Chameleon

I found a chameleon hiding in my flowers on the back porch the other day. Actually, I'm not exactly sure it was a chameleon, but that was my best guess.

He was a little shy of the camera and kept trying to hide. (Just ignore the three cocaroaches that snuck into the picture on the left hand side--they're always trying to steal the show.)

No, seriously, we don't have THAT many cocaroaches ALWAYS hanging around our back porch...we had just sprayed bug killer the day before so they all came out for one last hurah.

It is an amazing thing to watch your kids wonder at creation.

I hope my children are always this curious, this enthralled, at the beauty of our world.

Sleep

When you're on the road for three weeks, you learn to fall asleep and wake up in all sorts of strange places. Sleeping and napping was particularly a challenge with two little boys who nap at different times...especially since we all shared the same room for most of those three weeks. After one particularly challenging "nap" time, I heard Christian wake up and walked into the room and found Cohen out of bed and leaning on ours. I told him to get back into bed and to stop waking up his little brother...but upon closer examination, this is what I found:

Blyde River Canyon

We went for a short drive to see Blyde River Canyon while in South Africa. They had some really neat lookout points along one of the roads so we hopped out and did a little hiking. Our friend Melissa from Beira was with us.

Cool dude.

Christian and his girl.

Obligatory "family picture."

Farm in South Africa

At the beginning of December we took a trip down to South Africa for medical checkups and some supply buying. Despite a very difficult and trying journey, we finally arrived at a farm just outside Nelspruit, where we spent several days resting up.

The farm is actually the residence of a South African couple who opened up their home to us to stay as a sort of "bed and breakfast"...but we got MUCH more!

The farm was an ideal place for us to relax and unwind after some very stressful weeks, culminating with the disasterous trip down, (not to mention the past year of living in a dirty and run-down city). The family had a pool, some children for ours to play with, and just beautiful grounds with trees and rolling hills.

They let us borrow their four-wheeler for some "fun." Clearly Cohen felt slighted when Stefan chose me to go on a ride with him.

Oh well, who needs "alone time" anyway? We just couldn't leave him behind after the face he worked up.

The family we stayed with were so hospitable and friendly. They provided wonderful meals and fellowship and many "extras" such as frequent cups of hot coffee and a fire by the pool! It actually was beautiful weather while we were there--despite it being "summer," South Africa, and particularly this valley were much cooler than Mozambique this time of year.

We are so thankful for the opportunity to get to know Banie and Louise and their children and for their gracious hospitality while we stayed with them!

Licking out the Bowl

Like most children, Cohen loves to "lick out the bowl" after I'm done baking something sweet. But now Christian has begun to show an interest in everything his older brother does...so when Christian crawled up, I was bracing myself for some screeching and shouting (and yes, shoving and hitting)...before I would inevitably have to stop baking, intervene and supervise for the next ten minutes...

But this is what I found.

Aww...Such loving and well behaved children I have! (I quickly snapped a couple of pictures before we all returned to the real world of siblings.)

Coconut

While we were at Fernanda's house this past weekend we were showered with some very special cultural gifts for a growing baby: coconuts.

Fernanda's family has a coconut tree in their yard and they sent a little boy to climb up and take down a dozen or so to give as gifts for Christian.

And this was a BIG tree! According to local tradition, if a baby drinks lots of coconut water, he will have no trouble with speech, and in fact, will speak "early."

After the coconuts were down, Fernanda's son demonstrated how to break them open (which, incidentally, is VERY hard work).

Everyone joined in to peel them. Then they offered one right away to Christian. Afterall, they want him talking EARLY!

Christian, being the good little cross-cultural kid that he is, was eager to taste something new.

Dribble, dribble all over Mommy.

Turns out he LOVES the stuff.

Great! Just what we need. Now, I can't prove or disprove local belief about coconut water helping babies to talk early as I can't reference any scientific studies. However, I can tell you what I DO know about excess amounts of coconut water....let's just say it "cleans out your system"!! And very quickly!

Visit to Fernanda's House

This past weekend we took some pictures of a visit to Fernanda's house. (Fernanda is the lady who helps us out with the laundry, the dishes, and a hundred other things around the house).

This is "Dona" Fernanda. Cohen and Christian love her! Although her primary job is to help out around the house, she takes care of Cohen and Christian so that I can go to a weekly Bible study and prayer meeting.

