Exciting possibilities and good news!

An update from Equip Mozambique! View this email in your browser While 2015 will involve a lot less travel than 2014, it promises to be just as exciting for the Equip Mozambique team. We continue to relish our role of discovering, partnering, and empowering - finding out what God wants to do in the church, the city, and in individuals then equipping them for that role. Radio Station The church just got the equipment for most of a radio station from Brazil. They have been actively praying and seeking this opportunity for 5 years, and now it’s within reach. While there are individuals in the church with experience working a radio station, no one has put a station together before or understands how the equipment works together. As always, God seems to have a plan and Jon at least understands the basics. He has been poring over manuals and physics equations from his college days in order to fit the station together in the best possible way. When we left the US, we never thought ‘bearing much fruit’ (John 15:16) would include a radio station, but here we are! Peniel Peniel Leadership We have all enjoyed working under the leadership of Peniel. Even though we’ve only been here a short time, the church really does feel like a ‘home church’. Pastor Mario is a man who has a thorough knowledge of the Bible, a vibrant relationship with God, and is passionate about equipping other Mozambicans to bring positive change to their society. He speaks the truth in love, but he isn’t afraid of causing offence or taking a stand against the ungodly aspects of some of Mozambique's cultural norms. We have all benefitted from his teaching, and have been encouraged and challenged by the dedication with which the other church members live out their faith. A BLOG from Jon about various job opportunities here in Mozambique. Kyran balancing between two puddles on our street. It has been raining a lot lately, and much of Mozambique is flooded. Thankfully our area isn't that bad! Janie has been blogging about her many encounters HERE. Facebook Website YouTube Email Donate Equip Mozambique is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, so all donations are eligible for tax-exemption. Education Research   Our interest in helping Mozambique in the area of education is taking on new and exciting turns that we never would have expected. In order to get a better picture of the education landscape and opportunities, we've been interviewing some teachers and parents to get their opinions on the current state of schools and what is needed. One parent told us that some teachers don’t even show up for whole weeks at a time, and if they do come, they’re drunk. She was upset that the kids are expected to pass the standardized tests at the end of the school year when they have so little instruction. Another parent said a student could have 9 classes on their day's schedule, but only 3 teachers would show up that day. Two college professors lamented that many of their students - who graduated from high school - can’t even read.  They simply passed from one grade to the next, and then to graduation, by bribing the teachers for good grades. This explains two other major issues: corruption and the fact  that students of all ages just don’t seem to be motivated or care about learning. These are sadly common stories we’re hearing, so it’s pretty clear that  some drastic changes are needed to ensure a higher quality of education. Parents as Teachers   Carla has started homeschooling Kyran and Jariel, thanks to another missionary family that generously loaned us a complete kindergarten curriculum and set of books. The kids have been loving it, and are learning in leaps and bounds. Through conversations with Mozambican parents, we've come to realize that it is a completely foreign idea for them to be actively involved in their children's education. They've been shocked that almost-5-year-old Kyran can read and do two-digit addition problems, and 2-year-old Jariel knows the alphabet and can locate several countries on a world map. They didn't even realize that such young children were capable of thinking like that! This has given Carla the idea of starting a 'Parents as Teachers' kind of class at church to help parents give their kids a headstart with a desire to learn. This could transform at least some of Mozambique's educational woes from the bottom up. Job Opportunities Jon has also been busy looking for business opportunities and finding the right people to take advantage of them. If you want to know more, read his blog post “Want to Quit Your Job?” Please be praying for Bernardo and Dino, brave Christians who had great jobs but whom God is calling to step into the unknown. Janie Janie’s been spending time with several other girls from church in order to form friendships and keep learning Portuguese. Every day is a new adventure, whether it’s being asked to cook ‘American food’ for a friend, committing hilarious linguistic blunders, or having random conversations in stores and parking lots. She also got to do some photos for the wedding of a Mozambican couple. The wedding included multiple locations, lots of dancing, and lots of food. The whole affair lasted for about twelve hours, and it was a great experience, though it made for a very hectic day. Janie got the chance to photograph a Mozambican wedding. DIREs!   In order for us to do any ministry, there is a lot of administration that has to take place in the background. We have finally succeeded in getting our residency approval! It has been a long process including unexpected flights, emergency documents, and mailing shenanigans but God is good. We are so grateful for all of your prayers and the support of those here who have helped us through the process. To give some perspective on how big of a blessing this is: Jon and Carla were here for three years previously, and were never able to get their DIREs (the Mozambican equivalent of a US green card). This is a major praise report for us. Thank you for your prayers and partnership! Praises We're thankful to finally have our DIREs! We were able to find and buy a vehicle that looks like it will suit our needs well. It's currently en route from Japan and should arrive at the end of March. For God's faithfulness in opening doors and showing us more areas for ministry. For the kids' homeschool curriculum and the inspiration it provided to help other parents.   Prayer Requests That our car would arrive safely and that we wouldn't encounter any problems with the import process. That God would continue to guide us to the right people who need equipping in order to live out their calling. For Bernardo and Dino, the two brave men who are looking into starting their own businesses with Jon's guidance. That we would know which projects to take on and which ones would only distract us from the best that God has for us.  Reinagel family at the beach Thanks for reading, please remember us in your prayers!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

