Sunday, December 31, 2017

Happy New Year from Equip Mozambique!

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An update from Equip Mozambique!
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Happy New Year!!!
A Year of Growth

Overall, 2017 was a great year for Equip Mozambique, thank you for being a part of it! A particular shout-out to everyone who: 

  • Prayed for us
  • Sent us words of encouragement
  • Donated financially
  • Contributed to helping us furnish the new building
  • Sent stuff to us with visitors
  • Bought products from the sewing school
  • Visited us in Mozambique
  • Spread the word and told others about us
  • Helped us find new partnerships
  • Read our updates and stayed in touch
  • Kept up with our Facebook posts
  • Joined our Facebook prayer page

If you did any of these things, you played a role in making this our best year yet, and we invite everyone reading this to get more involved in 2018!
USA Bound
The Reinagel family will be visiting the USA for 3 months, February-April 2018. Let us know if you'd like to try to see us or invite us to speak at a church or small group!
Here are a few encouraging numbers to show our explosive growth from December 2016 compared to December 2017!
  • Church partners: 1 > 20
  • Library books: 0 > 770
  • Sewing school students: 7 > 48
  • Daughter sewing schools: 0 > 5
  • Sewing machines imported: 4 > 65
  • Bible app downloads: 14,000 > 50,000+
  • App languages: 14 > 200+
  • App countries: 1 > 17
  • Employees: 2 > 18
  • Reinagel children: 2 > 3 
For more news, we sent out a snail-mail newsletter a couple weeks ago. If you did not get one, you can read it here!

Praise Reports:

  • That we were SO blessed with growth in 2017!
  • That God provided for us every step of the way
  • That we are seeing many people impacted through our ministries

Prayer Requests:

  • That God would continue to lead and guide us as we plan for 2018
  • That our continuing growth would be met with increased finances to support all our projects and the people who make them happen
  • That we would have a safe and productive trip to the States
Thanks for reading, please remember us in your prayers! 

Thursday, October 12, 2017

Big changes with Equip Mozambique!

 

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An update from Equip Mozambique!
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Growing Again!

 

It has been a busy few months here in Mozambique! We are continually blown away by God's goodness and faithfulness. Read on to see what He's been up to in our little corner of the world!

NEW Building - The Empowerment Center

When we rented a 3-bedroom apartment to be our first office location, we only had 2 full-time workers plus us 3 missionaries, and the space was more than sufficient. Then our team grew… and grew… and grew! Now we have 18 people plus the sewing school which had 10 students at a time, and we were quite squished! Jehovah-Jireh saw our need for some room to grow, and did He ever provide! In August we moved to a spacious building we are calling the Empowerment Center, with 4 large rooms and 5 smaller ones, perfect for both our current needs and future expansion. We were also able to move the library out of the private school (which proved to be a low-traffic location for it) and into our building which is much better suited for having more visits. 
Before and After!
Crowded work spaces in the old place, plenty of room to grow in the new!

 

With the new building we are needing a little help with furnishing all that space with tables, chairs, shelves, and other things, so let us know if you’d like to partner with us financially to utilize the building to its greatest potential!
Here's a layout of the building and our dreams of what we could do with the space if we had the right furnishings! Click here for a detailed list of the furnishings we need.

NEW Teammates

As we said, the Equip Mozambique team has grown again! We now have Felizardo in media, Isabel and Rosanna in administration, Marcos in tech support, and Alex and Malavriosa in app development! They are all a joy to have on the team. We also needed to hire 2 night guards when we got the new building, it’s great to be in a position to provide so many much-needed jobs.

NEW Bible App Expansion

Jon and his programming team have been hard at work cranking out new versions for the "Fonte da Vida" Bible app, we're up to v3.6.6! We’ve added many languages, partners, and resources and we’ve expanded beyond Portuguese-speaking countries into some of the surrounding English-speaking ones. We now have around 40,000 downloads, and nearly half of those are outside of Mozambique, so we’re gaining international momentum!

NEW Sewing Term

We held a joyous graduation ceremony for Sewing Term 2 at the end of July! The students proudly wore dresses they had made themselves, and here’s what some of them had to say on that day:
“Teachers, thank you very much for all that you taught us, you are a blessing, and you were able to restore our dreams that were already lost. And with your patience and wisdom we didn’t only learn sewing, but we also learned to love, to forgive, to teach others, to have hope, and to care for others in need.”

 

After moving into the new building, we started up Sewing Term 3 with nearly twice as many students as we had before, thanks to the increased space! We also hired Estrella, one of the students from Term 2, to be a new teacher’s assistant to Maria so that she won’t be too stretched. Three weeks after the term started up, Carla went on maternity leave because we have a...

NEW Baby!

A healthy baby girl, Alizah Faith, was born at home September 7! She weighed 7lbs 6oz, 20in long, for those who like to know. A wonderful and very experienced midwife from Florida and a doula friend from Missouri both came to assist with the birth. Now we have a little Mozambican citizen in the family! Carla’s parents and 2 younger sisters also came for a total of 5 weeks around the birth, which was a great help and blessing to have some family time.

Praise Reports:

  • That we were able to find and move into the Empowerment Center--and that the landlord gave us a good rate for the rent!
  • That we have found quality people to add to the team, all of whom are proving to be a blessing and an asset.
  • That the new sewing term is up and running and going well -- even in Carla’s absence!
  • That Alizah arrived safe and healthy, and that she generally sleeps well at night!
     

Prayer Requests:

  • That our increased expenses (new building, more salaries) will be met.
  • In spite of our best efforts, we are still not registered in Mozambique. Jon got to meet the mayor of our city and make some connections with other government officials, so hopefully that will help our process along!
  • Please pray for healthy communication between team members. Even with our rapid growth, we want to keep a healthy environment of trust and respect.
Thanks for reading, please remember us in your prayers!