Jon has also been spending time with many of the local pastors and has developed some great friendships.

This Tuesday we had the privilege of accompanying the jail ministry team on their weekly outreach. We plan on participating in this ministry every week from now on, and after seeing how powerful it is we are quite excited to do so! We joined Lino, a joyful barber with a huge heart for sharing the gospel, Dadinyo, a wood craftsman who grew up in the Iris center, and Miguel, a young man with enough English to translate for us. The team had been working with the local Youth With A Mission jail ministry group, but when the joint teams got too big they decided it was better for the jail to have two visits per week and split up.

We arrived at the jail in the early afternoon, a simple U-shaped concrete structure around an open dirt courtyard with huge iron gates. Once we assembled the blue-uniformed guard took our cell phones and unlocked the padlock of the chain wound around the iron gates to admit us. As we entered, we already heard jubilant singing in a room off to the left and went to join in. One man was sitting on an empty 5-gallon oil canister and banging on it like a drum, and that and the voices of the redeemed prisoners completely filled and reverberated within the room. More and more prisoners poured in from the courtyard until there were about 60 men and 2 women gathered, all singing praises to God at the tops of their lungs. The walls echoed with pure joy that radiated from the faces of these men, and I was amazed. Paul wrote the book of Philippians while he was in prison, and in it he says: "Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice!" (Phil 4:4). Many of these prisoners had found that joy in spite of all their circumstances, and it was humbling to see.

Lino closed the joyful worship time and asked everyone to sit down, then he briefly introduced me since it was my first time to go and invited Jon to give the message with Miguel translating into Sena, the local language. Jon preached his heart out with excitement on John 16:5-11 but focusing especially on verse 7: "But in fact, it is best for you that I go away, because if I don't, the Advocate won't come. If I do go away, then I will send him to you." He pointed out that this wasn't said to people of the 21^st century or people who never encountered Jesus in the flesh – it was said to His disciples. He talked about how the disciples had Jesus with them 24-7 for three years, they ate together, slept together, saw miracles together, but after all that Jesus said it would be better for them if he left! We can see how true this is because after Jesus was arrested, it is evident that the disciples were not changed people on the inside—they betrayed Him to His enemies, they ran in fear, they denied Christ in shame. Maybe while Jesus was walking with them He acted like an ever present conscience—just like you wouldn't be nearly as tempted to retell the latest dirty joke to your pastor—but even though their actions may have been different for that time, their hearts were still unchanged. However, after Jesus was resurrected and left them, they received the Holy Spirit and found out what He said was completely true—it was better for them to have God inside of them rather than God walking with them! After that, they were fearless. After that, they were obedient to the point of dying for their faith. After that, they could face authorities and testify that Jesus was the Son of God and they were not ashamed of Him. They couldn't do any of that without the Holy Spirit. Jon then shared how this gives us hope today—we don't have Jesus walking with us, but He said we have something better, something that can transform our lives from the inside out rather than just modify our actions a little. Overall the prisoners responded very well, and it looked like the message really sank into their hearts.

After Jon preached, Lino invited anyone who had never received Christ as Savior to come forward. Hallelujah, 12 responded, picking their way through the crowded room to the front to kneel on the concrete floor, eyes closed, hands raised, hearts changed. We prayed for each one as they were transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of the Son of God (Col 1:13). It was so exciting! I saw genuine transformation in their eyes, and it was a "this is why I'm here" moment. They sang a couple more songs in their beautiful African harmonies, praising their Redeemer.

Lino then had me close in prayer for those who had court dates soon, that the judges would be just but that they could also see the changes in the hearts of these people, for the sick prisoners, and to just thank God for all that happened in our little service today. I did so with a full heart and a lot of joy.

Thank you to all of you who pray for us regularly, we really appreciate it. This time our praise reports would be:

That God has provided for the chicken coop for orphans project.
That the jail ministry is flourishing and people are hearing the gospel and responding wholeheartedly.
That our duties over hospitality and the kitchen are going well.
Jon is doing much better with his Portuguese, and communication is getting easier.

Prayer requests would include:

Jon is still having trouble sleeping, and we're pretty sure it's a spiritual attack against us. Please pray for spiritual protection over us and that he would finally be able to rest.
For more discernment. There are a lot of really tough decisions we have to make, and we really need to know God's subtle leadings and when things are not of Him.
This weekend we get to go preach at another pastor's church, so pray that God would inspire us with the message and give us the language we need to communicate it. I think Jon will preach with me translating into Portuguese this time, we'll see how that goes.

Thanks again, and keep up the prayers!

Blessings,

~Carla Reinagel

Rich in Faith

2009-02-06T19:19:00.001+02:00

Hasn't God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith? - James 2:5 (NLT)

I'm absolutely humbled by the faith of some of the pastors we work with... Unlike Carla, I can't learn a language by picking up a book and reading it - I have to talk to people. Fortunately, most Mozambicans we have run into love to talk! Many of the lives and stories of the pastors have really encouraged me, so I figured I would share them with you.

What does Christianity look like in a country with 300,000 AIDS orphans and many other children orphaned because of disease or floods? What about in a country where, if your child is born with a birth defect, you can kick them out of the house because you can't afford to feed a mouth that will never be able to give back? As I found out talking to the pastors, it often looks like taking in dieing children, even when you can't feed them. Most of the leadership here has at least 5 orphans living with them - some have over twenty! It's truly amazing what these pastors are doing...

Pastor Abel, one of the leaders of the Bible school here, has 1 natural son and over twenty adopted kids living with him. Until recently, they were all sleeping in his tiny house with 5-8 people per room. Recently, a team from Australia came and built an additional house for the older boys. When I asked him how he fed everyone, he laughed and shrugged, "Sometimes we pray harder than others. When we get food, we praise God. When we can't eat for a day, we praise God. God has always been faithful!" That floored me. I've never trusted God to the point that my life was on the line like that. Pastor Abel talked about how much his life with God has grown through taking in children by faith, and that he truly knows what it is like to be able to trust in God. Recently, a church in Canada has sponsored Pastor Abel's efforts by sending him money each month for food for his children. What did he do with the money? He praised God and started taking in more orphans!

Pastor Jose is a teacher at the bible school. He also has over twenty kids living with him, many who are crippled, blind, deaf, or mentally handicapped. He told us that it's very difficult to provide for all of the children, but God has always taken care of him. He said the hardest part is that he has a reputation now - the people who live in his village know he will take in crippled children so people he doesn't even know drop off blind and crippled kids with him. Because he knows the children have almost no chance of surviving unless he takes them in, he lets them live in his house even though he knows he can't afford it.

As I was praying about what to do here at the base, it was these pastors and the others like them that God brought to mind. I'm currently trying to find ways to help them in the long term - after all, they have been so faithful with the little they have (they only get paid $80-$100 per month)... Pastor Jose will be the first person we are going to try and help out. We plan on making a chicken coup for him and buying chickens. We'll start with Pastor Jose and see how it goes from there, but if successful, we will be able to provide for many more orphans than just the ones at the center.

Prayer Requests:

Please pray for my (Jon's) sleep... I have not been able to get to bed until after 3 the last couple nights, and it's hurting my ability to be productive during the day.

For wisdom - because there are so many needs here and so little it feels like we can really do, we really need God's wisdom with where to give of our time and money.

For God to transform thoughts and lives. For us, that we would be able to trust God with everything, like our Mozambican friends. For the Mozambicans, that God would give them strategies and plans for transforming their communities.

Praise Reports:

I know this has been a rather quiet prayer request in the past, but Carla has had problems with her bladder that at times make mission work incredibly difficult. In the last week, she hasn't had to go to the restroom nearly as often and her ability to hold it has gone from 5 minutes (incredibly difficult when preaching or evangelizing in the bush) to 3 hours. Praise God! As you can imagine, this has been an incredible blessing for us!

- Jon

2009-01-30T19:16:00.000+02:00

Hello all!

We don't have much new news to relate। We're still going through the training process before taking on full responsibilities. It's given us time to readjust to the clock and the heat (which we have done quite well, thank you for the prayers and praise God!), and have some good quiet time with God and resting before being thrown into the busyness that all the other missionaries live with.

We have learned a little more of what our duties will be। We thought originally that our main work, broadly called "hospitality," would be mostly with short-term individuals and teams visiting from other countries. That will be part of it, but we learned that we will be doing much more than that. Because this base is the Iris Ministries hub for all of central Mozambique, there are many meetings and conferences with the native pastors, and we will be taking care of them as well. It's an honor to serve those who are truly giving their all for Christ here in our country. We will also be running the kitchen, overseeing the workers and discipling them in their walks with Christ. I have started visiting the kitchen every day, trying to get to know the workers as a friend before being placed over them as an authority.

Jon has been spending a lot of time with the pastors, trying to understand the culture at a deeper level। There are so many needs - everywhere we turn, people are asking us for stuff, but if we help, there is no real change in the culture. Jon has been looking into micro-financing (the latest buzzword for cures for African poverty) and other ways to help the people on a permanent basis. However, most of the people we work with are Pastors who have taken in 6-12 kids - they can't work another job in addition to the pastorate. We're looking into building chicken coups (incredibly low-maintainance and reproducing), buying goats, or purchasing farmland for the pastors... Jon is also trying to find a way to record and sell local gospel music, as there is not local Christian retail music and many people would buy it at the drop of a hat. All the Christian music around here is from Malawi or Zambia.

That's about all we have this time by way of update! Instead of getting a lot of text this time, we've got pictures for you instead: www.jonandcarla.com/Pictures.html - Jon has frantically been trying to finish the website before our missionary work really gets in gear. We've also posted a bit of Mozambican worship music for those of you who are interested, and started a new blog about life in Africa; not really news or testimonies, so it doesn't really fit in the updates, but if you want to see what our day-to-day life is like, check it out: http://life-in-moz.blogspot.com.

Thanks for all your prayers, and do please keep them coming!
~Carla Reinagel

Back in Africa!

2009-01-21T18:43:00.000+02:00

Hey again!

Since Jon shared about our time back in the States, I’ll talk about our journey back to Africa:
We first flew to Atlanta, which providentially happened to be the only international airport in the Eastern US that was not having delays and cancellations due to the weather. While at the airport, we ran into some missionaries we knew from the Maputo area who were also on their way back to Africa! So we got to talk with them for a while, and we even sat very close to them on the plane. When we got to the Johannesburg airport, we parted ways with the Maputo missionaries only to get in the visa line with another missionary we knew well! That was an amazing divine appointment, because we both needed to stay overnight in Johannesburg (not the safest place in the world), and we had a hotel reservation but he didn’t so he was able to tag along and get a room in the same hotel. While we were still at the Johannesburg airport we got in line to exchange some money, only to run into yet ANOTHER missionary who helped us a lot with transportation last time we were here! We couldn’t have planned all those meetings if we had tried; it took God to put it all together. Different people seem to experience God’s loving but quiet “I’m with you” in different ways – ours seems to be divine encounters. We were so encouraged to know He was looking out for us. The hotel was nice and safe, and the guys got to discuss some important things while I went swimming in the pool to loosen up after the stiff 18-hour flight. Jon found out some needed information about transferring money into the country, and got to help the other missionary out by fine-tuning his accounting spreadsheet. We didn’t get the most sleep on the plane or that night (yay jetlag), but hopefully our internal clocks will readjust soon. We got back to the airport for the last leg of our journey, only to find out that our direct flight had been cancelled AND our baggage was considered overweight by the new airline. God was still looking out for us though, and the lady at the counter only charged us for less than half of what she should have for the baggage, and we were able to reroute through two other cities before finally getting to our airport in the biggest city near our village. We had a few more headaches in the Maputo airport, but once again two very nice men helped us reduce our costs and get us safely on our way. We got to the airport to be greeted with a blast of humid 100 degree air (not exaggerating), along with a very excited missionary welcoming us back. We went shopping for some essentials, then got to our village and our new home, put down our bags and crashed into the unmade bed. We were beyond exhausted, but glad to be back.

