Distributing Bikes

In Senna there is a phrase “time goes by bike” in other words, the time is going fast. The opposite is “time is walking by” or going slowly. And here it is the end of a week and time is going by bike in more ways than one!

The past week was really gratifying for us because we got to present bikes, most of them to individuals here in the Dondo Center or other ministries we are acquainted with. (The majority of bikes have been given out in our absence to people we don’t know, mostly pastors in outlining areas). Instead of just giving away a bike, we “presented” them with a degree of ceremony. First, an explanation of the limitations of American bikes: the rear racks can’t haul three 100 pound bags of charcoal or a spouse for that matter. Then an explanation of the unusual things about the bike: quick release wheels, Schrader valves, derailleurs and gears, and how to open a combination lock. Then we give them a inventory slip with a description and serial number of the bike…….love that documentation! And finally, we bless each individual and pray for them and the bikes.

Monday morning two opportunities presented themselves: Chico is a friend of the Mozambiquian director of this base and cares for a number of orphans in an outlying area. We had two bikes set aside for Chico but had never met him and didn’t know how to reach him. But by what we’ll refer to as Divine Appointment, Chico happened to come into Dondo Monday morning. Here is a picture of him and his son Daniel in front of the church receiving two bikes. Another special thing about giving these bikes out ourselves is that we recognize so many of the bikes, know the people who donated them and remember selling many of them brand new. Chico’s blue Fisher Hoo Koo E Koo belonged to Ruth and Royce Satterllee.

We had set aside three bikes for the Arco Iris Base in Chimo a village several hours chappa ride from here. The older children at that base walk 1 ½ hours one way to the higher grade level school. They aren’t walking through two feet of snow in freezing temperatures……but in downpours and intense heat. A person from the Chimoio base arrived unexpectedly with a truck and was able to load up three bikes so those children will have bikes to ride to school.

Three bikes went to the Ministerio da Cadea, the team of Lino, Lovemore and Miguel. These three guys go to the Dondo jai every Wednesday afternoon and preach and pray for the inmates. We have the privilege of being part of the Ministerio da Cadea team. Now the trip to the jail is a 5 minute bike ride instead of a 30-45 minute walk in the heat.

Next week, we plan to give 23 bikes to a missionary couple who oversee the Iris Ministries churches in the Tete Province. The Tete area is the poorest and most difficult area to work in. The temperature is hot here, 95 F. a couple of days ago with 94% humidity, but Tete was well over 100 F. so the bikes will be a real blessing there for the pastors that walk village to village.

This last photo is of Miguel, one of the jail ministry team members riding off on his Specialized Globe. This bike was the last one out of the containeer and the last one we assembled, but was one of the first donations. Miguel says thanks to Dave and LouAnn Gay for your donation. Thanks to everyone else who donated a bike or contributed to the shipping cost. Your gift is most appreciated.

Lovemore

I’d like to introduce you to the young man who is our translator. He has an unusual name and an amazing story. Lovemore was born amongst about 4,000 people attending a Christian conference on the Love of God. When I say he was born in the conference, I mean, right there, during and in the midst of the conference. Because the conference was about the Love of God, he was named The Love of God.

Lovemore didn’t talk until he was five years old. And then he began talking and hasn’t stopped since. He speaks eleven languages: Portuguese, English, French, Ndau, Senna, Barhive, Tchewa, Shona, Chiute and Nhundwe. Sometimes we think he is mixing all of these at once! Lovemore is now 24 years old. Yesterday he translated for Ron as Ron preached in the jail. Last week I went with him to the market to be with him while he preached. First he went to the chief and asked permission. When we came back there were a dozen or so older men sitting and waiting for him. I don’t know how they knew he was coming or where he would preach, but he preached for an hour the good news of Jesus straightforward and challenging.

Over the weekend Lovemore spent two long full day translating. He was so tired Sunday night that he couldn’t find words of any language to translate the message Ron had been asked to give on the final night of a youth camp. But later that night on his way home long after dark he came to a young boy who had been beaten and was bleeding from the head. He stopped for this boy and took him to the police station. But he didn’t leave the boy or the responsibility to the police; he then took the youngster to the hospital and paid to have his wound dressed.

