lasts!

Less than one week now. Gulp, thats a lot of stuff to do in not very much time.

Soph and I bought our last tickets this morning, from Maputo to Durban and back again. The lady looked thrilled to be serving us, really pleased that soemone would actually want to buy something that would go towards her salary!

We are into our 'lasts' phase, they started yesterday with our LAST church service, a lovely joint one at Inhamudima, we were there from 8 till 2 in the end. Yesterday wa quite mad, there was no bread in the house so we had bananas and biscuits for breakfast, then we didn't have time to go home after church for lunch so had bananas and biscuits for lunch, along with a random fried thing than tasted nice but havent got a clue what it was!

Then we met the others at Marinas house and went off to Macuti to present our football kit to a team there. It is a guy who was trained by youth action and now runs a sports ministry programme so they were really grateful for the strip and 8 footballs. Amber said a little something about the kit and we watched a buit of a game with it in action.

Then we ran home quickly to grab all of our stuff for leading sunday schoolfor the LASTtime at International fellowship. It was really sweet because all of the kids had made a goodbye poster for us and we were presented with it in th eservice, we had no idea they were going to do it. Sweetness.

Then after that we had our LAST sleepovers, I went round to Sophie's and Amber came to ours. Soph and I had much fun taking silly pictures, that noone else will ever be allowed to see!

And today is our LAST day off. We are going to print offphotos for various people and spend our LAST afternoon at Nauticos, then we are having dinner at Jim and Janes! Yay!

We are going out loads this week, in between everything else that needs to be done, tonight, wednesday(nauticos, just because it means we get to see the sunset on the beach) and friday is Jills birthday.

Last week went really quickly. It completely poured on Thursday morning so Emma and I had to wade to get to the church, but we had a really good lesson, I made them do interpreting, it really showed up how much some of them had improved saince being here which wa sreally encouraging. Thursday afternoon it was still raining so we couldnt go over to Manga, which was a shame as we really weanted to go, but we are having a 'we are cghildren of god' party this week to make up for it. So instead we went to the office and made books for HOURS for youth action, so much paper! We also bought our youth group a guitar as a leaving present. We recently found out that Valentin Miquitaio and Marcelena have a worship practice session on Wednesdays where the boys get to play Marcelenas guitar, so now they have their own, but they dont know yet! Pastor Samuel seemed quite excited when we were talking to him about it, he said it would be really fgood for kids work but he didnt like it played in church. We are also going to get them a study bible so they can carry on studying Philippians together. Normally they would just preach to each other so we really wanted to encourage them to ask questions with each other.

On Friday we made a 'surprise' visit to Sophie and Ambers house. We had had to let them in on the secret so they could be there and plan everything they needed to in the morning. When i got to theirs at hal two Miquitaio was waiting outside and excitedly told me that he had had to hide behind a tree when he had seen them earlier. Then we saw them peeking over their balcony, so he went to hide across the road to make it look like we were just passing. We waited ages for the others to turn up, and eventually just Em adn I went to the flat, telkling the girls that bnnoone else had showed and Miqui had had to go home. They fewll for it so five minutes later when Miqui, Valentin, Marcelena, Pai and Joaquin turned up, they could act genuinely surprised. Then all nine of us, plus euridice who appeared just as we were leaving, went down for an afternoon of fun and games atthe beach. We played fish in the net and cops and robbers, had races, sang song, heard a message from marcelena, got very wet doing titanic remakes in the sea with euri and laughed a lot. It was amazing, we were just a bunch of teenagers down the beach. i think it made us realise just how close we had all got recentyly, and how hard it will be to leave them here. But was so much fun we didnt think about it, and we are going to do it agin this friday!!!

Just before i go, to make you all jealous, this time next week Soph and I will be on a snorkelling trip to the Bazaruto Archipelago enjoying a seafood buffet on a deseret island, shame!

And if I dont get the chance to blog again before I get home, Thank you all so much for support and prayers, and hope you enjoyed reading all about my Mozzy adventures!