The next day was Sunday, so we got to attend our new home church and be introduced as the new members of the family here. It was great to see familiar faces and meet some of the people who we have come to serve. Yesterday we had a great meeting with our base director, and she gave us some of her vision and a better idea of the tasks ahead of us here. We found out that we will be able to apply for our Mozambican residency after only 6 months, which we thought was going to be a year, so that’s a praise report! Constantly having to renew visas is very costly, tiring, and often frustrating, so the sooner we can be rid of their inconvenience, the better.
Thanks to all of you who prayed for a safe journey—we certainly had that and so much more! Our prayer requests this time would include:

- That we could readjust to the time and the heat. We have been exhausted from the combination of jetlag and sweltering temperatures, so that makes it hard to get anything done or to connect with people when you always feel like you’re about to pass out. I didn’t remember heat feeling this miserable, but I guess it’s just our bodies going through shock from freezing-cold to roasting-hot with no transition (God sure knew what He was doing when He created the gradual seasons, didn’t He?). That and Jon and I seem to be responding to jetlag in opposite ways—I can’t sleep and he can’t stop sleeping. A normal schedule would be very nice.
- Ease in learning the local language. We have a decent handle on Portuguese now (though we still have plenty to learn there too), but last time we were in Africa God was impressing on my heart how important it is to the people to be able to communicate in their mother tongue.
- That we could be sensitive in learning the culture. Knowing the language does no good if you offend someone with actions, gestures, or clothing that would be considered innocent in our culture but horribly offensive here.
- For good relationships, clear communication, and unity with our fellow missionaries. Our base director is Brazilian, which is all the more reason for us to master Portuguese, but we would like prayer that miscommunication would not be a hindrance to the work here in any way. That goes for our marriage as well—for some reason we tend to misunderstand each other far more often over here.
- That we would be able to develop deep friendships with the Mozambicans. We don’t want to minister to them from our safe bubble at a safe distance. We want to get into their lives and know them, and be able to disciple them in their walks with Christ.
Thanks again to all of you who faithfully lift us up in prayer. We definitely need every bit we can get!

With love from Africa,

~Jon and Carla

P.S. If you get the chance, please check out our website – www.jonandcarla.com. We will have pictures of our house posted soon, as soon as we’ve moved in enough for it to look presentable.

Our time at home

2009-01-21T18:20:00.003+02:00

Hello everyone!

God is faithful and we are blessed. We had an amazing time while we were visiting in the States, and we had the privilege of seeing many friends, speaking in a number of churches, and making connections with people who have encouraged and supported us greatly. Even though we did not specifically go to raise funds, and even though the US is going through a financial crisis, we were amazed at how many people still gave generously to our work. Thank you all so much!

Since we didn’t do the greatest job of keeping in touch over e-mail while we were back, here is a brief synopsis of what we did:

- We got to see family and old and new friends in Missouri, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Texas.
- We lived with Carla’s parents whenever we weren’t travelling, which was a huge blessing to be able to spend lots of time with them AND not have many living expenses. They also let us borrow a car for the whole time we were back.
- Carla got her old job back, working full time for twice the pay she used to get, and doing what she loves, teaching English to international students and running programs to help them get connected to the community.
- Jon did a few odd jobs, but mostly he kept his schedule free to make our arrangements for coming back, connect with people, learn web design and programming (by the way, he created our new website: http://www.jonandcarla.com/)

However blessed we were financially, that was nothing compared to the blessing of seeing some of the American church in action. We were very encouraged to know God’s work was being done back home, too. Many of the people we got to see come to the Lord were going deeper with him, and we saw many people trusting in God even when it wasn’t easy. We saw years of prayers for our college campus get answered as the different Christian groups started meeting together for prayer. We were greatly encouraged as we were able to see for the first time the army of people who supported us in prayer, without which we could have done very little. We were touched as small congregations gave beyond their means for the chance of transforming lives they would never encounter this side of heaven, and we watched teenagers tearfully give all the money they had. We got to see our families as passionate as we are about Africa and the people we minister to. And no matter where we spoke or what that church believed doctrinally, we were accepted as a brother and sister in Christ.

Probably the most encouraging thing we saw when we were back was a church who gathered around Lisa, one of their members who had cancer. Believing God would heal her, they held countless prayer meetings and had corporate fasts. They also helped her five kids through school and gave them rides, fixed meals for the family, and stayed with Lisa through the darkest times. At one point, we went to visit Lisa in the hospital and over half of the church was there – truly, we have never seen a church who showed so much love for a single person. I write this in the past tense because we saw it when we were back in the States and the worst part is over, but the fight for Lisa is still going on.

I hope you can receive the same encouragement that we have. No matter what your local church is struggling with, how many family members are going through a spiritual crisis, what the price of gas is, or how many evangelists are having scandals, the kingdom of God is still advancing, people’s lives are being transformed, and the cross of Christ still has power! God bless!

-Jon and Carla Reinagel

Finish Line in Sight

2008-08-20T16:11:00.002+02:00

Hey People!

I'm writing this update as we babysit for some missionaries who are out for the evening, and since the baby is asleep we got to watch our first bit of the Olympics. No matter what the sport is, the commentators always talk about the athletes getting most of the way through the race, most of the way through the routine, most of the way through the event, and being so tired and exhausted but needing to finish strong. That's how I feel we are now, the finish line is in sight but that is no reason to slow down, drag our feet, or just give half-hearted efforts. Please stand with us in prayer that we can give it our all, right up to the end.

As I mentioned in the last update, we officially got accepted to be long-term missionaries with Iris Ministries at the Dondo base, and we also got to go there for our extended outreach. That was a blast, getting to know the missionaries and kids there for a while and seeing the kinds of work we will be doing when we return. It looks like we'll be taking over hospitality and managing all the visitors that come through the base, running the kitchen, and hopefully doing some discipleship with the Bible School students and local pastors.You can see pictures of the base and some of the people we will be working with on their website: http://www.irismin.com/ministryLoc_dondo.cfm.

Our outreach began a little ahead of plans, the Iris pilot planned on leaving Monday the 11th, but some paperwork at the airport fell through and he had to leave early on Saturday. That meant we had to rush around to finish packing and cleaning our house, but it was a fun trip! Jon got to sit in the co-pilot seat and even took over the controls for 2/3 of the trip, so he had a blast. I was excited to finally get back to Dondo! After a couple days on the base, getting a feel for the work and the town, we joined the missionary who is in charge of the church-based orphan care program, and drove to the Caia district (just below Malawi) to register kids and distribute food for 5 days. They have to register the kids with pictures and the local pastor present to verify the stories people tell, because everyone wants to show up for free food but the focus of the program is to help the orphans. They are all in the care of family members or friends of the parents, which is a great system because they get to grow up in the community rather than being separated from remaining family by living in an orphanage.

While we were in Caia we wanted to hop the border to Malawi to renew our visas, which was a process where we had to jump on the backs of bicycles to go over a 2-mile bridge over the Zambize River, then cram into the back of a tiny pickup truck for 2 hours, only to get to the border and find out they don't give visas anymore :-(. So we had to cram back into the truck (along with 16 adults, 10 kids, 2 bikes, 9 big bundles/suitcases, and 2 chickens), back over the bridge on bikes, and then had to leave our outreach early since we didn't have new visas. When we got back to Dondo the missionaries had an emergency situation so they couldn't help us get bus tickets to Maputo, but God planned it out so that we happened to have a friend in Beira (30 minutes away) who was able to pick Jon up, take him to the station, and get the tickets just in time. So at 4:30am we hopped on the 17-hour bus to Maputo (normally 16 hours, but we had a tire blowout that took an hour to fix), where we had another fun coincidence because also on that bus was the guy from Gondola that I was teaching how to read in May! So we got in to Zimpeto really late, then got up at 4:00am to catch a ride with some Zimpeto missionaries to South Africa yesterday, where we successfully got our last visas for this trip.

Now we will stay here in Zimpeto for 3 weeks before we end our 9-month Mozambique Marathon and head home. It feels like a full circle since we started our journey here at this base, and now we're finishing here as well. It has been a bittersweet return, as it is great to see familiar faces and pick up old relationships, but we also learned that three little boys we knew from our last trips died while we were in Pemba. I know we wrote about Thabo in one of our early updates, a 9 1/2 year old who was too weak to walk but was a powerful little intercessor and prayed for each missionary on the base by name every night. Now he's running through paradise with all the strength he could ever have dreamed of, and probably still fighting for the people who cared for him here. 4-year-old Tino lived to love, and would rush to everyone who came anywhere near him to give a hug. He looked almost comical in his little round glasses, but now his perfect eyes are beholding his Abba father as he rests in His embrace. 7-year-old Alfredo was abandoned in the hospital as a baby because he had hydrocephalus and his head was disproportionately large (about 3 times what it should have been). He never walked, or even sat up, but he had gripped the heart of one Iris pastor, Domingo. Domingo started a hospital ministry so he could visit Alfredo 3 times a week, and he cared for him like a father. It was sad to see all of them go, but good to know they are all happier now than they ever were on this earth.

So again, please pray for us for a strong finish, even more relationships strengthened and built, and more boldness to share God's love with the people around us.

In Him,
~Carla and Jon Reinagel

Graduation and the Next Step

2008-08-07T08:43:00.001+02:00

Hello, one and all!

First, thanks again to all of you who are so faithful in interceding for us with your prayers. Jon’s health is doing much better now, he’s still a little weak but he can hide it well and do basically everything he’s used to doing.

The mission school is over now, we had our graduation bash on Monday and were commissioned to our various fields. It has been so amazing getting to know the 100+ other students in the school, hearing their testimonies and visions, and it will be equally fascinating keeping in touch with them and finding out what God does with the rest of their lives. This week has been a gradual goodbye time as each day a few more leave, some on international or local outreaches, and some back to their homes. We are going on a Mozambican outreach as well, but we haven’t left yet. It’s a cool story though, we will be going to Dondo, which is where we have been accepted to come back to as long-term missionaries. They told us that it would be an outreach option a month ago, but didn’t let anyone else know until last week, so everyone else had already decided where they were going and no one wanted to come with us. So the three of us (Jon, me, God) will be doing this outreach alone, but that really worked out better. We are totally exhausted but we were planning on taking a grueling 48-hour bus ride to get down there, but then the base pilot mentioned that he would be flying to a city 1 hour away from the base next week and offered to take us in his little plane! Jon has been wanting to fly in it ever since we got here, so we jumped at the opportunity. Not only does it save us money and saves us from the arduous journey by bus, it also gives us a nice break to catch our breath before the outreach begins as well. It wouldn’t have worked out if anyone else had signed up to go with us, so God knew what He was doing when He put our team together :-).

On our outreach we will be working with the church-based orphan care program, going to various villages, encouraging the churches, then registering the families that adopted orphans to receive help from the Dondo base. It may be what we end up doing at least part of the time when we are long-term missionaries, so that will be really neat to get a feel for our future. Please pray for us about this outreach, first pray for a safe flight down there, and once we’re there we will be traveling a lot so pray for road mercies, we have some allocated finances for the outreach so please pray for wisdom in how to spend it and bless the churches, and at some point during our time there we will need to renew our visas (again…), so pray for a cheap, easy way to get out and back into the country. It has been so cool to send out prayer requests and consistently see the answers time and time again. Keep them up!

Blessings!

~Carla and Jon Reinagel

Prayers Answered! (and a little more update)

2008-07-21T08:43:00.002+02:00

Greetings, Victorious Ones!

Thank you all who prayed for us, the people at the immigration office changed their minds and indeed said we could stay! We were looking into our options if we had needed to leave, and the cheapest way would have cost at least $1,200, so we're very grateful we didn't need to.

And since I have a minute with internet, I'll go ahead and add a little update on everything else. Jon is still pretty sick, and he doesn't have much energy, so do keep praying for his health to recover. Classes are still amazing and filling, though at this point many people are starting to chomp at the bit to be released into ministry rather than just learn about it every day. I have definitely felt more at home in the villages than when we're on the base all day every day, so I'm looking forward to our 3-week outreach right after school where we'll be able to spend more time in various villages.

Speaking of village outreach, our last one was quite amazing. On the way there, bumping along in an open-air flatbed truck, we really got hit with how much ministry is all about love. The first night when we wanted to show the Jesus film, the generator broke and we couldn't. Even so, instead of expressing frustration the team just hung out with the crowd we still drew, and showed them love and attention. The next day we specifically looked for ways to bless and serve the people, and one cool testimony came from that. A group from the team went out evangelizing door-to-door, and they came upon some women who were shelling beans. They sat with them for over an hour, shelling beans with them and talking. Both of the women were Muslim, and wouldn't even let the girls pray for them, but they were very softened by the time the girls spent with them and the love they showed. Those women came to the evangelism event that night (we got the generator fixed) and saw the Jesus film, and one of the girls who sat with them shelling beans got to lead them to Christ. They were so transformed by love that they wanted to go out and pray for everyone they saw and help our team in healing their friends and leading them to the Lord as well!

