Exciting Months in Mozambique

The last few months have been filled with travel, a new project, and exciting things happening at Peniel.

Job Training for Widows

Carla has found a ministry opportunity that fits right in with her skill set as well as Equip Mozambique’s goal of equipping and training Mozambicans to be self-sufficient. Along with the leaders of Peniel’s widows’ ministry, she has started giving sewing lessons to widows who want to learn a new skill. Many of these women are elderly, and there aren’t many other work opportunities open for them. Most of them are dependent on charity or relatives for support. But, with some training, they will be able to have the dignity of earning a living once again. Capulana notebook covers Carla’s first project was teaching the ladies how to make notebook covers out of the bright capulana material that is popular here. The design was very quick and easy to learn, so even their first sewing efforts were able to turn over an immediate profit. There is nothing like these notebooks in the market here, and they’ve been a big hit! They are selling as quickly as the ladies can make them, and we expect our next projects of capulana purses, wallets, shopping bags, and especially Bible covers will be equally successful. The profits from selling their products goes toward buying each of the widows their own sewing machines, so they can set up their own small businesses to support themselves and their families.

Jon's U.S. Trip

As we write this, Jon is in transit back home from a whirlwind 3-week trip to the States. He was able to speak at several churches and college groups and do TV and radio interviews, in addition to one-on-one meetings to talk about the progress we’ve made in a year on the ground. He was also able to interview a few people considering visiting us or even joining us long-term, and we are excited about the prospect of having more help! Our workload is getting to the point where we need a bigger team; the opportunities here are endless. The fields are ripe and the harvest plentiful!

Church Construction

After many years of red tape and holdups, Peniel’s new church building is finally underway! This past week the main metal frame of pillars and trusses went up, and it is so exciting to see the visible progress every day. This building is calculated to seat 8,000 people, and with the way God is moving in this city we have no doubt that every seat will be filled within a very short time!

