Video: Little Victor!

He is 17 months old now and he's started walking!!! SO cute!





He also went for a ride on one of our 4 horses - he enjoyed that loads:

Medical Outreach - Montpuez

This past weekend I went on an overnight/weekend outreach to Montpuez - it was a joint medical outreach so something totally different from the usual outreaches I've been on!

Montpuez is due west from Pemba, and the road is smooth and tarred all the way - although we went into the bush bush down a dirt road for about an hour to get to the village where we were going to stay the night.

The Holy Given students had to ride on the back of an open camiao - at least it didnt rain!


My car is AMAZING, I love it!!! So handy and practial and useful! It has made my life so much easier in terms of carting sound equipment around and setting up in the villages at night I feel more secure about the equipment not being messed with.

I set the sound desk etc up in the back of my truck, so I have a place to sit during the movie and also I can close the doors to prevent the system disapearing!

This is our "high-tech" setup, it works really well! The Mediaplayer has replaced the DVD player we used to use, and the hard drive based system has been invaluble, worth every cent!

All set for outeach!

Unfortunately it RAINED that night, so we only showed about 1 hour of the film before I decided to pack up - we were all soaked by the time the system was in the car, and the whole team was in bed by 7:30pm! It was the first time that I've been in bed before midnight on an outreach, and sleeping for 10 hours was brilliant!

Tent Land - This village has not church building, but the pastor opened his yard for us to camp in

All the cooking is done over a fire - here they are heating the water for coffee in the morning!


Just look what missions has done! These are my friends Eric the Doctor, and Raphael the Accountant!

Saturday dawned slightly cloudy, but it was not going to rain - there were some patches of blue peeking thru the clouds, and by 7am it was starting to get kinda warm.

The Medical Landrover

The Medical team (headed up by Dr Angie), started setting up the brown tent where they treat and pray for anyone who needs medical attention. The problems they encounter range from asthma and scabies to basic wound care, so they are kept really busy! All the kids in the village are also de-wormed, and they stand fairly patiently in line waiting for their turn. Each kid is also prayed over, so it's an awesome ministry opportunity.

Dr Angie de-worming some kids

In the Medical Tent: This little girl has asthma and her fatehr was told by the witchdoctor that there was nothing anyone could do to help her! (Dr Angie was able to help her of course)

We did some more evangelism in the village while the medical outreach was happening, so the sound system was setup again




It was a good outreach - the 2nd night we were in Montpuez town, and there were a number of hecklers and 3 fights broke out while were preaching, but we showed the Jesus film and even though I was sitting with the sound system, I heard from some of the students that there were a number of healings! So good! :-)

My first week on HG staff

My first week of being on Holy Given staff, and man oh man is it busy! But its so much fun. This is an amazing group of students, they are so eager to get involved and really don't mind going the extra mile.

I did sound training with all the guys again, and they've been doing their own sound for school since the start of HG (its going good), and the outreaches are also going really well. It is quite a task keeping all the systems juggled - there is an overnight outreach every Thursday, returning Friday afternoon, but then 2 teams leaving every Friday morning for weekend outreach. And there is school everyday. And even tho I have 4 systems, I want the guys to practice on the outreach systems, so making sure that an outreach system isn't accidentally setup on a Friday when its meant to go out is a challenge... Good thing they are all color coded: Red (the small Yamaha Stage Pass system) and Yellow, Green & Blue (Mackie SRM450 outreach systems)!

So the systems have been going really well, although on this past weekend's outreach the 'Yellow' system's generator stopped working on the 2nd night, so they borrowed a small one from someone in the village, and this resulted in one of the guys on the team sending me an ominous text message: "We have some work for you..." Oh no! :-§

Well, the generator they had borrowed didn't have a voltage regulator built into it, so one of the plug strips went 'poof' (I'm told there was smoke and sparks!) and the little sound desk [a Yamaha MG10/2] stopped working too. Fortunately when I tested the little sound desk today it still worked, I'm SO relieved, as they are no longer in production so getting a replacement sent up from South Africa would have been next to impossible. The plug strip is a goner tho - good thing I got 5 extra ones in my storeroom! :-)

I am also responsible for the 'Village Feeding'. Heidi's heart is that no one goes hungry, so even tho the village kids are not allowed on the base during the day, they are allowed in for an hour or 2 for lunch. It gets kinda rowdy up in the kitchen/dining room, so the village kids are fed in one of the classrooms are the bottom of the property. My job is to make sure that there is a team of students who do this everyday. I made a schedule and the students have been AMAZING and run with it. No problems!!! (I told you they are a great bunch!)