Another cool thing we got to see was a lady who was completely demon-possessed got set free. It was on the last morning in our brief church service before we left, she was shaking violently, her eyes were clenched shut, and she was and uttering these deep, gutteral growls that didn't sound at all human. Julia, a girl on our team, just held her and loved her, and the longer she loved the more agitated the demons became. Darkness cannot remain in the presence of love, it can't stand it. After a while of praying and commanding the demons in our Christ-given authority, they left and the lady was completely free and at peace. She looked up with eyes full of light and joy, it was so priceless. She accepted Christ and we gave her a Bible we had—she couldn't read but she said she would ask her husband to read it to her.

One more quick testimony… We had just finished doing a short church service where I got to preach in Portuguese, and someone ran over to us and told us a man was very sick just across the road from the church. A couple of us walked over, and sure enough there was a man lying on a cot, sobbing and wailing in intense stomach pain. Tears flowed freely down his face. We began praying and his crying lessened, but even after several check-ins with our translator the man said he still had a great deal of pain. By now we had drawn a crowd of about 30-40 kids all watching us, so I told them all to extend their hands to him and pray with us "ma cheena na Yesu" (in the name of Jesus), for the man to be healed. After a couple minutes of those precious children's prayers, the man had absolutely no more pain! It's so cool to show the people that it's all about God's power, not us. There's nothing special about us missionaries. They have access to the same God that we do, and it's so cool to see the light come on in their eyes when they realize that and walk in that power. The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these…

Well, I should get going. Thanks again for your prayers for the visas, and please keep them coming for Jon's health.

Abiding in Love,

~Carla Reinagel

News from the front...

2008-07-02T15:46:00.002+02:00

Since Carla updated you on our daily routines and what we're learning, I get to tell you the more exciting things – what we've been doing. And what God's been doing. And why we need your prayers constantly. I know it is a bit long, but it's an amazing story – if you don't have time to read it now, please save it and read it sometime soon.

You may wonder how two missionaries focused on saving dying orphans ended up with 9000 churches… We have been wondering that too, but our latest outreach has given us a lot of insight. The former street kids and AIDS orphans play a huge role. They were taken from the streets where they would have certainly died and they were given a home, food, love, and a hope and a future. Even though they know they don't have to risk their lives for Jesus, they do so out of absolute love for Him. After all, who would know of God's love more?

Our two leaders for the 3 day outreach were Dilio and Netto – Heidi picked up Dilio off the streets even before she had any land for a center. They have been working together for years. Netto was a killer and a thief – one of the two most feared outlaws in the entire region. He had been killing people since he was 6 just to have their t-shirts. Now he's a worship leader and a mighty man of God.

Even before the outreach started, we had major problems. Our house flooded the night before, and we had to mop up the water every couple hours. In addition, our water filter was dropped and broken before we could fill all of our water for the outreach. Once we were all packed into the back of our flat-bed truck, the driver refused to walk across the base to drive us. After waiting for almost an hour, one of the kids jumped in the truck and tried to drive it to the driver. He didn't know how to stop the truck and we all crashed into the church, ruining the truck and cracking the foundation of the church. One pastor was seriously injured and had to go to the hospital, and the kid that crashed the truck ran away. We got another truck and headed on our way 2 hours late.

Two hours later, we arrived at our destination, only to find out that our only translator didn't come with us because his brother was the one who crashed the truck into the church and he went looking for his brother. Luckily, God knew this would happen months in advance and gave us an outreach team with Carla and I (who have a decent hold of the language now) and two people fluent in both Spanish and French (which are similar to Portuguese). We chatted with the local pastor, set up our tents in back of his house, and went looking for a latrine. The local latrines were just fenced off areas with a rock in the middle – we still have no idea how they are supposed to work, so for the weekend, we either went in the tall grass outside of the village or made the 10-15 minute trek to the one latrine with a hole near the church. This was totally ok for most of the missionaries in training, but we had an additional 21 visitors from Canada who really struggled with it.

We then went to the local school and attached soccer field to set up for the evangelism outreach that night. This night, we were showing the Jesus film, and then Heidi was going to drive in later and preach. We always draw a huge crowd because we are foreigners, and because the Jesus film is the only film ever translated into Macua, the local dialect. We set up the movie and began playing it to a curious audience of about 800, but about 30 minutes in to the movie, it began to rain and people started leaving. We all started praying, and the rain stopped less than a minute later.

The crowd kept growing until there were about 2000 people. At the last possible second before the movie ended, Heidi and a couple of our speakers from the school drove up. Heidi gave a quick salvation message and then asked us to go out into the crowd and pray for the sick. Heidi had asked for all the people with stomach problems to raise their hands, but on my way to a person with stomach problems, another guy grabbed me and pointed to his other arm. He couldn't move his elbow, and after feeling his arm, we realized that he didn't have a tricep – there was just a bit of flab where the muscle should have been. Fortunately, he was one of the few people in the village that understood Portuguese and I started praying for him with one other guy on my team. After a couple minutes, we felt his tricep again, and the muscle had totally grown back! He got really excited, and ran off to get someone else. It turns out the other man had the same problem, and after 40 minutes of praying, his muscle grew back, too. The first man was so excited that he kept bringing us people to pray for, and a week later at the conference Carla spoke about, we got to see him baptized!

Other people praying that night got to see a deaf person healed and a little deaf-mute girl hear her mommy's voice for the first time and start to speak. However, not everyone had a great time. About half of the people praying just got mocked the entire time, most of the women were harassed physically and verbally, and half a dozen people had cameras or bags stolen. However, the worst debacle was Heidi's car was broken into during the meeting and her stuff and all the speaker's stuff was stolen. Passports, visas, clothes, several thousand dollars, phones, and even wedding rings were stolen. We got together as a team after the outreach, and Heidi spoke to us about what we had just seen / been through. Even though all of her stuff was stolen, she chose to focus on the people that received Christ for the first time and the amazing miracles we saw God do. We caught a small glimpse at the price others have had to pay to bring the gospel to this area as the pastors that came with us told us stories of times they had been stoned or had their houses burned. It amazed us that every person counted it joy (Jas 1:2) at the trials they faced for the gospel. And we in turn counted it joy for the small price we had to pay to see most of a village completely transformed. However, due to the large amount of spiritual warfare we were experiencing, we felt like we needed to have people awake all night praying. Two of the pastors stayed up all night praying while us foreigners took shifts.

Heidi and the speakers spoke at a seminar at the church the next day, then headed out for another outreach. However, they left Dilio behind to translate for us. After 4-5 hours of sharing at the church, we went back to camp for lunch while the pastors jumped in one of the vehicles and headed after some of the thieves from the night before. They were able to buy back the passports, clothes, and rings but couldn't find the other things. We originally planned to do another outreach in the same village because it was the safest village in the area, but when the pastors found out, they had a fit. They couldn't stand to preach the gospel in the same village when there were others around who had never heard the good news. So we changed the plan and headed to another village against the judgment of Netto – our most street-savvy pastor.

As you can imagine, we were praying pretty hard. We knew we were being risky to go to a different village, but really felt like God would protect us. At 4:30 pm, we drove out to the next village, taking 40-50 older youth from the first village with us. We didn't find out till later that we took the youth so they could protect the visitors in case something went wrong – the pastors didn't really care what happened to themselves. However, the night went amazingly well. We showed the Jesus film to about 1000 people and many people received Christ. We then asked for people who needed healing. Well, Dilio our preacher told us to go into the audience to pray for people and then he started yelling at the audience to bring him a 100% deaf person. The lady that the crowd brought forward was completely deaf and had been so for over 30 years. She got healed on stage, and the entire atmosphere of the village changed – instead of being a little skeptical anymore, they quickly brought out all the sick people and begged us for prayer. I got to pray for several babies that had malaria – their heads went from being really hot to normal temperature and the moms left quite grateful to God. Carla spent the time translating because Dilio left the stage to pray for someone. We stayed for about two hours praying for the sick, and almost all were healed, including a completely blind man and 5 or 6 deaf or mostly deaf people.

We felt like we should pray through the night that second night as well, but we were all too tired to actually carry that out. The next day, one of our leaders was violently sick, we had no bread left for breakfast so we had to improvise, and all of the pastors left to chase after the thieves again. The plan was to eat breakfast, then pack, then preach at 8 o' clock, then leave at 10. Our Mozambican hosts made us boiled plantains and mayonnaise (not as bad tasting as it sounds), but we didn't finish breakfast until 9:30. Since Carla was the only one that could really give a sermon in Portuguese, she went to the church to start speaking while the rest of us packed up. The pastors returned around noon, and we left at 1:30 to make a "quick detour" to the prison, or so the pastors told us. At the prison, a couple policemen with automatic weapons jumped in one of our trucks and we headed to the police station, which was, of course, in a completely different village.

We got to the police station, and the pastors and policemen went in while the rest of us went to grab a cold drink. A little while later, the pastors came out, threw all the gear out of one of the trucks, and drove off without telling us much. The Canadians freaked out, but the rest of us were excited because we were right next to the beach. Everyone went to hang out at the beach while I went with the other truck and driver to find phone credit to call our base and let them know what happened to us.

Random aside about how hard even small things are in Africa: we went to every shop in town, and only one had phone credit for sale, but it was closed. It was fairly important, so we went into the village to look for the owner. After we found the owner, we waited for her to go to a different house and get the key. We drove back to the shop, only to find out the lock had busted and the key wouldn't work. I left one of our younger Mozambicans there with instructions to buy credit if the store ever got opened, and the truck went to the next village to look for credit. We never found any.

Night fell, and our pastors still hadn't arrived with the other truck. We decided to go take communion together and talk about the experience at one of the local shops. During that time, we found out that some people got to pray for a sick little girl and see about 5 people saved through that encounter. It struck me that God sidetracked 50 people for 4.5 hours just because He cared so much for that one family. The pastors came back at 7:30, still unable to recover the belongings, and then we realized that one of the trucks didn't have working headlights. We spend 30 minutes fixing the headlights, then we were on our way on dirt roads that were never meant to be travelled in the dark. Nevertheless, God protected us and we got back safely around 9.

Our team learned so much through the experience. We learned about God's love and power, His love for even one or two people, the absolute need for intercession, and the price third-world pastors pay daily for the sake of the gospel. I hope this has given you a glimpse into our lives recently and let you know how important every one of your prayers are. God bless!

- Jon and Carla Reinagel

Yes, we are still alive...

2008-07-01T15:44:00.003+02:00

Hello, Dear Ones!

I guess we haven't written one of these update things since the school started, but that can tell you a little bit about how busy we've been! It's a bit overwhelming at times to sit under amazing, life-changing messages every single day--sometimes we feel like we're about to burst with it all. To give you a taste of life here, this is what the schedule looks like on an average day:

Get up and attempt to have some semblance of quiet time in a small house full of 8 people and a small compound with 100 people. We have to take showers on a once-per-3-days rotation since water is very limited, and often we go days without any water at all if we drain the tanks faster than they can fill back up. Sometimes we have to do laundry or burn trash really early in the mornings, since this is the only time in the schedule to allow for it. At some point around 6am, a deafeningly loud gong will sound to announce breakfast time, where we all go up and stand in line at the cafeteria with about 300 children, workers, Mozambican Bible school students, and beggars to wait for our little roll of bread and cup of tea.

Class starts at 8am, and it is in the huge church that they just finished earlier this year. We start class with an hour or so of worship every day, which is usually pretty free-flow, prophetic, sometimes dancing our hearts out, sometimes just laying on the floor and soaking in God's presence, but never complacent. Following worship we have amazing speakers every day, often Heidi and the other anointed missionaries working here and other times people flown in from all over the world. I want to give you just a taste of what kinds of things we are learning, but since I can't really reproduce entire messages, at the end of this update I will include some of the one-liners that just hit me in the gut (obviously optional reading :-). Maybe they won't impact you like they did me, but read on if you're interested. The focus varies from class to class, speaker to speaker. Sometimes it is on our relationship with God, developing intimacy with Him, because without that everything else is impossible. Other times it is about knowing our identity in the Kingdom and walking in our God-given authority. Other times it is on God's heart for the poor and the broken, learning how to see the world and other people through His eyes. No matter who is speaking or what the topic is, every class is very powerful and practical.