Rachelxxxxx

2 weeks!!!

Look a miracle, I am on Blogger!!!!
Anyway we ot back from Savane this mornng, Jill was preaching at international fellowship so we went yesterday morning and stayed over last night instead. It was reall lovel we swam and lounged and i watched the sunset whilst sitting in/on a palm tree!We seriously overdosed on Protein, I managed to eat an entire chicken yesterday!(only because the menu is limited and I dont like prawns or Crab curry ) and got beautifully burnt, particualarly behind the knees, a reall great way to spend our second to last day off.
I have decided that i am really going to miss palm trees, might even try to bring one home with me, it would make my lion cub and elephant feel at home!
As we were driving back this morning Marina got a call from Sirley the PEPE coordinator and we all listened with baited breath,then jumped for jy when we heard the words 'ate proximo semana'. We all feel quite bad for not wanting to go to our PEPE programme, but last week was a nightmare. Amber and I are working together and we went to what we had thought was quite a small PEPE, armed with blow up balls and colouring things, but it turned out that there were seventy four year olds, and we were stuck with them in a church hall for over two hours. It was horrible, they didnt all understand Portuguese and couldnt get the games we were trying to teach them ,especially as one teacher had to constantly guard the door to stop them riunning out onto the road, and the other just didnt seem interested in helpin us at all! In the end they were just runninj g all around the hall like mad things, dragging chairs about and attacking the drum kit, we ebven resorted to teaching a group of them the macarena at one point we were that desperate. To make it worse when Sirley came to pick us up the teacher who hadnt helped came out and was complainging about us, we were not happy bunnies!!! But we spoke to Marina about it and she is oing to talk to Sirley and explain that it is really hard for us top handle seventy kids on our own when we dont speak Portuguese! And now there is only one PEPE left!
Em and I started sorting our stuff out at the weekend, it is very bizarre starting to pack up your life, so different forom getting ready to come here as everyhting has to be taken back chucked or passed on! Our sisters are quite excited at the thought that we will be leaving most or our clothes ere in favour orf touristy things, Euridice has fallen in love with all of Ems tshirts! Soph and I had our flights home confirmed the other day which is really cool, it feels strange knowing exactly when we will be back, much more definate!
Oooh yeah the freak wind! We went to Nauticos for dinner last Monday as we hadnt been out in ages and wanted to see the sunset on the beach, so we staed there all afternoon and had a lovely meal(i have turned into such a meateater, steak and chips all the way!) the as we were waiting for the bill the wind sunnly picked up, one mitute we were sitting there perfectly normally, the next chairs and tables were beiong blown all over the place, glasses were bein smashed and everybody ran to shelter in the kitchen. I almost lost my swiumming stuff but some random lady picked it up as it flew past her! Then just like that it was over again and we went home ratehr cold and shaky, very strnage, but otherwise it was a really nice evening, lots of girly giggling.
I have been to the cinema twice in the past few weeks, the first time Amber Soph an I went with a load of Oasis staff and others 'missionaries' to see a Mozambian film, "o jardim d'outro homen". It was reall good and we got what was going on despite the portuguese. It was all about a girl who wants to be a doctor but in order to getthe rigt grades is forced to sleep with her teacher, which is a real problem here in Mozambique. There were other side stories as well dealing with fathers having to work in south african mines, sleazy foreigners, HIV/Aids and having to pay for good grades. It was such a real film and really helped us to understand more of the problems that people here are faced with.
The second film Amber and I went to see was children of men which was horrible becaue everyone died and it thoroughly depressed us. But oh well, i gave us an excuse to get cake in Riviera to cheer us up.
Em talk in church went really well on Sunday, she even had it translated into Ndau! There were chuckles in all the right places and Pastor Samuel was gruting approval all the way through. She even streted with the Required HALLELUJAH!
And we have a despidido(sp?)arraged for saturday 17th at 2pm to which you are all invited!
See you soon. Rachelxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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