November team report! Guess the theme!

November Report (not October or December)

Hello Oasis UK,
Here is our November report:
It is a good report of November
So here you go, a report, all about November
We are actually going to write it now all about November……

November report, part one

Living arrangements- see report from October, the month before November, as this is actually our November report not October, and we are still living in the same places as October, even though it is now November. We had a bit of an issue in Sophie and Ambers house when it rained, in November, as the rain was coming in to their room but this was sorted with the aid of a board, good. Lizzie and Rachel are now adjusting to the water situation, and have plucked up the courage to just ask for it. Apparently there is a switch, which they didn’t know about in October, but found out about in November, also good. Our families are really great and sophie and amber are encouraged to dance lots to this really cool shonna cd. Edgar (their dad) speaks really good english but seems to like talking a lot about thieves (or teeths as he says) and was on top form when lizzy and rachel came for dinner the other night.

November report, part two

Work activities- unlike in October, unfortunately Lizzie has not been able to go to Vaz much so Rachel has had to go on her own, with various people accompanying her. This has been ok, but a bit tiring and occasionally frustrating. However the work is going really well and good relationships are being built up with the youth there.
Sophie and Amber are enjoying the work in November and are going to Nhamatanda with people from their church this weekend to visit people and the churches there. They have been involved with a good evangelism programme which has really encouraged the youth to get involved. We are all enjoying going to Lee’s and playing with the kids as well which we only started in this month. Which is November.

November report, part three

Relationships with overseers- despite the fact that it is now November, to be fair it has been November for a few weeks and will soon be December, but anyways, despite it being November, we still all really love marina. She is brilliant! And a really good cook. As for our overseers at church….two out of the three at Sophie and Amber’s church have moved to plant new churches, but the Pastor is great and looking after them well. The relationships with the Vaz overseers are really good, they giggle a lot, and Pastor Samuel has been really encouraging in his talks with Marina.



November report, part four

Well being of the team- Well….you can probably tell we are in a bit of a crazy mood today, maybe due to the fact that we spent half an hour drawing pictures of missionaries and giving them random names. You can blame Jim for this, as this was after his talk. However it makes a change to yesterday when we were all crying about various things (but that did mean we got to go to the nice café and have amazing cakes for training today). We are all going through the 6 week stage as marina calls it, even though its been 7 weeks now- we are being African and being late. Can’t wait till savanne next week! Lizzy is still ill its been nearly three weeks now and they still don’t really know whats wrong with her. She has been on loads of medication and had many trips to the doctors. One of which thought she was an ex Russian girlfriend coming back to haunt him…we think not. But November is a happy month and we are all still giggling a lot about random stuff, must be the time of year, which just so happens to be November! As well as culture shock, we blame everything on that. But it is ambers birthday next week yey! Party(the last day of November incidentally- a great day to finish off a great month)

November report, part five

Finance- As in October, we have done a finance report for November which sophie will send after retreat to include that. Which incidentally will be the beginning of December so will include the whole of November- aren’t you lucky!

November report, part six

Problems and issues- other than the fact that we are going slowly insane…we are having various ups and downs but mainly ups which is cool. We are all really looking forward to a few days break next week. Even though we get back on the last day of November, which is quite sad, the end of an era almost….
There was a food trauma the other day- on the whole the food has been good however sophie and amber sat down for dinner the other night and there were these weird brown things. They asked what they were and apparently they were goats stomach wrapped in liver- a delicacy over here!! Needless to say it wasn’t their favourite food of their time here. Sister betty and Raquel have also been fed some dried fish stuff which was in their words inedible. At least we have cakes to fall back on.
Sophie and Amber had soul survivor in their living room last weekend! 20 people from their families church were sprawled on the floor when they came back at 9pm on Friday night. They remained in the same positions until approx 9am Sunday morning when they went to church. Despite their lack of sleep, the girls found the whole event quite amusing and even enjoyed being woken up to their singing at 4am! Rachel was walking past at 7.30am on sat morning and could hear them…even though they are actually situated on the 5th floor of the building! No wonder the neighbours have previously thought there was a thief (teeth) in their house. We all hope that this is only an experience that occurs in November, not future months, such as December, January, February or March. After that we will be home so it won’t actually affect them a great deal.

November report, part seven

Prayer requests-here are our prayer requests for the month of November (not june)

Lizzy- health, that the doctors will be able to prescribe her with the correct medication to make her better. Also that she will be filled with peace about the situation and won’t feel discouraged and frustrated.