After class, usually around 1pm, we line up at the cafeteria again with our little bowls and spoons for a lunch of rice and beans, rice and cabbage, or rice and spinach, depending on the day. The afternoon activities vary from day to day, sometimes we have workshops or special training sessions, optional classes, or just interact with the people and build relationships. After dinner in the evenings we have class, worship, or small group meetings.

Now that I've described what a normal day is like, this past week has been anything but normal. They put on a huge conference for all the surrounding churches (which translates into all the surrounding villages since there's free food), so all of us mission students have been cleaning the latrines 3 times a day and helping serve in the kitchen for all +/- 3,000 people every meal. However, that was NOTHING compared to Saturday, when Rolland and Heidi's daughter Chrystalyn had her Mozambican wedding (she got married last month in the States, but they wanted to celebrate here too). They had a beautiful wedding on the beach, complete with 36 bridesmaids and 36 groomsmen in bright blue-yellow-white outfits (that I spent 4 days frantically sewing, fixing, and altering all the problems… Mom, my wedding was nothing :-P). After they exchanged vows, we had to run back to the church where the reception was to be held—feeding a chicken dinner with cake (thanks to each house in the mission compound making 8 cakes each) to all 5,000-6,000 people who came to the conference and wedding and just wandered in for the food (very broad approximation because you wouldn't believe how hard it is to keep count, especially when they sneak through the line more than once…). It was a beautiful picture of Luke 14, where Jesus said to invite the poor who cannot repay to your feasts, which is exactly what they did. In fact, they had the stage of the church set with special tables for the couple and their immediate family, several government officials and influential people, and some of the honored guests included several blind and crippled beggars. That shook the very ground of the community, and it was all people could talk about for days. The most influential person in town was shocked that absolutely everyone at the reception, from him to the groom to the 2-year-old village kid, all got the same food in the same portions. Later in Luke 14 Jesus tells a parable of a man who prepares a feast, but everyone he initially invites comes up with excuses for why they can't come. Then he sends out more invitations, to the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame, and they all come running. Jesus has a banquet spread, He paid for it all at a great price, and He wants as many people at it as possible. Who have you invited to come?

We had an awesome weekend outreach last week but Jon is dying to write about that, so I'll save that for him, sign off here, and close out with the promised snippets from class.

Invite someone to the feast…

~Carla Reinagel

One-liners from classes:

* Learn how to live out of the secret place--be so filled in your alone times with God that nothing on earth can shake your peace.

* The greatest battle we face is not against the sin or spiritual powers of darkness in this world--the greatest battle is for the affection of your heart.

* "You don't know anything about the Kingdom. Go learn from the poor." (what God said to Heidi after she had been doing powerful mission work in Asia for many years).

* We don't want just a visitation from God, we want to be a continual habitation of His presence.

* If your love is like a cup, it will have limits. If it is like a river, it has an endless source and it blesses many others.

* God wants to transform the area of your greatest pain into the area of your greatest spiritual authority.

* Jesus doesn't want to see our trophies; He wants to see our battle scars.

* For the joy set before Him, Christ endured the cross. And that joy was me. I am His inheritance.

* Jesus is searching for His hands and His feet--people who are willing to lay down their lives and agendas and let the Holy Spirit put them on like a glove.

* "I've made many mistakes in my life and my ministry, but one mistake I haven't made is not going. The biggest mistake is doing nothing at all."

* The best-kept secret of the church and theology is that the gospel is all about transformation, not information.

* When the impossible seems logical, chances are good you're seeing through a Kingdom perspective.

* The more we actually follow Jesus, the more we will be surrounded by the people who are attracted to Jesus: the sinners, prostitutes, poor, and desperate.

* Moving in the Holy Spirit has nothing to do with spiritual gifts: it is how well I know the resources of heaven and know my position as a child of the King.

* Don't preach the gospel, just give people a taste of Jesus and they will never be the same.

* Every time heaven and earth collide, heaven wins and earth changes.

Some of the people shared some visions they've seen, and here a few that blew me away:

* The one that impacted me the most was one person saw the gates of heaven with Jesus standing to the side and asking everyone just one simple question: "Did you learn to love?" We try to make theology sound so complicated, but love really is all that matters.

* In one vision God handed the person a book and said, "This is what you did with your life, everything you did for Me written down." But then He pointed to an entire shelf of books behind Him and said, "This is what I had for you." Am I walking in everything He has for me?

* One person saw the wedding feast of the Lamb, and she was overjoyed to see the banquet table spread with places filled by her family, then the first girl she led to Christ when she was 13, then other people that she witnessed to, then people who came to God through her ministry, and she was thrilled. But then she saw many, many empty seats and she asked why. The answer came, "These were people I wanted you to witness to, but you were too consumed with yourself at that point in your life to give anything out to anyone." She said she had been going through a period of depression at that time, but God still had plans to use her to lead others to Him.

* One lady saw herself with her hands touching Jesus' feet and her feet touching earth, and people were literally walking over her as the bridge into heaven. We can't bring others with us unless we are connected to Christ.

School Time!

2008-06-02T15:38:00.001+02:00

Hello all you beautiful people!

Just a quickie update, we had a blast at the Dondo base even though we were only there for a few days. It's a much smaller base than the other ones we've been to, but they have a big vision. Their orphanage has about about 30 kids, but the exciting thing is they have a program for orphans living in the villages, like I mentioned in the last update, just to help support and empower family members to take care of kids so they can still grow up in a family and community. They only have 4 missionaries right now, 2 of which were gone on furlough when we visited, and the director is a fiery Brazilian lady who just exudes the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Now we are back in Pemba for the school, and so far really enjoying getting to know our fellow students. We are sharing a house with 6 girls/women (ages ranging from 19-47), and we're officially the "house parents," so we get to lead the small group gatherings and fun stuff like that. Classes start tomorrow, but God's presence is already thick all over the compound, and there is a beautiful bond of unity already in place. We have had some amazing worship times together, and we're all looking forward to what God has in store for us and the others during our time here! I know that we'll learn as much if not more from each other as we will from the official sessions, everyone has so many testimonies and stories to share.

Yesterday was a national holiday called Children's Day, and since kids are the focus of the ministry anyway they got a special day at the base :-). After church we served a chicken dinner (BIG treat--some of these village kids only get chicken 2-3 times a year, usually just from the base here) to all 3,000+/- people. It took all 150 of us new students and visitors to manage the crowds, but it all went off without TOO big a riot :-). Then we played games with the kids in a big field, and I was in charge of the sack race. Boy, was I glad I spoke some Portuguese, don't think I could have managed without it! It was fun though, just to give the kids some fun experiences like they've never had in their lives. At the end we formed a double line to escort the kids out of the base, praying over them as they walked by and received a candy bag for coming.

Praises:

* Safe travel on buses and planes to get to Dondo and here!

* Amazing fellow students to learn from and fellowship with

* We're still in relatively good health

Prayer Requests:

* Continued unity among housemates and other students

* Teachable spirits open to every opportunity to learn from every experience

* Guidance with spending our time

Thank you all for being so faithful in lifting us up! It's fun to think back on all the requests that we have sent you in the past that we have seen answers to. Everything from speed in learning the language to safe travel to getting our visas... your prayers are powerful and effective, please keep them up!

God bless,

~Carla

Gondola... Life is crazy!

2008-05-19T15:32:00.001+02:00

Hello, dear ones!

Wow, life will throw you some unexpected curve balls... especially when you're living day-to-day on faith!

As of last update we were in South Africa and planning to stay there most of May working with an Iris base in Nelspruit (close to the border of Mozambique). We did have a great time while we were there, we got to go on a weekend outreach with one of the missionaries and a team to a remote village. The church was precious--a little lean-to building with corrugated tin for one wall and a tarp for the other, with the back just open--and the people were amazing. So friendly, hospitable, and inviting. We got to preach three days in a row, once doing a long walk through the village first to invite everyone to come. The night Jon preached was great (I can brag on him since it isn't him writing the update :-P). He talked about how God empowers all believers to do His work, and that He shows us miracles to increase our faith so we go out and trust Him to work through us too. After the message he asked all the sick people to come forward, then had the rest of the church--not the missionaries, not the visitors, not the pastors, just the lay people--to come pray for them, and all of them got healed! Five boys committed their lives to Christ for the first time that night as well, it was such an exciting time!

Immediately after we got back from that outreach we ran into a missionary and his sister who were just about to return to Mozambique, so we prayed about going with them, felt a "go for it!", packed up our stuff, and headed out at 5:00 the next morning! The two-day journey by car was good, though we did arrive on the scene of an accident immediately after it happened. A man and woman on a bike had been hit by an 18-wheeler, so it was not at all pretty. The man was at least still in one piece, so Jon and the other missionary jumped out of the car to go pray for him to come back to life. He took a couple breaths, but then lay still. It was a painfully sobering wake-up call for us--between AIDS, malaria and other diseases, war, natural disasters, malnutrition, and even just accidents like this, Africa has the lowest life expectancy of anywhere in the world. It rekindled a sense of urgency in us to make the most of our time here and make sure as many people as possible know about God's love for them before it's too late.

So now we are in Gondola, which is about 1/3 of the way up the country from the southern border and close to Zimbabwe. The base we are staying at is with a mission group called Africa 180, and they have a pretty widespread influence. This is the group I mentioned in our last update who had the immensely successful prison ministry, and we have been able to participate in it while we've been here. I tell you, few things are more beautiful than hearing 150 formerly-hardened criminals singing worship songs with all their hearts. They have so much joy and hope, it is amazing. The mission preaches and prays with the men for a couple hours every single day Monday-Friday, so by the time they are released they pretty much have a Bible college education.

Another ministry I've been able to be involved in is with a local mission clinic. It's a pretty amazing system they have in place, where formerly if a parent died of AIDS or if a mother had AIDS and couldn't nurse, the babies would be brought to an orphanage to be raised. One missionary saw how it wasn't at all the ideal way to grow up--kids need families, communities, and individual attention that they just can't get in an orphanage setting, so the solution they found was to help the moms or relatives of the kids. Usually that just means providing formula and free medical care for the babies, and now there are 250 kids living in families in communities with their HIV+ mothers, or with uncles, aunts, and grandparents who otherwise couldn't have taken care of them and would have put them in the orphanage. It was fun to help out at the clinic for a couple days and see the fruit of their labor.

We've also found a few other random things to do to help wherever we can. One Mozambican man working at the mission base couldn't read, and all the other workers looked down on him a little for that reason. I've been giving him reading lessons as often as he has free time, and he's progressing pretty well! It's so cool to see him encouraged by his progress. And of course there was the usual request from another worker for guitar lessons, seems like everyone in the country wants to learn how to play :-).

One answered prayer is that we finally got the visas we need to be able to go to the mission school! It was quite an adventure to get them though, I must say. We had to go to a Mozambican consulate in Zimbabwe, which meant traveling on our own in a not-exactly-safe part of the continent (as Zimbabwe has had a tremendous amount of political unrest for the past several months). God was so faithful though, a lady in the bus to the border with us helped us with everything from finding a good money exchange rate to getting a taxi to even escorting us all the way to the consulate, just to be nice! We got there at 11:00 and they said it would take 4 hours to process, but since we just sat outside we guess they felt bad for us and only took 1 hour. We then walked to a little bakery where we celebrated our first anniversary over some cream turn-overs and cokes (for only $500,000,000 Zimbabwe dollars... they have the worst inflation in the world, that's about $2). We asked the bakery worker how to get back to the border, and a random customer in line offered to take us to the taxi stand. So we got to the border and a missionary walks up to us and offers us a ride the rest of the way home! So 7 different transports and 3 divine appointments later, we got back and with visas in hand! God is faithful.

Now we're going to visit one more little Iris base in Dondo for a couple days before heading back up to Pemba for the mission school.

