And the Saints Come Marching In!

This has been a wonderful week in Quelimane.  After months of preparation, Rui and Benditta were married on Wednesday.  Then on Friday, Zach and Liz arrived from the States to spend 12 days with us.  They seem to be enjoying every adventure and are so much fun to be with.  Then on Saturday, we had a day we had been waiting for a long time.  Two families were baptized who had been married in the past few months because of their great desire to be baptized.  And today, these two strong families were baptized.  It was a beautiful day both in spirit and in climate.  We shared the day with some fresh water specialists for the church, the Merkleys, who were here with our humanitarian couple, the Wollenzeins, to look at a project out on the island near Quelimane.  These two families will bring a great strength and energy to the church and it was such a happy day!



The whole group before the baptism.  Elder Steel, Bendita, Rui, Amezide,
Lurdes, Elder Osborn, Elder Berg.



A nice group with missionaries, family and friends.

Our home made font often brings out challenges, especially when exiting.



Zach has found the smiles in Mozambique irresistible.

Zach and Liz and the sardine shack at the Mercado Central.

I do I do I do I do

I know that to folks in the states, the effort to have a simple wedding is inconsequential.  When I was a bishop in Alaska, I would marry people who appeared at my office with a license. It cost them nothing and really often involved nothing intricate by way of planning--and certainly nothing to do with red tape and bureaucracy. 

Today we performed (in portuguese, the word is "realized") the wedding ceremony of Rui and Bendita.  Words can hardly describe the labor that this was for them them to achieve.  It was a monumental effort and accomplishment.  They were excited, despite having lived together for 22 years.  They recognized it as a milestone.  They are alone among their entire extended families and friends to legally wed.  It is just not done here by the common folk, and Rui and Bendita are uncommonly common.  The event was small for lack of funds--so they invited hardly anyone (interesting to note that there were still crashers from the street who presumed there would be cake).  They had no rings and were worried that the ceremony would draw attention to that--but I asured them that rings would not be mentioned.  But the whole things was delightful.  We did supply a cake, and a wedding dress, and moral support, and the music and preacher,but the bulk of the effort and sacrifice was still theirs.  And in the end, they were a proud and happy couple.

Mozambicans are not nearly as stern as they appear in their pictures.  This was really a happy occasion.  After the service and while all were eating we played a special ipod playlist that I had devised of sappy romantic songs in english and instrumentals.  Rui's father stands at his left side.  I met him for the first time a couple of nights ago and asked him his age.  He answered quite sincerely "42".  Rui chimed in and reminded him that he, as his son, was 47, so 42 was improbable.  In truth, he actually had no idea how long he had been kicking around this earth.

Yes, we admit that there have been fancier wedding dresses created.  But this one, which is part of our little inventory here, seemed to have served just fine and the bride (who's complexion showed up in nice contrast to the gown) was quite happy with it.  The real significance of the day for Rui and Bendita, was that their marriage today opened the door for baptism into the LDS church on Saturday.

This is the new Quelimane district of missionaries--only Debbie and I have been here for over a month.  It is a very strange event to have four elders traded out in a single transfer--and it has thrown us for a bit of a loop.  Left to right, they are Elders Gibson, Berg, Steel, Workman, Tanner, and Williams (who is fresh from the USA).  They are a good bunch (so far).

Smelled like turpentine and looked like india ink (the Clovers)

 The item below does not look much like the potion sold in the 50s by Madam Ruth on 34th and Vine.  This is truly the nectar of the gods.  It is "maracuja", or in english, we know it as passion fruit.

I don't believe that I have ever seen it for sale in the states, though it can be found in Hawaii and a few places in drink form (usually in a delicious but adulterated mixture with orange and guava.  But pure and unmixed passion fruit juice is among the most delicious of all drinks.  I fell in love with it in Brasil many years ago and time has not faded its appeal to me.  We have lately been making a chilled mousse of it which is absolutely heavenly.  And as for its passion-inducing properties?  Well, I think its name comes from the enthusiasm of those who enjoy it rather than any other medicinal propertes.

Bringing in the Sheaves

We spent a beautiful Mozambican winter afternoon engaged in the rice harvest at the small farm plot of Rui and Bendita.  The harvest is in full swing and it was more our truck than our personalities that were appreciated today.  Herewith a few pictures from out on the "machamba".

This is the look of mature rice on the stalk--ready to harvest.