Several days later Lovemore found a young girl with no clothes. She had been sleeping in the rain all night. Lovemore found clothes for her and found out her parents had kicked her out of the house. She wanted Lovemore to take her to the police. Why, he asked, had her parents kicked her out, because she went off with a man? Well then, the problem is not for the police, the problem is you. Did your parents tell you not to run off with him? Yes, she said. Then you were disobedient and now you are living with the consequence. I am going to find you food and tell you about Jesus. He will show you the right way to live.

Yesterday, in the market, a 19 year old man showed Ron papers with a diagnosis of AID’s . He wanted money to buy cream for the sores on his arm. In these situations we lean on Lovemore’s wisdom. He said we must find out his situation. Who does he live with? If you give him money he might go around to other girls. He needs good food more than cream. Someone needs to show him how to prepare the food and take care of himself and go with him to buy the food so the money goes to food. Today Lovemore arrived with two things for Mateus: a book on AIDS and the Bible. He needs to know about AIDS and that Jesus Christ heals AIDS.

I could go on and on with Lovemore stories, but I’ll stop there. Here he is on his Raleigh M-80 that one of you generously donated. We mentioned that he spoke eleven languages, but only listed ten. Follow this link to hear the last one!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z4O6zN1WHI

Fala Portuguese?

I am getting Portuguese lessons in numerous ways: I am taking devotions with the younger boys who are memorizing Bible verses that I already know. I am reading billboards. There is constant chatter out our kitchen living room windows to listen to and pick out certain familiar words and statements. Anyone who comes to our house for water or rest is pressed into teaching me. And the pocket dictionary and phrase book are only secondary to reading my Bible.

Still I am experiencing limited success. Not often enough do Scriptures come up in the course of daily conversion. The bulk of billboards have to do with these five topics: it is best that you feed your baby breast milk for the first six months; keep connected with mcel service (the primary cell phone provider); think straight, use condoms; think straight(er), abstain, prevent AIDS; COKE welcomes you. One example of the limit of my success was early on recognizing the chatter from the porch wasn’t Portuguese at all, but Senna, the native language. And as for pressing visitors into service as teachers, I’ve found that if there are two people present, there are two ways to say it and two opinions on the right way to say it! After all, Portuguese is their second language, too.

As for the pocket dictionary, the problem is with me. First I have to find my glasses to read the word and that has to do with aging. The other problem is retention, and that has to do with aging. The next problem are the subtly different sounds that I don’t hear, and maybe that has to do with aging…but I think more likely occupational hearing damage from over inflated, or unseated exploding inner tubes in the Glacier Cyclery repair department.

And so I am a long ways from conversational Portuguese. Ron vocabulary consists of tools and bike parts, and lacks words for normal daily conversation. So we rely on our translator, Lovemore. A little about Lovemore later. Meanwhile, if I can find my glasses, I’ll sign off in Portuguese.

Ate Logo!

The Bike Project Resumes

Our first week was spent acclimating, adjusting and planning. With that done, we are taking action on the bicycle project. There are essentially three parts to it. The biggest is doing some additional training with the older boys on care and maintenance of the bikes here in the center. On our last visit, we left 15 bikes for the boys to use for travels back and forth to school and for recreation. Upon our arrival, few if any were still in working order. The tools that we left available for them to use are also few in working order. So we are beginning the teaching again with an emphasis on respect and responsibility of the gift of bikes and tools.

The next priority is to get the unassembled bikes, 55 of them, assembled and ready to distribute and to whom to distribute them to. We plan to distribute a good portion of the bikes to Iris Children’s centers in the towns of Chimoio and Tete. We will let the missionaries there determine who needs them the most. We will keep some of them for the workers here in the Dondo, Sofala area. Today one of the missionaries left for a village near Inhaminga with two bicycles which will be used by members of two churches to reach a community garden that is some distance away.

The third priority is to repair the broken down bikes. Some of these repairs are fairly minor, flat tires and brake repair. Some are quite extensive as most of the parts were stolen for other bikes so we’ll need to do some shopping, always an adventure to me here in Mozambique.