Praises:

* We got our visas!!! Safety in all our travels to get them

* Being able to help Africa 180 and bless the people here

* Our health has been exceptionally good for a long time now

Prayer Requests:

* Please pray for Zimbabwe and and South Africa, who are both experiencing incredible upheaval and problems

* For safe travels to Dondo and Pemba

* Continued guidance as we walk each day in faith for a word for the next step!

In HIS Hands,

~Carla and Jon Reinagel

Zimpeto and South Africa

2008-04-26T18:16:00.002+02:00

Hello All!

We just left Zimpeto yesterday after almost 3 weeks there. It was the first base we visited when we arrived in January, so it was fun to see familiar people and re-establish relationships we started a few months ago. For me it was a bit of a break from the craziness in Pemba-- I got to just hang out with the kids, teach guitar, catch up on some required reading for the upcoming mission school, and encourage the teams coming through the base. As soon as I started giving guitar lessons I was in very high demand, every time I'd step outside our door I would be greeted by at least 3 to 5 eager boys wanting me to bring the guitar out for more playing around. Some of them progressed really quickly, and it was so encouraging to see their hearts for true worship, not just learning how to play an instrument. I learned a lot from them as well.

As soon as word got out that Jon was fixing things in Pemba, there was no end to the requests for him to fix things in Zimpeto too. His major project was getting the internet on the base to work, for which the missionaries were extremely grateful. When we came to Africa, we expected to be living in mud huts in the bush without running water or electricity, so we were both quite surprised when some of Jon's most useful skills so far have been with working on pretty advanced electronics! But we came to be open and available, whatever that looked like--we're just glad we can be a blessing even though it's different than we expected.

Now we're in South Africa for about a month, and since we just got here we're not quite sure yet what we'll be doing. For a few days we're staying at a missionary retreat house, so we've been able to meet some amazing people and hear astounding testimonies. Here are just a few:

* One couple is ministering in the local school -- public school, mind you -- where revival has broken out among the children. One day the kids just were overcome with the power of God, gathering in little groups between classes and crying, repenting, and praying. The couple here was invited to preach at their next school assembly!!!

* The guy who runs the mission house was just running around town when he needed to get gas. He was right at a station, but felt like God was telling him to go to another station on the opposite side of the city. He drove all that way and arrived at the station immediately after a car wreck, so he jumped out and prayed for the person who got injured in it and they were completely healed! He got to tell the guy that God loved him so much, He sent him all the way across town so that he could be healed. He was so overcome he gave his life to Christ immediately.

* The same guy has also been going into simple market places and seeing God do amazing things. One guy who ran a butcher shop was very discouraged because he was getting almost no business, the missionary prayed for him, then he couldn't keep up with all the people who were coming in! He invited the missionary to come start a revival among all of his workers because they were all getting touched by God.

* One guy got to attend a Christian men's conference last week that had 73,000 men attending! It was held under the world's largest tent--that covers over 5 acres, but it still wasn't enough coverage and there were seats at least 50 feet beyond the tent in all directions. The conference was run by a farmer-turned-revivalist named Angus Buchan, who has a pretty amazing story as well. If you can get a hold of either his book or the movie about his life, both entitled "Faith Like Potatoes," do so! Anyway, the coolest thing about the conference is while they were there, a man had a heart attack and was taken to the medical tent they had on site. Within minutes the doctors pronounced him dead, before the ambulance could even arrive. But with 73,000 men of faith there, they weren't about to let the guy stay dead. Oh no. They prayed their hearts out and he came back to life before their very eyes!!!

* One missionary working in Chimoio, Mozambique, has been doing services and discipleship classes in the local prison, and she said ALL 150 inmates have accepted Christ! She has bought a couple farms so that when they get out of jail, she can give them a job working the farms.

As you can tell, we have been able to listen to a LOT of cool testimonies... this is only a fraction of the stories we've heard in the past two days-- and most of these stories just happened in the past couple weeks! God is moving so powerfully, and I hope all of your faiths are encouraged as much as ours is. God really does just use common, everyday people to do amazing things-- more and more we're seeing that it's not the super-heroes of faith who get to do all the ministry and see all the fruit: every single follower of Jesus is called to just listen to His voice and do whatever He says. Most of the time, that will involve loving or helping someone, somewhere, somehow. That's His heart. And he wants to use you, me, all of us, to do it. Next time you see a person in any kind of need, whether you know them or not, just pray and see if God wants to touch them through you. He probably will.

God Bless!
~Carla and Jon Reinagel

A Little About Mozambican Culture

2008-04-06T09:33:00.006+02:00

Hey Everyone,

This is for those of you who want to know a little more about the culture we are reaching out to - I think it's absolutely fascinating, but I understand it's not everyone's cup of tea. Our other recent update has the information about what has been happening in our lives and our praise reports and prayer requests.

I got a chance last night to speak to a missionary who has been here 15 years. He had a ton of insight into the culture, especially things like the family dynamics that had just confused and frustrated us. So, after talking to him, I feel like I can actually write a little more about the culture we are reaching out to.

In American, there seems to be this concept that all cultures and backgrounds are equally healthy. We seem to think Pacific islanders and other natives led a care-free existence till we stamped out there cultures. It's true that missionaries for many years confused bringing the gospel with bringing the western culture - cultures were deplored for their lack of hard work, their dress, and the food they ate and those were seen as non-Christian. However, we are seeing that a culture without Christ is very self-destructive. For instance, take Lobolo, the tradition of paying your in-laws a high price for your wife-to-be. There is nothing wrong with the tradition at all, and in Christian households can be a reminder of a husband's love for his wife and the wife's worth in his eyes. However, in non-Christian cultures, the Lobolo is held over the wife's head. "I paid ____ for you and you had better live up to it!" Many times the wives are beaten because they fail to live up to the husband's expectations and it's acceptable culturally because the husband paid for her. The violence, guilt, condemnation, and dehumanization that come from the mis-use of the practice is what we want to help the people change, not the actual practice itself.

Anyway, that's more of a Southern Mozambique thing - where we are with the Makua tribes, we were told marriages were more of a "rental" thing. Every year, the husband goes to the in-laws and give them grain and food and clothing etc., but marriages seldom last a year. A Mozambican guy can see a pretty girl walking on the street early in the morning and be married to her that night. The concept of married couples being friends also is completely foreign. The missionary knew a number of husbands that didn't even know the name of their wife! One teenage guy told me that marriages here last only 3 weeks; I asked for clarification in Portuguese because I couldn't believe it, but that's what he said.

In addition to the extreme brevity of marriages, a Macuan woman, if she is pretty enough, will usually have a boyfriend or two on the side so she can get a little extra money and presents, etc. You can see why AIDS and other STDs are such a problem here - this cycle can start for the women at 13 or 14 and for the guys, whenever they can afford it.

Of course, having a 13 year old mother and new fathers every couple months is unbelievably hard on the kids. The mother's family is actually considered the important family, and it is the mother's brothers (the kids' uncles) that play the father figure in the kids' lives. Even if a family has a relatively stable marital situation, the kids tend to not respect or listen to the father, making the analogies between God and a father quite difficult for the Makuans to grasp. Everything is based around the mother's family, and the husbands move from family to family while the women own most of the property, houses, etc.

The missionary told us that the worst thing that could happen to a Christian family was for the mother to die. In that case, the mother's family get together for a meeting and divide out all of the family's stuff, including the kids. The father isn't even allowed in the meeting - he gets absolutely nothing and all his kids go to different houses to live. It's interesting to see that here, where men are usually more marginalized than women, more men respond to the gospel than women whereas in the south, more women respond than men.

The business situation is also ridiculously bad... They have this belief that after you make enough money, you don't have to work anymore. All white people are in this category, as well as other
successful people like the Indian and Middle Eastern merchants and a few Africans. As a result, if you give a Makuan a raise, there is a chance they will just stop working entirely and still expect to be paid. To them, there is absolutely no correlation between hard work and money. None - money comes to the lucky or the ones that can steal a lot. Also, most of the money you make won't go to your home - if you have a job, you most likely have 8 or 9 other relatives who are too
lazy to get a job but show up at your door every payday, and you are obligated to help them.

Also, Makuans have no guilt about stealing. Things get stolen all the time from missionaries, but our missionary expert told us that they steal far more from each other. Their jealously also extends far beyond ours. For instance, in America if your neighbor gets a new car and you get jealous, you will probably work harder in order to get a car for yourself. In Mozambique, if your neighbor gets something you don't have, you do everything you can to sabotage it. The missionary I was talking to said this was a huge problem in his church with marriages - the Makuans with bad marriages will try to sabotage a stable marriage by spreading rumors and lies about both people. It's so frustrated and so self-destructive! I can see why so many missionaries have just given up on the Makuans... But I can also see why God would choose their culture to impact so powerfully.

There are so many other things about the culture, but this is enough for this e-mail. I hope this helps you truly realize the miracle that is behind every one of the dedicated Christians here. In most aspects of their culture, they are swimming completely upstream. I also help it gives you a new look on the problems we face every day, but more than that, I hope it helps you see how life-transforming the gospel is! If Jesus can change an entire culture and situation like this, He
is most certainly more than enough for whatever cultural and personal transformations we need in America!

God Bless,
- Jon and Carla Reinagel

Leaving Pemba

2008-04-05T09:29:00.001+02:00

Hey Everyone!

For Carla and I, being in Pemba has been fascinating. It isn't your typical mission base - with everyone here, there are about 40 missionaries. It's not just a Bible school or an orphanage or a food distribution center - it's a sending and equipping center for over 1000 churches that did not exist 5 years ago! Most of the time, the base is a frantic hum of activity. Prayer and worship is going on for hours a day and healings happen all the time. But that's Pemba May-December when the base is fully staffed and the 80-person visitor center is at full capacity.

But Carla and I have loved being here in the down-time. When all the miracles are happening and fresh on-fire visitors are coming all the time, it's easy for the people here to focus on God. Now, it's like all the flame is gone for a bit and you can see the individual embers. Many of the people just go occupy themselves with something else for the time-being; the kids with soccer and the missionaries with their projects. But the ones that can't do anything but cry out to God have been an amazing influence. There is literally a group of girls whose voices are constantly hoarse because they are worshipping all the time, and I'm occasionally joined in the prayer hut by kids who are just crying out to God for hours to see their nation changed.

I was watching a group of kids practice a performance for church, and I was absolutely floored with their joy and peace. Most of the kids at the center have been beaten and the majority of the girls have been raped. They came in hating the world and looking for revenge. It was amazing to see how they are so full of joy and love now even with their past circumstances - in their lives, I saw the Gospel clearly written. Rolland Baker (the head missionary here) always said he wanted to test the gospel to the limits - to go where others think the gospel could not bring change and watch God break through anyway. Just people being receptive to the gospel in this culture is a miracle in itself, but I'll talk more about the culture in the next e-mail. Anyway, Carla and I are really looking forward to seeing everyone in action in a couple months after really getting to know them first... The kids here help a lot with the outreaches, doing everything from translating to praying for the sick to working with the sound systems.

On Sunday, we head back down to southern Mozambique for several weeks. We'll get to hang out a bit more with the kids there and take in a lot more Portuguese. We'll also go back to doing a lot more outreaches and a lot less random maintenance tasks. After that, on the 24th of April,
we will be headed to another mission base that is just starting in South Africa.

Praise Reports:
Jon's eye is completely better and there is no residual scarring, which should have happened after the metal was in his eye for 3 weeks.

Our health has been excellent over the last month - even with malaria going on around us and an epidemic of eye infections, we have been in completely good health.

The flooding in central Mozambique didn't get nearly as bad as predicted. Also, for the first time since the Mozambican civil war, the international aid organizations weren't hindered in their work in Mozambique. We were pretty sad we couldn't be a part of the relief effort, but we're still praising God that we found out the trip was canceled a couple hours before we were supposed to leave instead of after the 2 day journey into the flood zone.

Feeding the village kids has been going excellently. We, without a doubt, got to see God multiply food a couple weeks ago. One day, 325 kids showed up for food because they heard we were serving chicken - some kids walked almost an hour to get to us! That same day, the kitchen gave us our bin half-full of food. We asked for more food, but the kitchen couldn't give us any more. It was the least food we had ever had and the most kids, but when we saw the situation, we started
getting excited because we knew there was no other way for the feeding to work unless God did something. The helpers wanted to have 3 or 4 people to a plate, but we told the helpers specifically to put a lot of food on each plate and only have the normal 2 people to a plate. 3 or 4 times throughout the feeding, we went back and told them to put more food on each of the plates, and we had just enough for every one of the kids and every one of the helpers. God is so GOOD! Not only did He multiply the food, but He gave us incredible faith for the situation that allowed us to see even more of His provision!