July and August Update

An update from Equip Mozambique! View this email in your browser Praise God for more helpers! New Team Member At the heart of Equip Mozambique is the mission to Discover, Partner with, and Empower Mozambicans to reach their goals. We get to live this in a very practical way with our new teammate--Dino! Dino is the leader of the media team at Peniel, so he’s been doing church projects with Jon ever since we got here. Now we have hired him part-time to help with Jon’s never-ending stream of work, and he is also receiving training toward eventually starting up his own video production company. Along with Dino, Jon is continuing to disciple several young leaders and helpers in the church about how to live and work with diligence, integrity, and honesty.   Jon training Dino how to fix electronics Jon designed and printed some Christian posters to sell at church as a fundraiser for the construction project. They were very well received!  Kyran and Jariel are still enjoying their school! We went out for ice cream to celebrate when they did well on their exams last month. Facebook Website YouTube Email Donate Equip Mozambique is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, so all donations are eligible for tax-exemption. International Conference Peniel puts on several conferences per year, and in August we had the International Conference with speakers from all over the world. Thousands of people attended, and hundreds responded to every altar call. In the following weeks, we’ve heard several testimonies of people whose lives were changed through physical, emotional, and spiritual healing during the conference. God is so good! We served in our usual, background jobs to help make sure everything ran smoothly. It’s definitely exciting to be part of a ministry like this. It's always great to see lives deeply transformed through God's power and presence! More Visitors As we wrote in our previous newsletter, the last few months have been full of visitors. Our most recent visit was from Laura, a young lady from Jon and Carla’s home church. She blessed us by bringing a lot of hard-to-get supplies and equipment with her when she came, and spent three weeks serving alongside of us. She took over the English classes that Carla had started with Pastor Mario’s family and spent many hours with them. Two of Pastor Mario’s daughters are hoping to study abroad, and this was great opportunity for them to learn more English while also having fun and forming friendships with someone closer to their age. Laura utilized some of her skills as a Sunday school teacher to help a fellow missionary, Sharon, with her work in the Peniel Sunday school program. All of our visitors have had great experiences and we’ve been very blessed by their time with us. Let us know if you’d be interested in coming to see us too!   Laura with one of her English classes where she built friendships and equipped Mozambicans! Prayer Praise Reports Jon was offered a part-time job that has flexible hours and can work around his ministry. It has also provided capital to make it possible to help some entrepreneurs start up businesses. Dino has been a blessing to our team, it's great to work with people of integrity! The conference went well and many lives were touched Visitors have continued to be a blessing to the team and our work here Prayer Requests Please pray for protection for our team’s health, we’ve all been hit with colds and stomach problems for a while; Janie was home-ridden for almost a month. We’re all on the mend now, but please pray that we can STAY healthy! Carla has started some sewing lessons to help a group of widows to support themselves. So far there has been solid interest, but please pray that keeps up and that they are able to learn quickly. Will update more in the next newsletter! Jon training and discipling the media team--equipping them to do their work better! Thanks for reading, please remember us in your prayers!  Tuesday, June 23, 2015 New video and update from Moz May and June in Moz! From new English classes to a houseful of visitors, we’ve had a busy couple of months here at Equip Mozambique. Our Adventure in Video! It’s a little hard to believe we’ve been here in Mozambique for 7 months already! We recently completed a video giving an overview of the projects we’ve taken on here. There’s never a dull moment as God continues to expand our vision and reveal his plans for Mozambique. Check out our video HERE, or click the link below. Click here to watch our latest video! Visitors We finished most of our house renovations and bought the needed furniture, and not a day too soon! We’ve had a steady flow of visitors for the past couple of weeks, who have been a blessing. One of these visitors is an old friend, ‘Mama Lee’, who ran an orphanage here for 11 years. She has since moved back to the States but is here to visit her kids.  We’ve been privileged to have her company, and to provide her with a ‘home base’ from which she can minister to the children and work with Pastor Mario to establish the orphanage under Peniel leadership. Her love for Mozambique and dedication to the welfare of her kids is a big encouragement to all of us. Our other visitors were an amazing couple, Jeff and Anneen, who are on an 11-month motorcycle journey from South Africa to Egypt. Their mission is to film a documentary about Muslims who have chosen to follow Christ. Check out their website and blog at anarrowpathmovie.com! They interviewed some members of our church, including Pastor Mario’s wife, Zaida, who was raised in a devoutly Muslim family. They also taught a few video classes for the Peniel media team during their stay here. They have a lot of skills and expertise to offer, and the media team was eager to learn more from them. They gave us the full versions of the testimonies filmed here, and we plan to edit and release them for those of you who are interested in the amazing things God is doing here among Muslims. It's been great to open up our home to visitors like Jeff and Anneen Mama Lee with a couple of her kids Carla with one of her English classes Kyran and Jariel are enjoying their new school! Facebook Website YouTube Email Donate Equip Mozambique is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, so all donations are eligible for tax-exemption. We were glad that Jeff and Anneen made some time for us on their motorcycle-through-Africa itinerary!  English and Education Classes Carla has had an opportunity to use her teaching skills with some English classes. Zaida and her  6 children have been wanting to learn English for years, and Carla started doing regular classes with them. She plans to start some more classes soon with some pastors who want to plant churches in Zimbabwe and Malawi. It’s a privilege to provide the tools necessary for these Mozambican missionaries to fulfill their calling! Through the church’s women’s ministry, Carla has continued teaching mothers about getting involved in their children’s education. In her last talk she shared the idea of making books at home to read to their kids, and it was amazing to watch their faces light up! There are very few books here, and they are quite expensive, so she showed them some books she created and encouraged them to do the same. It has been a great opportunity to equip families to give their kids a better chance at succeeding in school and life, leading to a brighter future for Mozambique. Kids' New School While we were enjoying homeschooling Kyran and Jariel, they were having difficulty connecting with other kids, learning Portuguese, and getting into the culture. A friend from church recommended the Christian English school where she sent her son, and we decided to try it out. The school is run by Kenyans and Nigerians, the teachers are Zimbabwean, and most of the students are Mozambican. The kids have been doing quite well at the school, they are opening up more, making friends, and learning a lot. Prayer Thanks for your prayers! As we reviewed our prayer requests from our last newsletter, we realized nearly every one was answered! Please keep it up. Praises We asked for prayer for Kyran and Jariel to make more friends, and their new school is helping with that! That our house improvements are mostly done, and we can now use it to be more hospitable. That we have made some great connections with old and new friends visiting us. That our teaching and equipping roles are expanding and bearing fruit. Prayer Requests That we could stay healthy. It’s winter here now, and most of us have had colds and sniffles for a few weeks. That we could manage our time well. As the pace is picking up and we are getting busier, we want to make sure we choose the right projects. Please also pray for Jeff and Anneen’s film project, that they would have a safe trip and make more good connections as they travel north. We will have another visitor from our home church, Laura, who will be arriving next week. Please pray for her preparations, travels, and the projects she will be doing here. Jon and Anneen interviewing and filming Amir, a leader at our church who grew up in a Muslim family. His was just one of many powerful testimonies we got to hear this week! Subscribe to: Posts (Atom) Meet Equip Mozambique About Us Equip Mozambique is a non-profit organization working on grass-roots, long-term poverty alleviation in the southeastern African nation of Mozambique. This blog is the archives of our regular e-mail updates, so you can read about our history all the way up to our most recent activities. 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