Equip Mozambique: A New Year full of Hope

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An update from Equip Mozambique!

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Starting 2021 Strong

The Equip Mozambique team is ever growing!

Happy New Year!

We hope this newsletter finds you entering this new year full of hope and anticipation for what God has in store! We train our team to turn problems into opportunities, and we hope you can do the same, no matter what difficulties you may be facing.

Year of Shalom
This year, our focus is on raising up our team to understand, live, and spread the concept of "Shalom". This includes having perfect peace and wholeness with self, family, community, and God. We believe that if we can truly live in Shalom and help others do so, we will be bringing a little more of God's Kingdom - His rule and reign - here on earth!

Reinagels to the USA

It's been 2 years since we were last in the States, and we now need to return as part of our Mozambican residency renewal. Because of the covid restrictions on gatherings we don’t know how many churches or groups we’ll be able to visit, but it will be good to spend some time with family after so long. We’ll be at least in Missouri and Colorado, send us a message if you want us to add you to the plan!

Tentative Itinerary
February 2 - mid-March: St. Louis, Missouri
Mid-March - early-April: Boulder, Colorado
Early-April - April 28: Rolla, Missouri

First 2020 Visit

After 7 different visitors had to cancel their trips to see us due to the pandemic, finally Jon’s sister, Krissy, was able to visit us for the month of December! It was the first time we’ve been able to celebrate Christmas with family in 5 years. She was able to spend time with her nephew and nieces, help organize our library, and made several new friends as she spent time with our team!

Krissy wrote up her first impressions of Equip Mozambique, which are included at the end of this email!

Praise Reports:

That our team is still going strong, we've been healthy, and the work is continuing in spite of all the setbacks and challenges.
That we are always finding new chances to bring Shalom/peace/wholeness everywhere we look.

Prayer Requests:

For peace in the northern region of Mozambique that has been experiencing unrest for a while now.
For opportunities for the Reinagels to both rest and be an encouragement during their trip to the States.
One of our goals this year is to gain 2 new monthly supporters per month. Please pray with us to make this a reality and consider if you could help in any way!

Donate Now!

Krissy wrote this bit about Equip Mozambique, it's nice to see a fresh perspective through new eyes! We thought you might enjoy getting to know the organization better through her summary and photo tour!

Most of you know Equip Moz as being Jon and Carla's project. In name, it is, but the reality is that Jon and Carla get opportunities to branch out both locally and internationally, but the organization is held together and run by a core team of Mozambicans. Jon and Carla bring opportunities, come up with ideas, and start projects, but those are handed off to Mozambicans that showed an interest and want to grow personally and as a community. From that stage, Jon or Carla might problem solve, but once the project is established, someone else has been trained and is ready to start taking over, they run off to do something else. Equip Mozambique is, in a word, hectic. In more detail, it is a place full of people that have a love for their country and passion to help it grow better. The office building itself looks nice, and is on a street full of deep potholes.

Within the building there are several departments. You are first greeted by the reception room where Memory checks people's temperatures.

Right behind her is the kitchen where breakfast and lunch are served daily for all the employees and the students of Restoring Hope Sewing school.

To the right, Jon and Bernardo have their little office with two desks and a small couch.

There are a few rooms that are rented out to other ministries and a huge room full of sewing machines where the Restoring Hope Sewing School can be found.

On the left side is the tech department, administration, library, embroidery room, and storefront for Resorting Hope.

Throughout the day people are always running to and fro working on this and that. The tech department not only has several apps that it is maintaining and developing, but websites, and servers. The tech department has 9 employees with two interns from a local college. Jon still has a heavy amount of work in this department, but the team is getting more self-sufficient each year.

The way things have grown here follows a pattern. Jon or Carla are presented with a problem by someone or see somewhere they can help. They start helping. As that project gets more attention and they bring on people that can help and as they are trained and becoming competent, they move on to another project.
Jon learned how to make websites and as that business grew he trained others to help. Then Jon realized that Apps could be a major way to reach people as so many have cell phones. As more apps got added to development more programmers are trained and Jon moved on to other projects. The result is an IT department that is constantly improving and is able to grow and multiply by itself with members creating their own apps.

Carla has always liked sewing, she ended up teaching some people and realized it would be a great way to help the widows in the church. Others came alongside and now the team has expanded past just reaching within the church to needing two full-time teachers, one administrator, and co-director.

When someone donated an embroidery machine Carla then moved from teaching to learning how to use the machine. She is currently training Lucio on how to run the machine and the word that they do quality work is spreading. Soon Lucio will be independent and Carla will jump to another project. Thus the projects continue, the organization expands, and with each expansion, more Mozambicans are equipped with skills that will make a lasting positive impact in their communities and eventually the entire country.