Teaching Pool

This is the family of Rui and Bengita and family.  They are the first large family that we have have begun teaching alone.  They are made much larger by the many friends and neighbors (not pictured) who they invite and who drop in when we teach.  They never fail to come to church, love the lessons, but losing the clapping and hallelujahs is hard for them.  Rui and a friend have said that they have a large group of men that they have organized to hear our message and wonder if we would be willing to talk to them soon.  In truth, we have found that it is a real challenge to teach effectively toward conversion to a large group a disparate levels of interest and understanding--so we have begun to carve up the Rui group into smaller and more manageable subsets to be more effective.  We debate whether or not the teenage daughter in the yellow capulana is pregnant (Debbie says yes).  Since this is Mozambique and there are no communication taboos, we would just ask I suppose. 

This is Julinho.  He is a carpenter who we hired to build some tables and the ladder and platform for our baptismal font.  I immediately took a liking to him and invited him to church.  He came briefly, but when he suddenly lost his wife and brother in quick succession, he sought us out for some insight and consolation.  We began the lessons with him last week and he appears to be engaging well.  He brought his infant son with him on the 10k bike ride to church yesterday.  The baby fussed so Debbie walked her during services.  I think she wants another baby, but only a black one.

Toby holding forth on some important point or other--or perhaps just relating a tall tale of hunting or fishing in Alaska.  Actually, the picture looks like I am whistling, but I assure you that is not the case.

Christina, to whom we taught a good lesson last week.  A single mother to whom perhaps we should introduce Julinho above.

Debbie had made brownies and brought them to this lesson with Amizade and Lourdes (as a thank you for significant assistance following our robbery).  ?neither they nor the accumulation of neighborhood kids had ever tasted them so Debbie handed out little bits to everyone.  They were a hit.  As a side note, Amizade spoke in church yesterday on the topic of marriage--expounding on its doctrinal foundation and speaking of his preparation to get married himself so that he can be baptized--and the fact that there will be no party as he can't afford it--but it is the marriage that is important (the expected marriage party is a HUGE thing here and actually an impediment to people getting married).  In the midst of his talk he lapsed into his former Pastoral role and said AMEN, to which the entire congregation responded with their own AMEN.  he then caught himself and chuckled and said "oops, I forgot, excuse me, I come from a different background"--everyone got a good laugh.

Ok, so this is not a teaching photo, but there are simply too many cute children here.