"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.