Workers and families--family farm rice production is largely the work of women.

I'm being taught the finer points of the art of the scythe or "foice".

After the rice is harvested, dried, and beaten with a stick--it is sifted in a basked like that above to remove the husks.

bags of rice weigh in at about 110 lbs.  no small feat to carry them around.

Just being us always gathers a crowd

We helped them haul eight bags home--which will feed their whole family for a year.  They will store it in their home, whre the greatest challenge Rui tells us, is the rats, who will consume 30% of the harvest.

Regal theaters in Quelimane?

People will build anything anywhere in Mozambique.  Some investigators had a pretty good sized house.  Then to save money they rented half of it to another family which is common.  Then one day we arrived and there was a banca or little store out front.  Then a few weeks later, they had created a little bar next to the banca.  Then wood for sale started appearing in front of the house.  But today, we saw the movie theater that had been built on the side of the house with woven bamboo palm leaves.  This is the type of movie theater we see everywhere.  They have a television inside and a big speaker.  We were told the movies go on until 11pm at night.  It costs 1 metacail or about 4 cents to get in.  A better deal you can't find anywhere.  You can see the movie covers and times posted out front.  I wonder how Tom Cruise would feel about this? Other establishments have a similar set up, but aren't so bold in their advertising as they are showing porn inside, but still for the same price, or so we hear.  There is no sense of personal space here; it just drives me crazy.  But, the people in the poor areas can do nothing about it, since the dona (owner) lets it happen.  We are currently deciding if we should have a date night next Friday night and go???

Let's cook...

We had our monthly women's meeting on Saturday and as usual, it was an eye opener for me.  I had decided to give a small lesson on being diligent and obedient in following the Lord's council.  I wanted each sister to write down one goal to work one for the next month.  We put them in a box and will read them next month.  All of the sudden as these 10 women were sitting there staring at me, I realized that four of them couldn't write down the goal!  I am a slow learner about cultural challenges to lessons here.  I quickly brought in two Elders to help with the project and we went forward.  At least they could all write their names on the outside of the paper.
I had asked Elder McCullough and Elder Petersen to teach the sisters how to make "apas" or flour tortillas, which they are masters at. The sisters loved it.  They had fun learning how to "feel" if the dough was perfect and rolling it out on the table.  Then we cooked some outside over the charcoal grill and some over the gas stove.  We put butter and a cinnamon/sugar mix on them, which made them perfect.  Of course, as I rolled them up and handed them to the women, they let all the sugar fall out all over the floor. Oh my, the ants, just loved it!!!  I found paper towels to solve the problem.  Then we loaded up people in the truck for a ride home in the dark, which is always a death defying adventure.  It was a "homemaking" meeting that would have made any Relief Society president proud.


Apas are a favorite with the Elders as we make chicken burritos out of them all the time



Elder Petersen, master chef.



Lurdes, shown here is a great new investigator who works as a health
inspector for the hospitals.  She is wonderful and LOVES the Elders.



The Elders bought them giant cake that looked like a Bible
for themselves to celebrate going home.  We ate it for
two nights and still didn't make much headway.



Macedo was waiting for his wife, so he was happy to ride with the ladies.

Elder McCullough's sweet mother had made little wall hangings with phrases like "Love
at Home" in Portuguese.  The ladies really went nuts over them.  They were a huge success.

Week of discovery

We have now been in Mozambique about eight months (is that all???).  We have long believed that Quelimane simply was so far off the beaten path that some things just couldn't be found here.  Not entirely so, we have come to find.  Herewith are some "discoveries" of the week passed. 



When Elder Maynez didn't respond to his malaria treatment and began writhing in pain, we started making calls in the middle of the night and discovered a little private hospital that was surprisingly clean and competent.  We checked in at about 4 in the morning and had him figured out before too many hours passed.  Food poisoning. Still, it was good to know that there is somewhere besides the large primitive  public hospital to use if the need arises.

Who would have thought that there would be a dry cleaning establishment in Quelimane.  It was the last thing we expected.  But the place was surprisingly nice (nice being a very relative term).  Our going away gift to Elders Peterson and McCullough this week was a clean suit in which to travel home. 



 We discovered a real tailor shop (shared with a beauty salon of course) with a guy who can actually do what is needed.  We have gone through about six others who cannot sew a straight seam, but we found this guy who was able to do some fairly serious alterations to a wedding dress (wedding coming in a couple of weeks).  So impressed were we that Debbie has taken granddaughter projects to him now.