This is Fernanda's house. She lives about 30 minutes away by "chapa" (the old vans that are the country's public transportation).

These are some of Fernanda's family members who all live on the family property: a mother, an aunt, a couple of sons, dauthers-in-law, a few grandchildren...and well, many more. (Note: For those of you that remember the story of the the little boy named after Stefan, he's the little baby toward the back sitting on his great-grandma's lap).

Her property has a nice well on it--clean, and functioning--which is so important in Mozambique due to the droughts as well as the floods when much of the water around can be contaminated.

We spent some time just visiting.

And brought cookies and juice to share.

Cohen was fascinated by all of the animals running around.

And as usual, he made friends quickly.

Here he is playing with one of Fernanda's sons and a friend.

Thanksgiving Day

We couldn't bear the thought of "missing" Thanksgiving even though we are now living here in Mozambique, so when we didn't hear of anything happening by way of celebration, we decided to get together with one or two families to celebrate. Well, in the end, we ended up having over 25 people in our house for dinner!

One family brought a Turkey down from Nampula but didn't know how to bake it so brought it over to our house for us to fix. We ended up having all sorts of delicious food--everything from the traditional turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes to...the not so traditional okra side dish and beef goulash. Afterall, we weren't celebrating with only Americans. Our house was filled with all sorts of nationalities from Peruvians to Zimbabweans to English to...well, you get the picture.

We threw some Mozambican mats out on the grass for the kids (mostly to get them out of the house :) They didn't seem to mind the swealtering heat as much as the adults.

It certainly was a houseful! And we loved it!

Melissa, our good freind and collegue helped us run around after the boys while we tried to be good hosts. She has become their best friend this past year.

It was so great to spend the day with friends in the absence of family. We stood around in front of the fans and air conditioner trying to pretend it felt like winter was right around the corner :).

Team (without Mama and the boys)

Stefan and our co-worker Melissa led another short-term team out to Gorongosa at the beginning of this month. Some leaders of Orchard Hill Church in Iowa and the FH-US VP and his wife came to see the work in Mozambique and look at parternship opportunities. Their visit was such an encouragement to us and it was so exciting to see a church with with such a passion for cross-cultural ministry.

This time Mama got to stay home with the boys.

One look at this face and you can maybe begin to imagine what our week was like.

"Mouse" in the Pantry

Christian has been crawling for a little over a month now and finds all manner of things to entertain himself. It is great. He gets into everything from the trash in the bathroom, to Cohen's prized toys ("No, Christian! MINE!!") to the cupboards with the dishes. Although it is time consuming to walk around the house picking up after him, I figure the trade-off is worth it: He spends 15 fun-packed minutes playing and I spend two cleaning up! One of Cohen's favorite places to play is the pantry...and the other day he left the door open and Christian snuck by me and crawled in. I heard some rustling inside and went to inspect and here is what I found:


Speaking of rodents...We do actually have somewhat of an issue with large rats here. Thankfully they are not IN the house--but they run around quite confidently in our yard without any apparent fear of humans. We share our yard with three other tenants and their domestic employees and the families of the domestic employees and the security guards--all of whom have their own little space out back. Point being, we cannot control the hygiene and trash habits of all the people we share our yard with and hence continue to learn to just "deal" with the creatures.

For example, when Cohen and Christian and I are out on the grass playing and a rat comes running straight at us I stand up and yell loudly shouting my disgust (I've found this to be quite effective! It typically scurries away, undoubtedly with it's feelings hurt). Cohen, however, hasn't quite figured out what to make of them. We have been teaching him to be respectful of animals and trying to get him over his fear of dogs....so apparently he thought the same rules applied here. The other day when I rat was running around us, he looked up at me, opened his arms and asked me, "Mommy? Give "wat" hug?" I'm afraid my shock and horror were so great I may have yelled "No!" a little too vehemently! Poor boy. It's got to be confusing. Why do Mommy and Daddy teach him to pet and hug puppies and not the large furry animals in our own yard? Hmmm....

(Nearly) Beach Front Property

One of the many neat things about our house in Beira is that we can actually see the ocean from our front porch! All that separates us from the vast Indian Ocean is about 100 yards and a four-foot wall. Well...that was yesterday. This morning we woke up to find the ocean lapping just a little too close for comfort after tearing away a large portion of that wall!