Prayer Requests:
Discernment - we constantly have people asking us for money for roofs, shoes, pants, etc. They are all legitimate needs, but not everyone is telling us the truth and we want to know exactly what God wants us to do in every circumstance.

Safe travel, because we'll be doing a lot of it soon.
Ability to learn Portuguese quickly - we can definitely get around town, work with Mozambicans, and order food at a restaurant without hitting on the waiter (something Jon did before he knew much of the language), but we still have a long way to go before we can share the gospel without a translator.

Thank you all for your continued support and involvement in our lives! If you get the chance, please e-mail us and tell us what's going on in your own life. We may not get back to them for a while but we certainly read everything that comes our way. God Bless!
- Jon and Carla

Outreach Time!

2008-03-16T09:22:00.001+02:00

Hey All,

Many thanks for all the prayers you all have blessed us with, we appreciate them! We've been continuing to help anywhere and everywhere needed here in the Pemba base, they always manage to find some odd jobs for us to do to stay busy and useful. We are so glad we can bless
them with the talents we have to offer.

Last Thursday we got to go on a village outreach that was quite fun. We all piled onto a flatbed truck with about a dozen of the Iris pastors-in-training (they have a Bible school going on right now), and drove for about 1 1/2 hours to a little village. We were quite the spectacle since the people probably haven't seen a white person in 2 years or more--kids crowded around us constantly just to stare. We tried to talk to some people, but most of them didn't even speak
Portuguese--only the Makua tribal language. We unloaded the equipment--a generator (the town didn't have electricity), a big white screen, a sound system, and a projector, and they started playing worship music. Once it got dark we played the Jesus film translated into Makua, and the crowd kept growing and growing as the movie went on until the Mozambican pastor estimated there were over 2,000 people there. After the film one of the Mozambican pastors preached the gospel message, Jon got to share a testimony of what God has done in his life, then they had everyone who wanted to accept Christ for the first time pray to receive Him. Hands went up everywhere (too many to count, sorry), it was so exciting! After that they called everyone who was sick or in pain to come forward for prayer, and we got to see bunches of people healed--headaches, eye problems, back pains, everything! I spent a lot of time before and after the film with one 13-year-old girl who was partially blind, just holding her and praying
for her, but I don't know if she got any of her sight back. I can't wait to see more miracles like that.

Wednesday we went on a medical outreach to a nearby village where Iris has a small children's center. There's another visitor here now who has some medical training and there was one of the Iris nurses there, but I had to learn quickly what to do. Most of what I got to do consisted of cleaning and bandaging dirty and infected cuts and wounds, treating the kids who had a nasty fungus on their heads, and spreading stuff on their arms to get rid of scabies. The more serious
problems went to the people with a little more experience, and Jon prayed for people as they left.

Feeding the village children every day is still going well. It's pretty amazing, we're quite sure God is multiplying the food because it doesn't matter if we have 100 or 300 kids--every day the kitchen gives us the same amount of food, every day all the children eat, and every day there are no leftovers. I'm thinking we only get enough food for 100 max, but God makes it possible for everyone to eat anyway when there are more, so that's exciting! We try to tell them Bible stories
while they wait for the food to arrive, and always explain how they apply to their lives. Though sometimes the feedings seem absolutely hectic and chaotic, I still enjoy serving them in this way. Now every time I go out into the village I hear children calling my name all over the place, it's fun :-).

Some of our Praises would include:
* Being able to stay in Pemba as long as we have
* That the outreaches went well this week

Prayer Requests this time are:
* Jon's health, he has a lingering cold that is getting annoying
* Guidance for a few decisions we need to make about our time here

In HIS Hands,
~Carla and Jon Reinagel

Still in Pemba...

2008-03-06T10:16:00.002+02:00

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

Zambezi Flood Relief

2008-03-03T08:55:00.002+02:00

Hello, all of our wonderful Prayer Warriors!

Just yesterday we heard from the team in the Zambezi River area that they are in desperate need of more help, and though they don't usually let visitors do that kind of thing they managed to clear permission for us to go down and help! We are very excited, but this means we will need all that much more prayer. First of all, pray that we will get permission to land the 4-seater Iris plane on a military runway that is the hub of all the relief efforts we were trying to bring to the people who are stranded in the floods. In fact, if we don't get this one simple permission, we won't be going and all the relief for that area will be cut off completely.

If we do go, we will either be leaving today in a truck for a 2-day journey (over unpaved roads) or tomorrow in the plane for a 2-hour journey. Which transportation we will take depends on some decisions the leadership here have to make. While we're down there we will be staying at a small Iris children's center in a village called Morrumbala and going out every day to buy tons of food and take it to the victims. The area we are trying to reach is only accessible by plane, to try to get food to them on the ground it would take a 6-hour truck drive to a 2-mile single-file foot bridge where we would have to carry each 100-pound bag of rice one at a time... so again please pray the plane will be allowed to land where we need it to.

We don't know yet how long we will be down there, but I do know that we won't have running water or electricity, let alone internet for more updates. Expect a fairly long silence from us followed by an exciting update whenever we do have internet access again :-).

So our prayer requests this time are:
* Permission to land the plane on the military runway
* Favor with the government in the area, that they will allow us to bring the food to the people
* Safe travel for us either by land or air
* Health, as we will be exposed to all kinds of new diseases and problems
* That God would provide every day the finances, people, and transportation to get food to the victims
* That the flood victims would realize their spiritual hunger even more than their physical hunger, and want to know about God
* We were very blessed by a church in our hometown who sent us $2,000 to help with the flood relief, so also pray for guidance as we spend that--that it will go to the people who need it most.

In God's service,
~Carla and Jon Reinagel

Life in Pemba

2008-02-20T21:02:00.000+02:00

Hello, friends and family!

We have been quite busy since our last update, when we landed at the Pemba we told the missionaries that we were here to help, and boy did they take us up on that! After we'd only been here a couple days they gave us a huge to-do list of needs the base had, and we've been checking things off pretty steadily.

Jon has been the base fix-it man doing the most random things ever, working with the swamped maintenance staff to keep up with everything that breaks from computers to water pumps to bunk beds to satellites to voltage regulators to... the list goes on. There is quite a need for people who either know how things work or how to figure them out quickly, which Jon is quite good at :-).

He has also been discipling a teenage boy from the village named Abdul, which has been really cool. Abdul is from a strongly Muslim family, is one of 9 kids, and loves Jesus with everything he has. Whenever he learns a new Bible story he goes back home and tells it to all of his siblings. We gave him a Portuguese Bible, and since then I've never seen him without it, he is so hungry for more. He reminded me of the parable of the talents, how one servant was only given a little to look after but he was faithful to work with what he had and increase it as much as he could. It is humbling to think of how much more I have but hold back and don't give out, how much I know and don't share. He also has a great heart to serve, every day the Iris base welcomes in the children from the surrounding village for lunch (we usually get 120-170 kids every day), and Abdul helps tremendously with organizing, translating, controlling the crowd, and just making sure the whole operation runs smoothly. It's so awesome to see kids like him just sold out for God and making a difference in the people around him.

I've been busy doing my own list of odd jobs, mostly helping the hospitality staff. This base gets a couple hundred visitors every year, and the job of keeping track of them has been passed around about 5 times in the past few months, so the new person (who just took over the day we arrived) was swamped and clueless where to start. I've been helping her with organizing the planned arrivals for the rest of the year, figuring out how to maintain the visitor's center efficiently, sorting through a chaotic storage room of donated stuff, testing a wad of random keys in every lock in the center, preparing rooms for new people coming in, giving directions to the cleaning ladies every day (great for practicing my Portuguese), mending holes in mosquito nets, among a slew of other random tasks. I'm definitely seeing a new side of mission work that I had never seen before!

Some of my favorite times, though, are when I get to minister directly to the kids. I've been meeting every day with an older teen named Chico to tutor him in English, teaching some of the girls guitar, helping with feeding the village children, and loving on the babies and toddlers :-). It is just an honor to be here.

Every morning we pray with the staff, which have been awesome times, especially when we see so many answers to prayer every day :-). One answered prayer is that the flood relief work is going well, Iris sent a team out who came back about a week ago. They will continue sending teams out as the people and funds become available, but the good news is some other organizations have been allowed into the country to help as well. Some past years with floods have been needlessly more tragic simply because the government officials were too proud to admit that the country needed help and actually turned away people who wanted to bring food and supplies--there were times Iris was the only one allowed to do anything because they were already here. This year the government seems to be more reasonable about letting other organizations help, but the needs are still enormous. This is one of the worst and most wide-spread floods they have seen in many years, and again this is just the beginning of the flood season. There is another team leaving from this Iris base this week to continue bringing food to the flood victims, and Jon and I hope we can join a team in a couple weeks (there wasn't room for us on this one).

One thing that has made our time here in Pemba interesting is having so much more access to the average Mozambican people than we did at the other more contained bases. Here, everywhere we go we have people come up along side us, start up a conversation and act friendly, but then they always turn the conversation to asking for something. Sometimes they are genuine needs, but the majority of the time people aren't exactly honest. We always have to pray about their requests to see if they actually need it or if they're just trying to take advantage of us because we're "rich Americans." For example, one boy told a missionary that his house was destroyed in a storm and took them to go see. Sure enough, he brought them to a destroyed house, but they found out it hadn't been the boy's--it had been abandoned for a long time and the kid was just trying to weasel money out of the missionary. We're still learning how to deal with those kinds of situations.

So overall things are going well! Praise reports would include:
* Several organizations have been allowed to help with the flood relief
* We are absolutely thrilled with how much we can bless the Iris base here
* At the moment neither of us are sick (though we've both had problems in the past couple of weeks--but we're better now!)
* We are getting much better at Portuguese, still plenty of room for growth though

Prayer Requests
* That more relief would come quickly for the flood victims
* For discernment in dealing with the daily requests for money and things
* For wisdom in how we spend our time--we want to find a balance between helping the missionaries and spending time with the kids

Thank you all for your prayers and encouragements, it's always good to hear from home even when we can't send personal replies back every time.

May His Kingdom come more in your life every day,
~Carla and Jon Reinagel

Mozambique Flood Report

2008-02-09T19:41:00.000+02:00

Following is an update by Norberto, a Mozambiquan pastor who works for Iris Ministries. He flew over the floodlands last week to see the damage and take pictures, and this is his report:

I left Monday with Joe, we flew to Morrumbala. We took off from there to fly over the Zambezi river. As we were flying about 200-300 feet high, I was so shocked because I had never seen so much water in the Zambezi River. It is true that there was more water this year than in 2000 or 2001 or the flood we had last year. I've never seen so much devastation from a flood - I would say hundreds and hundreds of houses under the water. We followed the Zambezi from Morrumbala toward Caia. We saw so many people that were still being trapped by the water. I believe the government still did not see many of those people because you could only see them from the sky or a boat. I believe it would be really easy to rescue people with a boat because there are many places you cannot drive to. And also looking down, I found a lot of people have lost 1000's of acres of farms and I believe so many of our churches near the Zambezi were washed away.

Basically every house is underwater and there is nothing we can do. I was just really praying and thinking that I wish we just had a helicopter because there was so many people just waving and needing rescue but we could not pick them up because we were in an airplane. We did fly a little bit in Beira and we found that even in Beira a lot of places have been flooded. Then we flew into Tete where there had never been any flooding. We flew at 4500 feet and looked over Tete - the flooding was really bad and the water had taken over many places in Tete. The Zambezi had cut lines through the city, wiping out everything in the low places and leaving many people stranded on islands. A lot of people were waving and asking if we could help them, but there was nothing we could do.

I went with one of the teams to take the food to the camps. It's not fair to see people living in those kind of conditions because a lot of people don't have any medical supplies or food. We took trucks with 200 bags of rice and 18 bags of beans to the camp. You can see that the people had been waiting a long time and were only living on black fish they got out of the river. A lot of people don't have any tents and were making houses out of grass that they had cut. The houses were about 10 feet by 10 feet and some of the families had 6 people in that small house. The land
wasn't very clean like the land we saw last time - basically that people are tearing everything with their bare hands because they don't have machetes or hoes to clear the land. There was a lot of joy when we handed out the food to the people, but there were so many people at the camps we passed that looked so sad because we had no food for them. It is true that there is so much more help that is needed and many people that need food and need to be rescued.