I'm also trying to find some of the 'lost luggage' - doing it as a favor for Eric who helped me out with sound for the week that I was away - so I go to the airport everyday searching for the bags! The 2 students have been pretty chilled about it, they have been living out of whatever they had in their carry-on for the past 2 weeks! I did try and cheer them up tho, and I told them about a student from the previous school who's lost luggage only turned up the day before he left Pemba! I dont think they appreciated me telling them that! :-p

So it's going really well, God is doing some amazing things in the student's lives, and it's really exciting to be part of it all!

Heading North

I'm on my way to Pemba after 2 short weeks in South Africa! My exams went well, but I'm glad that they are finally done.
Holy Given started on Tuesday, so I've missed the first few days of school - but I'm sure that I'll get settled in real quick and get to know all the students that I will be working with for the next 9 weeks!

I'm studying really hard. Serious....

OK, so I'm not really throwing myself into studying as much as I should be - but I have a valid excuse: Raphael and Eric travelled with me to Pretoria to renew their visas, so I just HAD to show them a bit of South Africa! It was their first time in my country, and you know what they say about first impressions...

So I took them to our big mall (Menlyn), I took them to visit an old Dutch fort (Fort Klapperkop) and we went to Pilanesberg National Park, to go look at some animals. It was so much fun to have them here - and I think they liked it too!

A 'Disinfector' used to clean the soldier's uniforms 

Here are some photos taken by Raphael at the game reserve: (click on the thumbnails to view the larger versions on Raphael's website)




So this past week has been fun, but the guys left today... I guess now I have no more excuses! I write my first exam on Oct 15, and the second one on the 17th. Then I head back to Pemba to join the staff for the next Holy Given School of Missions [HG7] starting soon.

Outreach in Pemba

Last night we went on outreach to a place 6 minutes away from my house - I've never been there before - its a village just off the main road, in a fairly muslim area. For some random reason we left the base at 3:30pm... arriving at 3:36pm, and considering that the sun only sets at 5:30pm we had some time to kill! I sat in my car and studied for my upcoming exams while waiting for the sun to set.

Finally its time, and the guys get everything set up real quick, too quick actually cos we had to play the swahili dancing music for about 25mins before it was dark enough to start the film.

Its Ramadaan at the moment, and one of our student pastors came to me and excitedly informed me that he had stationed 6 other pastors around the generator, because there were banditos in the city and they could easliy take off with the generator. I thank him, and then he adds, "...and usually, here in Pemba city, after the movie, the people like to throw rocks at us. But its OK, because God is good!" *gulp* OK.

I had set up the sound desk and media player in the back of my car - it makes it easier to look after it, and also gives me a comfy place to chillout while the movie is going. I usually sit there and study, or if I have a good book I sit and read.

The movie ends and I look around at the crowd to see their reaction - ready to throw the equipment into the back if they got violent, but thankfully nothing happened. It was a very 'hard' area, the people were not very receptive - although I did see one guy wearing a skull cap put up his had for salvation. Awesome!

Rule #1

So I was eating a bowl of matapa tonight (random green leaves - sorta like spinach, but not quite) and as I was eating I wondered why I just swallowed mouthfuls without chewing.

So I stopped and chewed..*crunch crunch*
Then it dawned on me: Rule #1: SAND will be present in all food!

...And that, is why I never chew the center food! Makes sense when you think about it :-)

Lotsa Typing!