This is the view from our front porch. The ocean is just on the other side of those cars in the background.

Here is where the wall used to be.

So we are definitely feeling a little too close to the mighty ocean for comfort. Not to mention rainy season (i.e. storm season) is just starting!

This is the view from where the wall SHOULD be...looking back at our appartment (the mustard-colored building behind the trees). Yes, we are definitely feeling like we are living life a little "on the edge."

Oh, and did I mention that we came about 10 feet from being crushed by a tree this afternoon? As the ocean wears away at the sand, the trees along the road are also falling. Today when we set out to walk along the beach, this tree you see in the background cracked and began falling just as we were in the middle of crossing the street right in front of it! Thankfully it was caught on some trees in front and so it didn't actually make it on top of us or the street.

Vacation in Mozambique

Today marks one year that we arrived in Mozambique! We just got back from a 10 day vacation which really allowed us to do some reflecting on this past year and some praying, discussing, and dreaming of where the Lord is leading us this next year. It was perfect timing as we had not really gotten away since Christian's birth and had not had a vacation since arriving a year ago. Although the last two weeks included a lot of traveling (over 1800 miles by car) and a lot of packing and unpacking (we never stayed more than two nights in any place), we so enjoyed our time away as a family.

Our idea with this vacation was to not only "get away" from work for a while, but to also get to know Mozambique better. So we headed north and spent some time visiting some old friends. We visited Phil and Elin Henderson with New Tribes Mission who work in Pebane. We also visited DJ and Tricia Morrisson and Pete and Charity Rogers in Nampula who also work with NTM. All of those girls I (Sharon) knew from my childhood at the boarding school in Brazil. We also spent some time visiting with Danny and Marilyn Germann (of NTM), regional leaders of NTM who just happened to be visiting Mozambique from Senegal at the time. It was really neat to see the work that NTM has begun here in Mozambique and their vision of future ministry.

On our way up from Pebane to Nampula, we caravaned with another missionary. Here are Cohen and Stefan helping to pump his tires.

Despite all the visiting, we did have a couple of days as just a family on Carusscas Beach just accross from Nampula. We spent a lot of time just hanging out in the sun and collecting shells.

Stefan and Cohen (and Christian) sorting the shells...

Here's Cohen...and like most kids completely oblivious to the previous night's catastrophe...Here's the thing: apparently we have some sort of an issue with rats following us around on our get aways. Here again, they joined our family and the first night ate through our bread and apples. The second night, when all that was left was a box of unopened UHT milk, yep, they ate through that! (Not to mention chewing up Christian's toys and leaving little bits of wood and plastic everywhere!)

Little "Laurence of Arabia" and his Mommy. Stefan always thinks it's funny when I put this little hat on Christian since it has that funny flap in the back. But on the beach, sun protection comes before image and style. So Christian gets to be little Laurence for a few hours.

On the other side of the cove is the Ilha de Mocambique (Mozambique Island), a small island with beautiful old buildings and a lot of history. We spent one night on the island at a B&B (using the term loosely). It had a really beatiful balcony view. See the mosque right next door to us? It had a loudspeaker attached and working at full volume...which in and of itself would not have been an issue had it been a normal week. But if you recall, last week was still the middle of Ramadan...which we found out meant hour long blasts of preaching and calling from roughly 8 pm to 3am throughout the night. So much for getting some sleep!

We visited a beautiful old Portuguese fortress on Ilha...

...complete with rusting cannons, crumbling walls, and a spectacular view...

...which Cohen also appreciated. Appreciated so much, in fact, that he forgot all about his shoe and dropped it over the edge. Now, any other shoe we might have just cut our losses. But it was one of his special "crocs" sent in a package from our sunday school class in KY.

So we spent the rest of our tour trying to arrange for someone to unlock old dungeons and gates and climb over falling rocks and sharp coral and wade through the rising tide to search for and retrieve said "croc." Cohen was super happy to have it back. And the boy that came to our rescue was super happy to have some money for a soda.

Finally we made the three day trip back to Beira. Along the way we stayed at a guest house in the home of a missionary family we had never met before, but who graciously housed us both on the way up and back. It is truly amazing to be a part of this body of Christ as each member seeks to glorify God through the gifts and ministry God has given him. This vacation was such a beautiful reminder of the larger work that the Lord is doing through His children in Mozambique and even around the world.