On Wednesday evening, I went to speak to a man who was a victim and ask him a couple questions. I asked him how bad the floods were, and he told me that they had never seen so much water before and he had never seen so many of the farms wiped away. Everything had been washed away by the current including their pots and pans. As we were talking, he told me that the day before the team got there, there were 6 people in two canoes trying to cross the river. The current caught the canoes and flipped them. There were 4 men and 1 woman with a baby in a capulana. The woman managed to hang onto a stalk of sugar but when she looked behind her the baby had slipped out of the capulana. The woman was the only survivor, and the man took me to the place where it happened. I was sitting with this guy and he told me so many people were trapped by the water.

On the 6th, while one man was trying to catch fish to feed his family, a crocodile came up and ripped off the flesh off the man's left arm and thigh. There was a man that came alongside and started beating the crocodile until it left the first man alone. I could not take pictures because I did not think the government would want me to. The man got taken to Kilimani hospital, but already the man had lost so much blood that he was not coherent. There are so many crocodiles and many people have been attacked or eaten by the crocodiles. There are many people that have tried to cross the floodwaters and so many of them have been attacked by crocodiles. It's really horrible.

For a lot of people it's hard because their houses are in the water and they cannot stay on their roofs because they don't have the nice metal roofs. I believe disease is going to be a real problem because many people are just standing in a couple inches of water. Malaria is going to be really bad and so is foot swelling because everyone is just standing in water all day. A lot of people really need clothes and plastic bags on the roofs. The kids need clothes, blankets, and plastic bags and they really need teams of people to play with the people and tell them Jesus loves them and that someone cares about them. I believe this is an opportunity for the worldwide church to come and show God's love to these people.

There must be people that are willing to go and play with the kids - a lot of the schools are under water and the kids can not go to school. Instead of just feeding people, I believe there is something else the Holy Spirit wants us to do - if we can buy rice seed and bean seed and corn meal along with hoes, the people will have a harvest in a couple months. This will help the people a lot because most of the people live through agriculture anyway. We feel like this will be a tool to help us invest in the people and give them something a lot more lasting than a little rice.

From what I've seen, this is a really huge disaster. I don't know how long Mozambique is going to take to recover from this. So many schools are underwater and many bridges were destroyed. The people need food, they need help, they need Jesus - they just need a lot of help. We have a team in Morrumbala buying and handing out food, but we need so many more people. But this isn't the worst of it - I heard that Zimbabwe (or Zambia) has 5 dams that they are going to open up soon. It's not Zimbabwe's fault - they really have no choice or their country will be flooded too. When this happens, the damage will be unbelievable...

Pass on the message for people to pray about how they can help us. Whether they send money, food, or come themselves to help, we need all we can get.

-Norberto

Machava and Pemba

2008-02-08T14:40:00.000+02:00

Life continues to be full of excitement, joy, frustrations, love, ups, downs, and everything in between... Since our last update, we did receive favor with the visa office, but not quite the way we had expected. We wanted a 3-month visa so that we could spend one month in each of 3 more Iris Ministry bases, two of which are in the north of the country and would be difficult to cross the border to constantly renew the 30-day kind we had at first. Well, instead we got a 2-month visa, so we had to rearrange our plans a little but it's still a lot better than having to leave every 30 days!

We spent one week in the Machava base, which is in a suburb of Maputo, the capital city. All of the missionaries are from Brazil, so they didn't bother teaching many of the kids English, which made it a little more challenging for us :-). It's a smaller base than Zimpeto, the one we were at before, and very peaceful. They had about 90-100 kids in their orphanage and they run a community school as well. The week we were there they needed extra help in their preschool, so I was quite happy to jump in and be of service! The kids are so precious and love all the attention they can get. That base also organizes and puts on a weekly youth worship event in Maputo called Som do Ceu (Sound of Heaven), and we got to help with that as well. They asked me to sing a song for the altar-call, so I did one I had just learned in Portuguese. It is such an honor to worship with so many people who are completely sold-out for God and love Him with everything they have.

Now we have been in Pemba for about a week, and we absolutely love it here. The Iris base is right on the beach and very beautiful. This is the base that Rolland and Heidi Baker currently live at, though they have been in the States ever since we got here. The base is very different than Zimpeto or Machava, which were both much more established and in safer communities--the Pemba base is smack in the middle of a huge and very poor village that poses an interesting combination of opportunities and challenges. The base houses about 230 orphans, but it is constantly filled with kids from the village as well, which produces mixed feelings. On one side, they're a challenge because they are constantly stealing food, clothes, toys, valuables, and everything they can get their hands on from the Iris kids--as well as taking the time and attention of the missionaries and visitors that could be going to nurture the orphans. On the other hand, even though the kids have family in the village, most are very neglected and/or abused at home, so we know they need help too. One thing the base is doing to help the problem is provide lunch for the village kids separately from the Iris kids every day Mon-Fri, and that does relieve at least a little of the tension at meal times.

Jon and I have definitely loved our time here in Pemba. Right now over half of the long-term missionaries are gone (vacations, language schools, furloughs, various reasons), so they need a lot of help. I was given the job of spending time with the babies every day (I tell you, they really had to twist my arm for that one... not) and I've been teaching guitar to a few girls, and Jon has been running around the base fixing random things (computers, generators, pumps, anything that breaks). Both of us have been really blessed to spend time with the missionaries and Mozambicans, especially Norberto and his sister Rosa. Both of them are so full of the Holy Spirit they just radiate with His love and character.

We definitely feel like we're more on the front-lines of the spiritual battle, more so here than at the other bases. In addition to the usual poverty and witchcraft, this area is also more prone to natural disasters like floods, is very strongly Muslim, and has unthinkable immorality problems. It is very common for parents to teach kids "sex ed" at very young ages--5 to 6 years old. Many girls end up in prostitution before they're 10. Within families there is usually no concept of marital faithfulness or commitment. Even though Mozambique had one of the lowest numbers of people with AIDS in Africa about 10 years ago, now the missionaries estimate probably 75-80% of the people in this area are HIV+. Many of the kids in the base have AIDS as well, but thankfully they have a much better chance of survival due to better nutrition and medical care.

The floods going on right now in Mozambique are absolutely devastating. This is early in the flood season--usually it lasts until the end of April--and it's already the worst in most people's memories. Thousands of acres of farmland, millions of houses, and entire towns that are usually high enough to be safe are now completely underwater. There are whole villages that have been wiped out with the survivors still stranded on little islands or in trees for days without food or clean water. Many of these islands are completely inaccessible by truck or plane, so Iris Ministries is praying for a boat or helicopter to help bring relief. Of course it doesn't help that the flooded rivers are letting crocodiles into much wider territory, even further endangering lives. To make matters worse, the neighboring country Zambia is experiencing flooded reservoirs, so they are about to open up 5 huge dams within the next couple of days which will ALL flow into Mozambique and cause even greater devastation. Please pray for Mozambique.

There's a lot more to write about--how the water supply has been cut off here in Pemba and the political unrest and riots in Maputo going on right now just to name a few, but this update is already pretty long, so I'll save them for next time :-P. How's that for a cliff-hanger?

Praise Reports:
* We got the 2-month visa we needed to come to Pemba and next Dondo!
* We are both doing much better with Portuguese and can communicate more readily, though keep praying for this to increase.
* We have been able to travel safely.
* We got out of Maputo right before the riots started.

Prayer Requests:
* For the flood victims, that relief may find them quickly and that the rains will miraculously stop soon.
* For protection for the team of missionaries from Iris who are bringing food and medical care to the flood victims.
* For Iris Ministries to get a boat or plane to help with the flood relief effort.
* For protection for Jon and me from illness and injury, both of which are still randomly plaguing us.

Thank you all for your prayers and encouragement!

May God bless you richly,
~Carla and Jon Reinagel

Video Clips

2008-01-22T14:05:00.000+02:00

Here's a short video clip of the village church we visited in Mozambique. They're singing their favorite Shangaan song about how God finds us in a lowly state and lifts us up higher and higher. It's awesome to worship with the people here!

This one is of the youth at the Iris base doing one of their crazy dances during worship time. It puzzled us how they all know exactly what to do when, and it didn't seem like anyone was directing them or calling cues or anything! They definitely have a heart to worship and give God all they have.

The Scoop in Africa

2008-01-22T10:25:00.000+02:00

Our time here so far has been amazing... God has really been drawing us closer to Him and to each other at the same time we're serving Him. Talking to the kids has especially been a real blessing. I realized that some of the 14 and 15 year olds know God far better than any other Christians I know... They may not know as much about God as we do, but they know God like Jesus knew God - as the father. They know their Dad will take care of them and aren't afraid to live like it, which is so refreshing to see and learn from. They don't worry or ever talk about what they need because they know God's looking out for them! Of course, there's the other kids who aren't ashamed to beg for money, but it's the godly ones who have made an impact on me.

The kids at the Iris base aren't the malnourished kids you see in the advertisements for adopt a child programs... Almost all of them looked like that at some point, but not any more. The meal portions are huge and many of the kids have developed a healthy stomach. A lot of the kids at Zimpeto where we were staying actually spoke English, which helped a lot. However, later this week we will be heading to Machava, where all the missionaries are Brazilian and no one speaks English. That should help us with learning Portuguese, which will be helpful for the rest of the trip!

The spiritual climate in Mozambique is full of religions and superstitions. There are witchdoctors all over the place, and people pay them to either curse others or protect themselves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it definitely has power behind it. In the States, it's trusting in money instead of God that trips up many Christians - here, it's trusting in the witchdoctor's protection instead of God that is a stumbling block. Cutting off the yarn and button "protection" bands is almost as great a celebration as leading someone to Christ! That isn't the only form of spiritual bondage in Mozambique though...

The Zion Christian Church is a fairly large church here and in South Africa. Regardless of their name, they don't really believe in Jesus or the Bible. When children are born, they ask the spirits of dead people to come and guide the babies... We went to one village (where we actually got to take pictures) and there was a 2 year old boy who wouldn't stop yelling and running around. The mother said he was like that constantly, day and night, but had been fine before the father insisted on taking him to the Zionist ceremony. It was pretty eye-opening to see the effect of spirits on people, especially coming from a culture that doesn't believe in them. But it's in the Book, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised.

Last week we went back to the Bocaria (the city dump) for another outreach. This time instead of walking up onto the dump to talk with the people sorting the garbage we went around the village surrounding the dump where the roughly 1,000 dump-scavengers live. We went into one home where the husband was lying on a reed mat on the floor. Even through the blanket covering him you could tell his body was completely emaciated. His arms were narrower than my wrist, and his legs weren't much bigger. He was suffering from AIDS, and hadn't been able to eat in a long time. After we prayed for a while he gained new strength, sat up, and said his appetite had returned and he wanted to eat! That was great.

Another AIDS victim that absolutely wrenched our hearts was a little boy living at the Zimpeto center. His name is Thabo (pronounced TAH-boo), he was orphaned at age 3 and was given to some relatives who neglected and abused him horribly. He is about 9 years old now but he hasn't grown much since he was 3, and he is absolutely skin and bones. He has been at the Iris center since August, but he's been ill for so long that his health isn't recovering very quickly. He can't walk, and he stays in the center's clinic full-time. Last week he got really sick, had a high fever, and could barely breathe; the nurses thought he was going to die soon. Jon and another visitor prayed with him for hours and his fever broke and by the next day the sickness was completely gone! He was even able to leave the clinic for the staff worship time, where he got more prayer. If any of you think about it, keep him in your prayers as well, the little guy needs all he can get.

Well, we need to bring this update to a close. Thank you all for your continued prayers, support, and encouragements--we are so blessed. Our current prayer requests are:

* That we can get better visas that will enable us to stay in Mozambique longer than 30 days at a time.
* That our health would be protected. We have had several random sicknesses, pains, reactions, and incidents that seem like attacks, so protection would be appreciated.
* That we could learn Portuguese faster, so far it has been a very slow process and we still can't communicate very much.
* That God would show us every day what He wants us to be doing. There are so many "good" things to do every day we're sometimes overwhelmed and really only want to operate in what the Father has for us specifically.