Sophie- homesickness as she is really feeling at the minute, with little things reminding her of home. Also the poverty is really getting to her again so pray for strength to deal with it.

Amber – she has changed her mind about what course she wants to do at uni but it is proving difficult to try and sort it out. Also for homesickness aswell.

Rachel- she is finding the work challenging and tiring going to vaz on her own and really really needs this retreat. Please pray for motivation and energy for her work and that she can really relax next week.

General – language: we are all improving but still finding it hard.
That sophie and amber will have a safe journey to Nhamatanda this weekend (sat-sun) and will have a good time there.
Retreat – we can all have a really relaxing time and have some good God time aswell so we come back to Beira really inspired.

So there you have it, our smashing novemberish report full of novembery type things and coming to you from us with loving novemberlike thoughts. Enjoy!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lots of love the great but slightly deranged moz team xxxxxxxxx

a sunday service

Hello everyone,
We had a lovely storm last week it was amazing, much noise! So last week was sort of just a week, nothing really special happened I dont think. Lizzie is still unwell, the new threoy is that she has a parasite in her intestines, sounds nice! So she is on tablets again, but yesterday she went backj to the clinic because she wasnt getting any better and she has to go back for yet abother test today, but they changed the way she took her tablets so this time she might actually start getting better. It has been really weird going to Vaz without her, it's been about three weeks now since she went. But we have retreat next week so that will be really nice, luxurious desert island! Yay.
I thought that since not much has hapopened I would tell you what a typical sunday service is like here, couldnt be much more different to what I am used to. Not entirely sure how it starts as i tend to keep missing that bit, although not my fault honest, but normally for the first hour/ hour and a half there is lots of singing, after the first half hour of just random songs the apostles creed is said in Ndau and then we read the greta commandment and the beatitudes in either Ndau or Portuguese, then we go back to singing but this time someone will stand up and say "in first place i thank god for bringing us all here etc, and in second place i praise god for..., and i want to sing..." then we sing, Generally the songs are in ndau which everyone atthe church speaks as a first language, nbut soemtimes in Portuguese, and one person leads it, we are priviledged in our church to have a keyboard, ehich they prgramme funky disco beats into and then play one of three tuns that they know, whether it fits the song we are singing or not. During this praise time ythe youth, that includes me!, stand up the front in a long line and dance, generally side stepping and clapping, and some others stand in the aisle dancing as well. Then after the singing we say the lords prayer, i think, in ndau and have the sermon. at this point i attempt to understand the portuguese translation then give up and read the passage that it is based on and disappear into a world of my own, trying to keep half an ear open in case i hear the words 'irma raquel' or 'inglaterre' then i know they are talikng about me so i just smile and nod along, generally works quite well. After the sermon, normally about half and hour or so. someone else comes up and gives a word about the sermon, i think they generally jsyt retell itin their own words, i enjoy this biut because it normally the pastor and he jumps around all over the church acting it out, wearing the altar table cloth as a capulana, hes very funny.
Then we come to the offerings so all the youth , yes including me, go outside and process in , dancing, and singing, we then stand in the aisle sing about four songs again dancing, and eventually make our donation, the the atevistas do the same thing, they are the older ladies in the church, occassionally joined by a couple of men, they do really groovy dancing, and everyone else gives their offering. then we sing a more sombre song and have the notices, including how much monmey was given. At some point in the serv ice there is a prayer session biut it vhanges every week and every so often it is jyust announced 'vamos ora' and everyone starts praying, quite loudly at the same time in portuguese or ndau, or english in my case, its great! So that is a typical service, the shortest one thjat i have been to was about 2 hours 45 mins, but they can go on for much longer, Sophie and amber had a surprise wedding the other week and were there for five hours, then force fed lunch so they got hiome about 20 to five, in time to wash their feet and run out to international fellowhip.
Mozambicans are very fond of force feeding you,and it shows that you really valuse someone if you just sit with them not talking, just being, useful when you dont speak the language. Yesterday i lost Rosa after church and didnt know how i was going to get home, but i ended up at the pastors eating cold baked sweet poatoes, yummy, and then having lunch. we have learnt to be really carful about telling peoiple we like magoes as they normally then go out and buy some, juyst for you, and since you buy magoes in lots of five, thats a lot of mango to eat. Its quite fuinny though because when marina was at pastor samuels the other day i came round after an english lesson and he said to her ahh now this girls loves her coffee, i do not love coffee, but at his house they mix it with so much sugar that it is more coffee flavoured sugar water!
I think that that will do you for now :) might not blog next week, sorry, but i will be lying on a beach in the lovely hot sun surrounded by palm trees on an island, shame really.
xxx