An update from Equip Mozambique! View this email in your browser Happy New Year!   Two busy months have flown by! Wow, the End of 2014 was packed with so many amazing things that it’s hard to know where to begin! We've had: major breakthroughs in a number of our projects, doors flung wide open in ways we never would have guessed, clarification of our vision, and small victories in some of our biggest battles. Partnering with the Creator in transformation is never boring! Read on to hear more.   Jon and some members of the Peniel media team whom he has been mentoring. Refining the Vision We’ve always known the vision of Equip Mozambique should be to equip the Mozambicans; find those with purpose and support them in whatever way they want to change their culture. We originally thought we would be doing that through the creation of a college, and this project is still in the works; however, it has become clear that it will take many years to complete. The education system is so systematically flawed that we will need to spend many months just sitting down with the teachers and discussing what a godly school would look like in this culture. The last thing we want to do is take an American system and place it in Mozambique; yes the school would work and people would attend it, but we wouldn’t truly be confronting the things that need the most change. The other major roadblock has been unemployment; it’s around 20% even for college graduates. It has become clear to us that the best impact we can have here in the short-term is in job creation and entrepreneurship training rather than education for a degree that may or may not help in securing employment. While we are still looking at education for the long-term good of the culture, several opportunities have opened up to help with job creation. Jon taught a seminar class on doing business using the principles of the Kingdom of God, and he has been visiting companies and sitting down with their directors. He's been talking to them, learning about the business culture, and giving them ideas on how to grow and develop their businesses to hire more employees. We are currently working on an analysis of the city and identifying strategic opportunities for honest businessmen. The church is very excited about our work so far and the business owners are going to be meeting together to discuss their plans, something that is rarely done in here, where it’s more common to hide all your best ideas instead of work with others. Pastor Mario Jon and Dino working on a video project together. Selling Santa hats on a street corner. 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 hope to raise up entrepreneurs who can succeed at enterprises a bit bigger than selling used shoes in a muddy market. Tax-Exempt Status As of December 31, we are officially registered as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization! Our non-profit status comes after tons of paperwork, much prayer and a long wait. It's a big answer to our prayers! Since our non-profit status came before the end of the year, we will be sending out receipts to everyone who gave us donations in 2014, and of course, we will continue to send out receipts for all donations made in 2015. Projects We've had some major breakthroughs with our Bible website project. We are in the process of securing the domain name biblia.co.mz, but more importantly we have found the content for the site! There is an organization called Faith Comes By Hearing that already has audio Bible recordings in most of Mozambique’s main languages. At first we were worried we would run into copyright issues with using other people’s work, but we got an e-mail from them this week giving us full permission to use everything they have—free of charge! Jon has much of the Bible website coded, but is still looking for some programming help, so if you know anyone who could contribute some time to this, please let us know! (The site uses the web languages of PHP and MySQL using the Joomla CMS – knowledge of 2 of 3 of them will do). We are always looking for ways to involve people who want to make an impact even if they can’t physically travel here. However, for those who CAN physically travel here… Hospitality We have been in contact with two teams that may come later this year, one to create some video documentaries and one to help build a Christian recording studio. We are quite excited about these projects as they fit perfectly with our vision. The short time that these teams may be here would empower the Mozambican Christians to do so much more than they could alone, and once the projects get started, they won’t need continuing support from outside of the country to grow. Let us know if you would like to visit as well to help with a project! While we can only accommodate a few people in our apartment, our church is in the process of constructing a new building that will have guest rooms able to accommodate larger teams, so later this year we hope to be able to take on even more visitors! There will be many opportunities for you to partner with us in 2015, whether from the States or as a visitor here in Beira. Please contact us if you're interested. Wrapping up Christmas presents for beggars with the kids Christmas Celebration We wanted to celebrate Christmas this year by being a blessing to others. So, on Christmas Eve, Kyran and Jariel helped wrap up some little presents they had picked out at the store, and everyone spent the morning cooking beans, rice, and chicken. We put the food in take-out boxes, loaded everything up in a chopella, and drove to a part of town where there are a lot of beggars and disabled people. We handed the food out to a bunch of blind people that we encountered, and Kyran and Jariel distributed their presents to their children. It’s easy to say ‘Christmas is more about giving than receiving’, but we wanted to put those words into action and show love to people who don’t have the dignity or privilege of food, shelter and possessions. Carla read Jesus’ words from Matthew 25; ‘whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of Mine, you did for Me’. She explained to the kids that, since Christmas is the time when we celebrate Jesus’ birthday, we were going to give Him presents by passing out gifts to other people, after which they walked around the house exclaiming, ‘happy birthday, Jesus!’ Even though they’re both so young, it was good to see their understanding that Christmas isn’t just about getting presents.    The Reinagel family Christmas photo!                  Janie with Anna, our house helper. Family Update The ‘temporary’ house where we’ve been staying while we looked for another one actually came available for rent. We really like the neighborhood, and the house was better than anything else we’d found in the same price range. So we decided to stay! We were able to hire a sweet widow from church, Anna, to help with housework, which was occupying most of Carla and Janie’s time. Anna was praying for a job to feed and educate her children, so we’re glad that we’re able to bless her in this way. Now all of us are freed up so that we can focus on more ministry, so it's a win-win all around! Thank you so much for sharing in our journey through your prayers and support! Praises For "Faith Comes By Hearing"'s audio Bible generosity. For receiving our tax-exempt status. That we found an affordable place to live--and we didn't even have to move! That was definitely an answered prayer from our last newsletter! That the immigration office has extended our 30-day visas TWICE now while we have run into a few roadblocks in getting our residency status. At first we were told that would be impossible...it's a good thing we serve a God greater than impossibilities! Peniel has been in a legal struggle for more than a year over a piece of land where they want to construct a new building to accommodate the church's rapid growth. Last week they FINALLY won the court case and they'll be able to start building soon! For partnership with businessmen and specialists who will, we hope, be able to make a big impact on their culture. Prayer Requests That the teams who would like to come help will be able to--that all their finances would come in and there wouldn't be any other hindrances.  We needed some documents sent from the States to continue our residency process, and they're not here yet even though they should have arrived by now. Please pray they'll get here soon! Worship Thanks for reading, please remember us in your prayers!