Projects

Chicken Coup Project

Many pastors here have tremendous visions for service, but no means of accomplishing those visions. Most of the pastors are subsistence farmers, and will never have enough capital to get anything else started. Our vision for this project is to equip the pastors who want to take in orphan kids to be able to through raising chickens. It costs several hundred dollars to build and equip a fair-sized chicken coup, but it takes less than 6 months to completely pay for the initial investment. One coup can provide about 8 times the income of a standard job here.

Teaching English

I (Carla) have been teaching my English classes for several weeks now, and they are such a delight. I currently have three classes per week, one for the Bible school students and two for the base workers. I had to start out very basic indeed. Some of my students already knew a few greeting phrases, “Good morning,” “How are you?” “What’s your name?” etc, but some didn’t even have that much. My students here are quite a variety—I have pastors, the “uncles” who work with the kids, the guards, the kitchen workers, and sometimes the family members of pastors or workers.
For the Bible students I always start class with a Bible verse in English. I’ve also started teaching them simple Sunday-school type songs, because they love to sing! It has been a very gradual process teaching vocabulary and structure, but they are excited to learn and the classes are very enjoyable to teach. Bit by bit they are learning, and it’s a lot of fun to hear them practicing whenever they see me around the base!

Jail Ministry

This is one of the most exciting things we get to be a part of every week. We work with several other churches to provide 3-4 church services or teachings. After being in the prison for two years (the duration of most of the inmates), most inmates leave with almost a Bible school education behind them! Most of the inmates were armed robbers, called "Homems da Katana" (Men of the sword). Many have this chance to change, and they take it with all seriousness. The government seems to understand that these men have no hope in changing apart from finding Jesus and they are totally fine with letting us preach the gospel there. Lino (pronounced Leeno) is the leader of the prison ministry team. He was saved in a jail himself several years ago, and is a shining example of the transforming power of Jesus!

Christian Music Creation

Africans absolutely love music. Unfortunately, most of their music is rap/hip hop imported from the States or their own compilations. This music is blared at every bar with electricity. There is also more traditional music, but we have yet to find Christian music in the local dialect of Senna. There is even very little Mozambican-style worship music in Portuguese, but it does exist. We have met a number of Mozambicans whose vision is to get more Christian music out on the streets, and we are planning on helping them with this in the future!