A slightly weird week

No more rain, monday the sea was dumped on us and since then it has been dry, but nicely not as warm as before. The sky is suspiciously cloudy today though hmmmmmmm. we did go and see a film in the end, Take the Lead with Antonio Banderas, it was great, reeallly girly, and less than a pound to watch it, bargain! although compared to other east african coutnrries mozambique is quite expensive, a bottle of coke can cost up to 30p compared to ugandas 12p.
The cinema was massive, much bigger than any of guildfords screen, and really packed as well, our team of four and one other lady sat on her own. They had an interval and when we realised what was going on we all burstinto laughter. not entiirely sure why, i think than the sun has sent us all a bit loopy, we laugh at really random things, Although we do and say some truly stupid stugff as well, we have started a book calle dthe little book of funniness and silliosity, where we write random stuff, like lizzie ordering a fanti ovo (egg) instead of fanta uva (grape) or sophioe saying that the food weas taking so long to arrivebecause they were pluckingthe cow!
Lat week was a really hard week for all of us, Sophie and amber had their first full week of work, and yesterday they had a surprise wedding at their chuurch, so they got their for nibne and got home at 20 to five, time to wash their feet and run out to international fellowship. Lizzie is till feeling rough, with what we thought was just tonsilitis and possible malaria (how do you get tonsilitis out here) but now we arent so sure so she has had antoher blood test today. So i hhave been going to vaz without her, taking various other peeps instead, so was completely shhattered by saturday. It was great though as the youth went away for the weekend somewhere so i fuond out on friday that i didnt have to do anything on staurday, yay, major lie in!!!!
But we are all really looking forward to our retreat two weeks today!
There were ood points about the week as well though, like the film and fun in the rain/flood and i now know the portuguese for tonsilitis (amygdalite) which is bound to be useful at some point. We also (except lizzie) went to lees house of blessing for the first time on thursday which was so much fun. we all went down to the beach, slightly worried that lots of the girls had changed to swimming costumes but didnt really think muchof it. So we got down there and rolled up our trousers to go in for a paddle, but the girls had other ideas and we ended up getting completely soaked, and worn out. It was really funny, one little girl called maria held my hand the whole time and kept announcing, 'we go running', so we did, and then fell over in the water, shame. Wegave up in the end and started playing ring a roses and 'it' in the sea. Then while sophie and amber had their hair 'beautifully' plaited i played lots of frisbee! cant wait to go back next week,. they are all so cute.
We had much fun coming back from church last night as we got a lift from jim and jane and the four of us were rolling around in the back of their truck, it was great as we had all been really wanting to ride in the back of a truck for ages, and in the dark its even better. Their little son felix was poking his head through the back window to talk to us, io think he thought we were a bit strange though, laughing hysterically and taking photos. But he is soooo sweet, its really weird hearing a little person with an english accent, he sounds posh!
Lizzie and Ihad a particularly enjoyable time food wise on saturday, for tea we had emergency rations porridge, actual emergency rations why?, with some squash that tasted more like medicine. so after eating as little as possible we were really hungry by dinner. Then all of a sudden there was a really hoorrible smell, imagine wet dog, cabbage, cheese and fish alll mixed together, we were quite scared going in for dinner. it turned out to be really salty matapa with hot dogsinit. again why? sadly we were so hungry we had to eat it, but now we have bought biscuits to keep in our room in case it happens again. I think that when we next go to shoprite we will be investing in nutella as well.
Still no sign of our friend Gecko, although his younger cousin Gecko Junior showed up briefly the other day!
In other news we are all getting alot better with Prtuguese, as well as being able to tell people that Lizzie has tonsilitis (although the average mozambican hasnt heard of it) i can say that she is a little better but very tired, and we are getting very good at directing taxi drivers to our house. Taxi are funny here, you can never be sure that they will com to the right place to pick you up as no-one knows street names and the houses arent numbered, so you have to use landmarks, great for learning prepostions. Or you can teach a taxi driver here you live and always ask for that one, far easier.
Those of you with a delicate nature should stop reading for a minute. Lizzie and I found out last week that as well as not being able to flush the loo we also cant put toilet paper down it, oddly we are not very happy about this, can't imagine why!
So please keep emailing and praying especially as we are all getting really tired and of course for Lizzie. XxX

It raining its pouring!

