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.