We discovered a bakery (paderia) vastly superior to the one by our home. It does a small roll that has actual substance instead of air.  If you hit it at the right time, they can be had hot from the oven.  Debbie is sporting here her latest haircut which rivals mine for length.  In the background is one of the omnipresent inbred mongrels of Quelimane--all of whom look largely the same.

This place is not much to look at but it is a genuinely competent mechanic shop which specializes in Nissans. We found it this week and had a desperately needed alignment done, fluids changed, and a horrible mysterious rattle tracked down and fixed.

We have discovered that our empregada or housekeeper, Pasqua, likes to squeeze juice to take a load off her feet.  We have been feasting on fresh orange juice this week.  What an absolute delight it is.  The Mozambican custom is to peel the orange before squeezing it.  Doesn't make much sense to me but they swear it works out better and provides more juice.

We also discovered this week that crocodiles, especially those who haven't eaten in months have an appetite for chicken.  No elders limbs were lost in the course of this discovery.

in the jungle (part 2)

Elder Tanner is fairly new to us in Quelimane, having been here only a couple of weeks.  He is not long out on his mission either but is comfortably engaged with a little experience behind him.  I thought that I would share this picture of him and his companion.

Power Play

We had a power outage for about twenty hours today.  Luckily, it was a beautiful winter Quelimane day of about 75 degrees with a nice breeze so we didn't swelter.  We had no microphone at church of course, but everyone, with a little prompting from their group leader, spoke in a loud enough voice to be heard.  Finally about 9 pm, when our ipad batteries were about dead too, the power returned.  Who knows the reason.

A speaker flaked out on  me at church so I had an unexpected ten minute block of time to fill.  Our group has heard enough of my preaching of late so we called a three of people from the audience to speak.  Debbie was the only pale one and she was spared because the first two took more time than their assigned three minutes.  Both Mozambicans were clearly challenged and by the experience but did really well--and thanked me afterward for the adrenalin rush.  Debbie will speak next week--though she has yet to thank me.

Elder McCullough was one of our speakers today.  He spoke on pioneers and borrowed from me the story of my Great Great Grandmother and the quail at sugar creek.  I was surprisingly moved to hear it told in portuguese by someone else (and his point to them was that they are similarly pioneering in Quelimane).  He and Elder Petersen are at the end of their missions and are going home next week.  It has been very good for Quelimane to have two highly motivated, very fluent, and very polished missionaries spending their last days here.  (Not implying that they are the only ones--they are not).  We will miss them as they head home. Elder McCullough, more than anyone else I have seen, speaks like a Mozambican--which doesn't necessarily mean that he speaks good portuguese, but he speaks excellent Mozambican and, as a result, relates very well to folks here.  We will miss them, but we will try and use them well for another seven days.  They have requested a special P-day activity tomorrow--which in deference to the squeamish or to the mission president who may be reading this, I won't fully describe--but it does involve crocodiles and chickens.

We were outside the city, helping some folks on Saturday and gathered something of a crowd.  Immediately after this picture was taken, Debbie tried to balance one of these water jugs on her head--let's be charitable that she doesn't have the head for neither algebra nor cargo.  If you are related to her, you have likely seen the video of this experience already--which is full of  good natured guffaws from the locals.  These yellow plastic containers hold 20 liters and originally contained cooking oil--but are used by everyone for water, gasoline and anything else.  They are the standard liquid container of choice in Mozambique.

The picture is not particularly flattering, but keep in mind that a 50 kilo sack of rice is not a particularly easy thing for an old geezer to heft.  We were helping folks move ten sacks from point a to b.  I did fine with the above sack until I needed to climb a very steep little  hill with it--there simply came a point when my legs would no longer do what they needed to do.  I left it for the young bucks.

Bendita and Rui we have spoken about before.  They finally succeeded this week in getting their documents ready and have started the formal marriage process here.  A significant achievement to be sure.  I will perform their marriage towards the end of the month--three days before their scheduled baptism.  Rui works as a driver for a Chinese enterprise.  He recently risked his job and refused to work any longer on Sunday (after a dicey day or two, he now has Sundays off and more responsibility).  These are good simple folk (who are full of interesting complexity) who we have loved to see grow over the last months.  They were the first of our investigators.