There are 16 boys who signed up for the classes, a number of whom where in the class two years ago and quite mechanically inclined. Tomorrow we begin the second session of classes.

Back in Africa, My Dear

11/5/09

Papa Ronaldo! Mama Jane! Boa tarde Joao!, Boa tarde Nelson!, Boa tarde Vito!, Zito!, Mariano! Oh, Lord, help us figure out the names of all these boys who are two years older and two heads taller than when we left the Dondo Children’s Center 22 months ago!
Then at dinner some other familiar faces greeted us as well. Fish heads floating in yellow broth and white rice. Ron’s least favorite dish was the first on the Dondo menu. Welcome to Mozambique, Brunk.

Ricardo and Maninho, two boys special to us were the first to greet us. It was good to see them. When we left in February of 2007 our Portuguese and their English was equally rudimentary. Now their improved English had to make up for our forgotten Portuguese. Here hugs go a long distance in bridging the communications gap.

Within hours of arriving at the Children’s Center the base director came over to tell us that one of the boys who had been sick with TB for some time had just died. So our return to Dondo has been very bittersweet. Sweet seeing Maninho and Ricardo, bitter in the death of one of the Dondo famiy boys.

We are settling back into the same house that we were in last time and already we are beginning to feel at home, although, this time we have a couple of wicker chairs and a wicker couch to replace the bunk beds, so it feels more like a home than a bunkhouse. Cockroachs still poke their heads out of the shower drain, a march of minute ants is making their way across the kitchen wall and a lizard (the same one we were neighbors with last time, I’m sure) just scampered behind the droopy kitchen drapes.

We’ve been here too a short time to have any good photos, but for the sake of curiosity, I thought pictures of missionary housing on the Dondo Base might be of interest.

This is our home. Please come in and have a seat on our couch. The little pile of dust under your feet are bugs dinning on the couch legs, but it will hold you up for a short visit! This is the kitchen, when you visit us what we have to offer is cold water out of a refirgerator. On a hot day in a village where few houses have electricity and fewer have refrigeration, I think cold water is a treat. Maybe not; it is for me! Turn 45 degrees and you are in the dinning room. These two chairs and coffee table (where’s the coffee! Ron wonders) is the sitting room. We have a VERY nice bathroom, but the plumbing, exposed galvanized pipe draped with wire carrying 220 and water. Wow. And this is the bedroom. The body is Ron who has been acclimating to the heat.

Thanks for stopping by. We hope you come again. Next time I’ll have something more interesting.

Learning in Africa

Salamaha! Good Day!
Mohavaha? How are you?
Kihavahu, Kihikirutu? I am fine, how are you?
If we say this really quickly, it sounds as though we speak Makua, the local tribal language. However, if we get it right, they usually respond with another sentence or two and we are completely lost at that point. So, now we are nearly tri-lingual in saying hello, how are you, etc. but then we revert back to english and feel so dumb! The people try so hard to communicate with us and are so patient with us but unfortunately, we are limited to a few phrases and charades. It’s an adventure and frustration at the same time.

Things are continuing to go well. We are in good health, praise God. This is a real praise asthere have been many sick people in our class. One has been flown to South Africa with some kind of tropical sickness, another is down with malaria and several are sick with different flu-like symptoms. We are both feeling great and only lacking some good solid exercise. Our days are spent in class in the morning and doing some kind of project in the afternoon. Today was feeding the village children. This entails getting about 25 gallons of cooked rice and 10 gallons of beans, a bucket of wash water and about 30 plastic plates to feed about 150-200 young kids, aged 2-15 years. Sometimes it feels a bit like herding ants or bees as it did yesterday, but today it went really smooth. The 30 plates means that there is a lot of washing and re-filling so it is quite a process.