The lonley planet travel guide to Mozambique says that there are no major obstacles to visiting in the summer mmonths October to March, conveniently the months that I am here, however it goes on to say that you may wishj to take into consideration that almost all mof the annual rainfall falls at this time and the weather is extremely hot and humid. So no real obstacles. However what they fail to tell you is that as soon as it hits november the temperature increases drammatically without prior warning and a week later the rain joins in. From the first of november onwards you can expect to be wet all day everyday, half the time because of sweat and the rest because of the torrential downpour! We woke up this morning to the sound of rain, so we wonder, what do you do on your day off when the beach is not really an option and there is a thunderstorm, resulting in several powercuts so internet is hard? Answer: you put on your first paiur of proper shoes for five weeks, don a rain coat and walk into town hoping to find an empty chappa along the way and praying everytime you step off the pavement that the puddle isnt deep enough to go over the top of your shoes. And here we are! The internet is worjking yay, and Sophie Amber and I are probably making puddles on the floor, so wet. Earthquake Avenue, our route into town, so named because the tree roots have torn up the pavement, is flooded so I nhad to walk on the pavement for once, and crossing roads was fun, the puddles are too muddy to see the bottom, quite an adventure. It took my mind off the fact that it was the first time that I had walked into town on my own though.
Lizzie has been feeling unwell for over a week now and hasnt been able to leave the house much, so I am the first in our team to be allowed to go out on my own, it is really weird! But we dont live far from the others and only about 15 mins from town so its not that scary. She had a malaria test on wednesday which was negative, but over this weekend she felt a lot worse, its weird, but we spoke to a nurse at english speaking fellowship last night and she suggested parasites, strangely enough lizzie is not at all amused about that thought! So we are seeting an Oasis record, four weeks and we have all been ill at least once, Sophie and I twice, although the second time was just a mini thing that knocked us out for a day. Oh well.
Time is going so quickly here, over a month already its great though when we are getting annoyed about not being able to speak portuguese we just remind ourselves that we havent been here that long.
Work is going well, although last week I only went for one english lesson, and Sophie came to help, but they are fun, we love the youth at our church and they are really unusual for Mozambicans as the boys and girls are mates as well. They all take the micjk out of each others English, our overseer Valenbtin can't get the hang of saying "years old" so they all deliberately ask him his age and laugh. I think he is learning though. We hopefully start work at Lees house of blessing this week. It is an Orphanage run by this great american lady who juyst sold everything and moved out here for the rest of her life. At first she was planning on just taking in 12 boys, but now she has 13 girls and 23 boys! We are going along as a four on thursday afternoons to see the girls and just get to hang out and doi stuff withthem which is great. Lee syas that its great that we can go and be their friend as they all have horrible histories and just need attention.
There are exciting new developments in our house at the moment, the hole that appeard in the sitting room wall the day after we moved in, we have nopw discovered in where Rosa is getting an air conditioning unit installed, luxury! but just in case we forget that we are in africa, i was woken up the other night by a cockroach crawling around on my neck, I was not amused. I think that it is something to do with the weather but the bugs seem to be getting bigger! especially cockroaches. I , accidentally, drowned a huge one in the mop bucket the other day. There are also the most gigantic bees that i have ever seen before, and strange flying ants that look a bit like dragon flies, but bite. There was also a gecko in our room the other day, which I affectionately named 'Gecko' but I am not sure where he has gone, we would quite like him to stay though as he eats all the bug things, I have a lovely photo of him crawling on my clothes.
Now that we have all healed properly and not had any side affects i thinbk that it is safe to tell you about some of our lovely injuries, tehe, the first week we were here Sophie stepped on a bit of metal in the market that embedded itself in her foot, as they were being a bit harassed byu a guyy at the time she pulled it out and threw it away, the catch wa sit may ior mnay not have been a needle so we were a bit concewrned for obvious reason, soi we had our first visit to the avi cena clinic for a tetanus jab. The rest of us, actually Lizzie has been spared thism, have all got lovely chappa injuries, bruised knees and ankles being the most popular but Amber and Sophi got identical grazes on their legs and i magaeged to cut my foot on a random metal bit. We also have lovely feet, Sophie and mine in particular, hers are all red and scabbed from mozzie bites, they seem to like her best, and mine from blisters, so we are alll looking very attractive!