I'm at a bit of a loose end at the moment - my sound systems are either totally broken and need to go to South Africa, or they are 100% fine! So, unless I spend time in my sound room aimlessly shifting heavy equipment around, I have a bit of time to kill. So I'm helping out in some of the other departments - This past week I've been helping in the accounting office - there was a large backlog of receipts from the petty cash that had to be captured so I spent every morning in an office typing typing typing. It's kinda fun, decipering the portuguese receipts!

Then our bible school has started and the girl who usually runs it has gone on a well deserved break, so one of my other friends has taken over... kinda overwhelming! So for this week I'm helping out there - some of the name badges were wrong (name and photo dont match...) so we had to redo a lot of them. But there are lots of little admin things that need to be done, so I guess I'll be kept busy with that - then its back to the accounting office to start capturing the backlog of receipts from cheques that were issued!

So nothing fun and exciting this week, just work! :-)

A Day at the Beach with the Boys

Photos by: Raphael Vaney

Saturday was a fully packed day with lots happening - I am glad that I had Sunday off too, to recover from all the 'relaxing' I did!

As usual the day started with pancakes (which were delicious!), then I went to pick up 12 of the Iris boys (aged 10-12) who live in Raphael's dorm. I had offered to drive them to Murrebue - and they were very excited to finally go. The morning had started off rainy, but by 11am the sun was out and the sky a perfect blue.


There were 12 boys, Rapha, Brandon, Eric, 2 dogs (Bala and Jahu) and myself going - so we took 2 cars!

At the beach Rapha played soccer with the boys while Brandon, Eric and I took the dogs for a long walk down the beach, stopping for a chat at a soon-to-open restaurant run by a lovely Italian family.

By the time we got back to the Murrebue restaurant the food had been served and the kids tucked into their chicken meals. I had ordered the battered and fried prawns - mmm mmmm mmmmmm! so good!

After lunch the tide had finally come in, so we could go swim!




- everyone headed into the ocean and we played a totally unorganized game of "volley balll/'piggy-in-the-middle'/throw the ball to anyone you want to" with the boys. It was very energetic to say the least! Raphael and Eric where throwing the boys into the air so that they could do backflips into the water,


The boys also started a small seaweed fight and some of them would sneak up on me and grab my ankles! They loved it - and it was great to see some male missionaries around who could just play with the boys.

So loads of fun, but I was exhausted by the end of the day - when we dropped the kids back at the center they each came to give me a hug and say thank you!

The day didnt end there - I made dinner with my neighbours, and then we watched a movie - so I got to bed quite late, but it was a fun day!

Tsunami...

We were in the middle of a 'goodbye' Travis party, all just chilling, listening to him play guitar, soaking - when suddenly Musy burst into the room, her face white. I thought that something had happened to her week old baby, Bella. But instead the most unexpected words came out of her mouth: "A tsunami is going to hit Pemba in 2 hours, we have to evacuate NOW!!"

There was a silence, and then suddenly everyone is up, outside. I text my parents to get more info. All 120 of the bible school students had to be told, all our staff. People were already in bed. Very quickly everyone is home, packing the essentials - wondering if its really going to happen, and at the same time not quite grasping the concept of a wave splashing down on our houses.

My housie is in South Africa at the moment, so I text her and asked what I should get out of her room. Finally I have everything in the car, dog included.

By that time the 'HUGE' tsunami had hit the Seychelles, and it had been a whole 15cm higher tide than usual. So we started relaxing at bit, but we still had to evacuate. Some of the Mozambican staff didnt want to leave their houses. The men said "We'll just go to the beach, and when we see the wave coming we'll get our families and go to higher ground" *... yes, great idea...*

All the kids were sent up to the school at the top of the hill, and they even took the drum kit! It was quite noisy to say the least, but finally around 22:50pm when it was clear that nothing of significance was going to happen we finally decided to let everyone go back home.

I wanted to go see what this 15cm wave would look like, and 2 of my friends were keen too. So we headed for the beach, and at 23:39pm (the given time of arrival) we stood looking out to sea. We were sorely disapointed... the tide was out very far (which is usual) and we could not even see where the waves were! So at midnight we decided to head back home.

So some excitement, some scares, but after a good night's sleep we are back at work today!