Some of you may wonder what we are learning in school. The school we are in is called the Holy Given School of Missions. There are two primary goals to the school. One, to learn the basics of cross cultural ministry. This accomplished by living in this culture and seeing that the things we accept and believe are not accepted and believed here. We try to understand what their beliefs and values are through friendship and relationship and relationship with them. It’s a challenging and on-going process. About the time you think you understood some of it, you experience something else that shows you how western you are and how much more you need to learn. The second thing we are learning also an on-going thing as well and that is how to have the compassion of Jesus while working amongst the poorest of the poor. Words cannot describe it, we are in a children’s center that is in the middle of a village called Novien. It is perhaps a couple of square miles in physical size and has perhaps 50,000 people! It might be less, but not much and it could be many, many more. Maybe double that. The area is covered with homes of bamboo, mud and concrete block. Most of them are probably less than 200 square feet and have perhaps an average of 5-7 people per home. I know that these are vague estimates but hopefully it will give you an idea of the number of people in this village. Now, imagine another village next to it and another next to that and then you start to get the picture. Most are without work and live day to day, meal to meal. One day in our class, Heidi Baker, the director asked our class and a class of Mozambique pastors whoever had more than 20 metacais to their name to raise their hand (20 metacais would be about .80 cents). Of course, all of us missionary students had more than that but not a single pastor raised their hand. That is the situation of most of the people around here. The on-going challenge is how do we, with so much, respond with compassion to these with so little. We’ll let you know when we figure it out.

The bicycle container situation is that the container is now in Maputo and should be going through customs as we speak. The only problems that I am aware of is some paperwork problem that was supposed to be cleared up yesterday and i assume that no news is good news on that one. The other problem is that our actual freight bill was different than what we estimated to them so we may need to pay some additional fee. Hopefully it won’t be too much and we will have the container on it’s way to Beira in a week or two. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear something.

As Far as communicating with us goes, email is slow and unreliable at best, we may or may not receive an email if you send it but give it a try if you want. No pictures please, it will take forever to load. Our email is: brunk@montanasky.net

If you are real adventuresome, you can try to give us a call. The best way is to buy an international calling card which should get the call down to around .25 cents per minute.
For us to call you is about $1.50 per minute so...

Our time Zone is 9 hours ahead of the mountain time zone and a good time to reach us is in the morning in Montana which would be in the afternoon/evening Mozambique time. Our phone number is 258-82-636-4833. There is the typical delay in speaking but it works pretty well.

We hope all is well with all of you. Thanks for you prayers and support, we’ll try to do a weekly report and keep you better informed but the computer situation is fighting that right now. We’ll see how it goes. God bless you all!!

Ron and Jan

Helping at the Children's Center

Hi Everybody,

Bom Dia! That is good day in Portuguese. Its one of the few things that we are able to say. It is usually followed by, “how are you?” and then the response is completely lost to us. As we reported earlier, things are going well. We continue to be in good health, are eating pretty well but beginning to tire of rice. We usually have it for lunch and dinner, well actually we have had rice for every lunch and dinner except for one. It is complemented with some type of sauce, such as beans, cabbage, goat etc. Breakfast continues to be a roll and sweet tea. I pass on tea and have coffee, provided by me. Out days start very early as the sun is up at 5:00am and when the sun comes up everybody gets up and the semi quiet of the night gives way to roosters, goats and many, many voices. Our classes start at 8:00am and go until about 12:00-1:00. Our afternoons are kept busy with feeding the street kids, playing with the children, helping on some projects like the one starting next week, the digging of about 40 latrines! There is a great danger of a cholera outbreak if they don’t do something about the village children and the workers using the hillside as their toilet. It is a pretty serious problem and we will be working practically on solving it. The Children’s Center called the Village of Hope is hope to about 200 children, 100 pastors in training, 120 of us missionary students, about 50 native staff workers and about 30 full time missionaries. So this children's center is like a village of about 500 people. It’s a busy place, especially since it is open to any village child to come to school or lunch during the daylight hours. It’s a challenge to keep track of which kids are Iris children and which ones are street kids. Additionally, we will continue to go on weekend outreach where we show the Jesus Film, pray for sick people, dedicate churches and baptize people. We were in two villages this past weekend doing just that and we probably baptized over 100 people. It was a great time. I’ll sign off for now as my time here at the internet cafe is about up. Thanks for your prayers, we’ll try to keep you posted. We love you all!

Ron and Jan