Hot and humid

At church today we had a record crowd for Quelimane.  63 people came.  We had to stop our service mid way as people kept coming in and we ran out of chairs--so we had to get the plastic ones from the porch and from the children's room.  What a nice problem to have.  This week I will have some benches made to fill the chapel behind the chairs that we have--we will make them uncomfortable enough so that there is motivation to arrive on time to get the more comfortable seats. 

The last couple of days, things have worked out for Debbie and I to teach a few lessons on our own, away from the watchful eyes of the young missionaries (who really are great teachers we have found).  The mission president recently turned us loose to teach directly in our spare time (or more accurately, said "sure, do whatever you want to do")--and we find that those are among the richest of experiences for us. 

This man won the prize today for wildest outfit today at church.  His name is Amizade, which means friendship (there are a lot of "virtue" names here).  You see a few, very african outfits like this and all I can say is that it doesn't seem to anyone but foreigners like us to look bizarre.  I think that he was "dressing up" in his best clothing for church today.  Amizade is the pastor of another couple of churches. They are a great humble couple who live in a tiny mud home--but they are bright and impressive and very engaged.   Debbie and I met for a couple of hours with both him and his wife this afternoon--what was going to be a brief meeting in which he began to ask questions and one thing led to another and we seemed to teach most of the gospel.  It was a powerful meeting in which he finally said, "What can we do to show our faith and become real members of the church?"   We had, as you might guess, answers for that question which led to the second hour of our meeting.  Debbie and I are going to go to his church and preach in a couple of weeks--it is offshore on an island about an hour away.  They are not of course formally married and the documentation required to become so will take a while--which frustrates them in their desire to unite with the church.  It was interesting though that he wanted to make sure today that this delay for him and his wife would not necessitate a delay for his 18 year old son to join the church.  I've got to get an outfit like his.

Debbie teaching prepositions to her English class.  Debbie offered a prayer today in one meeting in which she prayed, in Portuguese that our investigators would bite their hearts--rather than change them.  All present showed remarkable restraint and did not giggle uncontrollably.

We came across this beautiful cemetery today in a very poor part of town.  There are little well-tended gardens of plants and flowers atop each grave.

When one wants to move something big in the city of Quelimane, one does not borrow his friend's pick up truck (since none of his friends have one).  Instead one goes to the corner in town that rents these handy hand carts and rents one and contracts with a worker to push it with your load to wherever you want.  These are all over the city.  Some carrying amazingly big loads.