God bless!
~Jon and Carla Reinagel

Life in Mozambique

2008-01-15T19:14:00.000+02:00

Hey Everyone!

Last week I talked about our outreaches - I´m going to focus on the country of Mozambique this time. It´s kind of strange that it took us this long to really get a feel for the country, but we have been living in a missionary compound most of the time surrounded by Christians. This last weekend, we had the privelage of going into one of the outlying villages and geting a taste of what real Mozambique life is like! The people themselves are incredibly friendly, but the living conditions seem to leave much to be desired. We stayed in a government-built project area, which meant everyone had at least a 1 room house to live in, but most Mozambicans aren´t that fortunate. Many of the people we have met only have one or two changes of clothes (they often get a new pair for Christmas), and most of Mozambique doesn´t have power or running water.
Until recently, Mozambique was involved in a terrible war. Though it is referred to as a civil war, RENAMO (one of the warring parties) was funded by other countries in an effort to destabilize Mozambique. They targeted much of the infrastructure of the country and the war itself left Mozambique in shambles. When the Bakers first came to Mozambique, there was machine gun fire every night and the sound of explosions. Mozambique has been at peace for a while now, but there are still remanents of the war like land mines and other explosives. Last spring, a munitions dump exploded, sending missles and other explosives hundreds of miles - one hit the mission base we´re staying at right now, but didn´t explode on impact (or there would have been no more base). 5 minutes away from our base, there are the remains of a hospital with several huge holes in it, the largest of which cuts through several stories. Land mines are also occassionally a problem, especially when floods happen and the water moves already marked land mine areas.

Speaking of floods, some are actually occurring right now in the northern part of the country. Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated and many are in desparate need of food. We will most likely be helping with the flood cleanup, but we do not head up to the northern part of the country for another month. If you would like to help out directly with the food distribution or the cleanup efforts, the best way is probably through Iris´s website, irismin.com.

Well, I´ll save the spiritual condition of the country for later - Carla is going to try and post pictures on Facebook. For those of you without Facebook, um, we´ll work that out next time we get internet access! Please be praying for the Mozambicans in flood areas and the rescue and recovery efforts. Please also be praying for us and our health - malaria is a constant threat and already several of the missionaries have come down with it. I´m very sorry I cannot write back personally to each of you right now, but I hope you understand.

God Bless!
- Jon and Carla

First Week--Zimpeto

2008-01-10T19:08:00.000+02:00

Hey!

Things in Africa are so much different than in the US… Theology doesn't matter to the people we see – to the broken, the homeless, and the dying, they need more than just news about where they could go after they die. They need hope and life now. Preaching the good news to the poor has been great, but just like Jesus's ministry, the best part has been providing for their needs, showing them God's love, and see their lives completely turn around.

The base we're at now has 330 kids, about 20 long term missionaries and 12 short term missionaries at a time. The scope is amazing – most days, there are multiple outreaches into the community and every day hundreds are fed. I think the most amazing thing is to see the kids here and their heart for outreach – these were the children off the street that had almost no hope of surviving unless they got taken in; they came in bitter, self-centered, and malnourished (among other things) but after they were shown God's love through the Christians here, they have an incredible desire to go out and share that love with others. We go to the hospital and pray for the sick, have outreaches to the street kids who have no homes and beg for a living, reach out to the people in jail, and we have even gone to the village dump where people live trying to scavenge any trash they may be able to sell.

The hospital was the first place we went. It was overwhelming to say the least and I don't think any of us could have stood to be there if we didn't have the ability to do something about their situation. In America, when we pray for someone and they don't get better, we just go ahead and get the surgery or take pain relievers – if the Mozambicans don't get healed, they will usually die or be scarred for the rest of their life. We would walk into a room, tell everyone why we're here, and ask if anyone would let us pray for them. Usually, most people would accept. Not everyone was healed, but everyone was touched in an important way. The AIDS victims were the worst to see – almost all of them were stick-thin, and some of them couldn't talk anymore. They would cry out in pain almost constantly and none of them got healed this trip, but several had less pain. But there were much better stories as well. In one room with 3 women in it, every one of the patients got healed and walked out of the room – they were all in the lounge smiling when we left! 5 women ended up accepting Christ as their savior, and the atmosphere in that corner of the hospital had shifted from death and decay to one of joy and happiness. This happens almost every week, but the hospital is huge and we can only touch a couple people's lives at a time.

The gospel here is just amazing – the kids have really taught me a lot about why Christ came. In the States, I think we too often focus on death and life after death. In Mozambique, there is a stark contrast to the death and pain all around us, and the joy and life in the ones who know Christ. I don't think there is anywhere where we saw this more than in the Bocaria – the city dump. People without jobs would try to make a living by rummaging through the garbage and selling the metal back to companies and the food trash to pig or goat owners. The dump was enormous, and after walking in for 15 minutes, we had still only seen a corner of it. I'll send pictures later, but we're kind of having difficulty with our dial-up connection. We walked up the hill of trash in 3's and 4's and asked the people if we could pray for them, then told them about food we were handing out at the church at the bottom of the hill. Many of them were touched by the prayers, but no one we talked to last week went to the church to get food – they didn't want to leave their pile of trash for fear that someone would take it. I thought that was so symbolic of many of our lives – afraid to give up our trash and step out and take real food. But I think the most encouraging thing that happened occurred deep in the dump – we approached one guy covered in flies expecting to see the lifeless, hopeless stare that characterized most of the people in the dump, but instead we were greeted with eyes full of hope and joy. When we told him what we were there for, he told us his story – he used to live in the dump, then found Christ several years ago. With help from some Christians, Zito was able to live outside of the dump and have a real life, but then he felt called back to the dump in order to reach others. He now lives there to bring hope to others. When Rolland and Heidi first got here (the missionaries whose organization we're working with), the other missionaries and churches told them they were wasting their times with the dying and the homeless because those people would never make a difference in society. But Jesus reached out to the dregs of society, and it seems like he knew what he was doing – the formerly dying and homeless are now making incredible differences; the mission base's school that sought to educate the kids who had never been able to afford school is now the number 1 school in the country, and many Mozambicans have been called to other countries to share the same good news that changed their life around.

We were also able to go to the police station and witness to the people that were in the temporary jail there. People would be kept there for about a week at a time, so each week we share the gospel to another round of delinquents. Many of them needed the gospel, but in a way that surprised us – they couldn't stand living with themselves, and in jail for the first time, they had nothing to do to take their mind off that fact. We explained to them that that was because of the sin in their life and told them Jesus came to take away that guilt and give them a new life. One of the guys told us this was the happiest day of his life, and several others also gratefully accepted the message. Even more surprising, the guards came up to us, got down on their knees, and asked us to pray for them. Almost every one of the 15-20 stationed policemen came up and asked us to pray for them – the Mozambicans from the center had never seen anything like it!

Later, we hope to update you on some of the other happenings around the base. By sharing these things, we hope to show you just how powerful your prayers for us have been and how much difference your support has made in people's lives. We also hope to challenge you a bit and to let you know that the gospel is above all powerful and more than able to change people's lives (Rom 1:16, 1 Cor 4:20)! God bless, and we'll write back soon!
In Christ,
- Jon and Carla Reinagel

P.S. I wasn't really expecting this, but my allergy to peanuts got healed!
P.P.S. For those of you a little more connected to Iris: Pastor Surprise wasn't tortured then martyred - it was his cousin. Surprise is alive and well and has a base in South Africa.

Arrived in South Africa

2007-12-29T17:54:00.000+02:00

Hello everyone!

Thank you all for your prayers, our travels were blessed and we arrived safely and very well provided for. We had an overnight stay in the airport of Johannesburg, South Africa, and said airport just happened to have an out-of-the-way prayer room that was quiet and had long seats we could sleep on. We arrived in Nelspruit, SA, the day after Christmas and we have been here ever since. There is a new Iris Ministry base here that is starting to grow and take off. Instead of a contained, walled-in compound like all the bases in Mozambique, this one is right in the middle of a very poor village and they invite everyone in need for a meal every single day. They said they usually have about 350 take them up on the offer. Unfortunately we didn't get to experience any of these feedings because they were taking a short break for the holidays, but we'll be coming back here in May and we'll be able to help more then. We did get to play with the village children who still came to the base every day, a couple of whom spoke a little English and had fun teaching us their games. I also got to teach a bit of guitar to a couple teens from the church.

The memory that will forever stand out in my mind from these past few days was when we visited the children's hospital. Several of the kids had AIDS, some were abandoned or orphaned, and all were in desperate need of some love and attention. We brought puppets and stickers and played with them, and seeing their eyes light up and their smiles was so precious. One little boy in particular gripped my heart, he was absolutely the most starved and malnourished child I have ever seen. He was 2 years old, and his spindly arms were about as big around as quarters and his belly was so bloated below his sticking-out ribs. I wished I could have done something to help him, but for our short visit all I could do was hold his tiny hand and pray while tears ran down my face. Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.

We are supposed to go to Mozambique tomorrow, so please keep praying our visas work out, as we don't have them yet. We will be in the town of Zimpeto where Iris has a very large children's center and plenty for us to help with. We are excited to see all that God has in store for us there!

Have a Blessed New Year!
~Carla Reinagel

Getting Closer

2007-10-27T22:04:00.000+02:00

It is truly unbelievable how quickly time flies... We just officially bought the tickets to leave on Christmas Eve for Mozambique. In a few short months we will be treading through the African bush, swatting malaria-laden mosquitoes, sleeping in tents and mud huts, and sharing God's love with a bunch of refugees, dump-dwellers, destitute people, and AIDS orphans. Though honestly, we know that we are going to receive so much more than we could possibly give. These kids at the children's centers with Iris Ministries know God's presence, glory, and power so much better than we do--we want to learn from them even more than we want to teach them. They refuse to be called orphans. They know they are adopted by their Abba Father, and they are loved, sheltered, fed, and cared for every day. So many people in the affluent Western world are the real orphans. We don't know our Abba. We live feeling rejected and alone. We don't even understand what physical starvation feels like, let alone spiritual hunger. In Mozambique we will be able to meet 8-year-olds who have healed blind eyes and paralyzed legs. We will be able to worship next to hundreds of children who hunger for Christ even more than they long for food. It is truly humbling and inspiring how much they know their God.

We're growing more excited every day! Pray for us if you think about it, we definitely have a lot to do to finish getting ready. God bless!

Back in the loop

2007-07-17T22:59:00.000+02:00

Well, I've done a royal job of not keeping up with this particular blog... seeing how I set it up, posted once, and then promptly forgot all about for over a year. Needless to say, a lot has happened in that year...

Jon and I got married May 19th, we had an amazing honeymoon in the Smoky Mountains, and we are now working / finishing up school and getting ready to move to Mozambique, Africa! God was quite clear in calling and confirming that direction for our lives, so we are planning on it even though the logistics are not all worked out yet. He can handle those.

My hope is that we'll be able to use this blog site to update everyone on how God provides a way for us to get to Africa, share any other cool testimonies, post pictures, and all that good stuff. Don't hold your breath in between posts, however. You would likely pass out, shortly after turning an assortment of lovely shades of blue.

Always Enough

2006-05-24T20:29:00.001+02:00

Welcome to my new blog, where I get to talk about all the awesome things that are happening in my life!

I'm going to China this summer to teach English as a second language. I had to raise support for the trip, and I was astounded that more came in than I actually needed!

I just learned yesterday that I will be in southern China on a team of seven people from all over the States. I've been trying to learn Mandarin for a while now, but where they're sending me they might speak more Cantonese, so I may have to shift my focus...

I have been reading a book called Always Enough by Rolland and Heidi Baker. If you haven't read it, get a copy as soon as possible. It is life-changing. It is an amazingly inspiring story about a couple who went to Africa several years ago and have seen amazing outpouring of the Spirit all over the continent. They started out with an orphanage. Now they have over 6,000 gatherings of believers. Hearing their stories of intimacy with the Father and the overflow of that into their ministry is beyond exciting! He is so faithful... If only we could trust Him a little more, who knows what we could do for Him?

This will hopefully be a blog of my journeys and experiences with my Father. I want to be able to stay in touch with people and report back everything I see Him. Come back sometime.