Na Na Na Na, Hey Hey, Goodbye

Today we had our Zone Meeting, which is a training session for all the missionaries in our three city area of Northern Mozambique.  The Mission President and his wife come from Maputo and it is always a worthwhile time.  We typically put on lunch for the eighteen or twenty of us and have a lot of extra bodies hanging around the house--which is nice.  The picture below tells a story or two:

The first thing you may notice is the prone body of Elder Maynez in front of the group.  He got through half of the three hour meeting and keeled over with a nasty case of malaria.  So we got drugs into him and put him on a mattress (and didn't want him to miss the picture).  This is Elder Maynez's first area so he is still new.  I know he has loved ones who read this blog so let me assure them that he will live through this.  We haven't had any malaria here for a few months so we have been lucky.

I don't think that I have spoken much here regarding President and Sister Spendlove.  They are wonderful people though eccentric in a few endearing ways.  We have truly enjoyed serving with them.  This is our farewell meeting with them--they are going home finally in a couple of weeks.  We organized the Elders to sing the old song by "Steam": Na na na na, hey hey, goodbye--as a farewell number--the idea was a bit better than the event, but it was ok and it made everyone smile.  The Spendloves served a senior mission like we are doing and then were immediately called to serve an additional three years as mission president, leading the church here in Mozambique--so they have been here, in this very dificult place, for nearly five straight years.  Saints they are.  They are fascinating people who have trodden untraditional paths to this point in their lives.  We have enjoyed and appreciated them. 

There was a time when I ignorantly looked upon the responsibilities of a mission president and thought that it would be a fun and interesting calling.  Getting to know a few of them and seeing their effort and sacrifice more closely has convinced me of the error of my thinking.  It is a ton of work and worry and not nearly as much fun as what we are doing.

We broke out our last packet of Alaska smoked salmon from home (thank you DH) for our dinner with them last night.  We have struggled a few times trying to meet their vegetarian lifestyle nutritional needs in the past.  Dinner was met with considerably more enthusiasm this time.

Debbie has give me her cold and we are now both fully in its throes.  I hope it passes quickly.

Livingstone, I presume...

Last year on our way home from Tanzania, I read a fabulous book called "Into Africa" by Martin Dugard.  It was fun to read the names of so many places we had been and seen, especially Victoria Falls.  Imagine my surprise, when the first time we drove through the jungle to the town of Marromeu, I saw a sign pointing to the grave of Livingstone's wife.  I suddenly remembered that she had malaria and stayed behind on the expedition to the falls and died there, but I had not remembered in was in the little village of Chupanga, Mozambique.  Today we finally had a few extra minutes to take the turn-off and drive about 2 kilometers to the banks of the great Zambezi river.  We found this beautiful church built in the Portuguese era; the only people who really ever built anything beautiful or lasting here.  We asked a man where the tomb was and he took us down a little path to this cemetery.  Many of the tombstones were in English, although the guide didn't know why.  Livingstone's wife's tombstone has a plaque on the front that reads it is a gift from the Livingstone family of Africa.


Livingstone's wife is buried here.



A beautiful Catholic church.



I had to ask a few questions about this.  The blue basin is for infant baptisms.
The decorated box has a space on top for the statue of Maria or Mary that is carried
through the town on May 3, her special day.  They went and got the statue out for
me to take a picture.



Elder Osborn in the front of the interior of the church.  The walls are
brightly painted, it is very clean and fascinating to find in the
middle of the jungle

Really this is all I want to bring home form my mission--DRUMS!  They
are called "batukes" here and are used in most rural religious gatherings.
This one has really nice carvings on it.  I really wanted it!

Yes, it is winter here and time for poinsettia's to be in bloom.



I love seeing people walk in from the fields with their "stuff" on their heads.  Perhaps
that is why this scene was poignant to me as I thought about David Livingstone and his legacy here.

Above are some pictures from a very lovely little town in Mozambique.  I can picture the explorers and their slaves getting ready to go down to the river here and begin another leg of their journey into the interior of Africa.

Morning has broken



Debbie and I do not use an alarm clock in Mozambique.  The roosters start crowing at about four a.m. and achieve a crescendo-like volume by about 6.  Should one of them meet its natural fate of becoming two Mozambican half-chicken dinners, there are always more.  Chickens here roam the streets, alleys, and vacant spaces.  They all, technically, have owners, but they are somewhat free-range and unmanaged. 

We are off to the wilds of Marromeu for a couple of days.