Tons

We have been without phone and Internet service for the last six days in Quelimane. After being promised service without result from the national phone company, I finally, with poorly disguised irritation, arrived at the provincial headquarters office of the company this morning to talk to the president. We had someone out to fix the line within a half hour and it took less than 5 minutes to find the break in the line.

We have had a wonderful group of young missionaries with us for the last several months. Four of them were transferred this week. Before leaving they asked to escape the city on Pday to get a glimpse of more rural and pastoral Mozambican life. They looked for an hour for this beautiful spot to record their first album--the video of which is shown below.  Please note the perfectly matched and painstakingly-coordinated outfits. The whole presentation brings the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to mind.

Other sights along the way of our little rural excursion through the back roads outside of town is this colorful picture of cut grass being carried home--perhaps to feed the goats or kids.  And below, we came across this small herd of buffalo cooling themselves in a pond.  I tried approaching but they were definitely uncomfortable with my presence and I bid a hasty retreat

Saturday last we had the largest number of people baptized together in Quelimane's brief history.  These were two fine families plus Cornelio, a single man who has been preparing himself for this day for many months.  This was especially good to for the Elders who love these people see them get baptized before they were sent off to other assignments.



This is the family of JoJo and Sonia and thier five children (and a neighbor.  Debbie and I both commented that we have never seen a better behaved group of children in Mozambique.  Today they all sat quietly for a nearly hour-long lesson without complaining.  We are impressed with this family who were referred to us by their friends Julio and Paula--and, according to them, have long awaited the gospel message.  Debbie and I had decided to stop teaching new investigators and just concentrate on church and member work until we go home soon.  But we just didn't want to give up the chance to teach these good people.

This is George, a great young man in the church here in Quelimane--and good looking too.  That in itself doesn't necessarily get someone blog coverage.  But George is blessed with perhaps the largest mouth I have ever seen on a human and thought it worthy of sharing.

Our friend and convert, Bendita, was bitten by a poisonous snake as she worked her rice fields this last week.  She made it to the hospital in time to get treatment and is now on the mend without long term damage--but there are many around here not so lucky and missing limbs from snakebites.

Going to the chapel...

It is not that the process to get married in Mozambique is impossibly long and expensive.  It is just if you are not already a full documented citizen, then it becomes incredibly cumbersome to first obtain a birth certificate and then turn it into the valid documentation required to tie the knot legally.  It is for this reason, among others. that legal marriage is rarely considered by a couple beginning a life together.  But despite these obstacles, we celebrated a wedding yesterday.  Manuel and Teresa, a young couple, who are incredibly poor, succeeded in making it to the alter (a figurative alter at least).
Manuel is a taxista or bicycle taxi driver.  His wife Teresa, a beautiful lass, is but 17.  They have been living together for five years (yes, the math is astounding).  She cannot read nor write and her husband helped her sign her name on the wedding certificate.  But still, it was a simple but joyous affair.  And they went through this prodigious effort so that they can be baptized and fully embrace the gospel.

It was so hot in the chapel that my suit coat and shirt were wringing wet by time the service concluded.  Weddings and general authority visits have been the only uses for my suit coat.

The wedding dress of Teresa is from our small inventory here.  The cake and drinks were a gift from Elder and Sister Osborn.  It was a  simple but profoundly sweet occasion. 



Outside the federal records office or "registro" was this guy transporting chickens.  Among the things which I have learned in this highly educational place is the fact that chickens, held upside down, are perfectly docile and carry easily in bunches like carrots.

This is Debra, who is growing nicely and beautifully.  We tended for an extensive period this week as we made a final push for documents for mom and pop.  They succeeded after many fits and starts, and a bit too much impatience on my part. Their marriage will be next week.  Debbie was uncontrollable and went out today and bought matching (or at least complementing) outfits for the three children.

O Captain my Captain...

I'm likely directing my passenger to shift his weight as he is obviously causing the hind end of our craft to ride low in the water.  This reminds me a bit of my first canoeing experience with my very small children in Alaska.  After ten seconds, we were capsized and the near-infants were floating downstream.  We did better on this particular voyage.

Rain has continued to be our constant companion during the last week, which makes accessing some areas of the city a nasty mess.  Remember that every home has an outdoor latrine at ground level--and that during the rain, ground level is often inches or feet under water.  It is the source of some unpleasantness at times.

This is our friend Amizade.  He had prepared a hand written spreadsheet to support his estimate of costs for a small construction project.  He showed it to me and I couldn't help myself from wanting to introduce him to the wonders of Excel.  He had never sat at a computer before but quickly saw the value of the program and managed to put all his data in.  We are also teaching Amizade and others the church membership and financial system which they shortly must operate on their own.  It is a fascinating experience to introduce technology to folks for the first time.  Some are ready for it and others not at all.  The stains on the walls in the office here are from the rains which drip in spots down the walls.

The sweetness of service

     Surprisingly enough, there were several windows full of Valentines cards and hearts and treats here in Quelimane.  It is called "Dia das Namoradas" or day of the girlfriend, I think.  But even without the traditional Godiva chocolates to celebrate the day, there was a sweetness that came from a baptismal service on the beach and memories of other sweet days, that brings a more lasting feeling of love to us.
     The Nichols family is here visiting from Portugal.  Their home is in Alpine, Utah, but they have taken a year off to have this international adventure with their family.  Their children have had their eyes opened to the worldliness they have found in Portugal and throughout Europe.  They have told us people keep very much to themselves, are culturally snobbish and generally do not see a need for God in their lives.
   Catia Nichols was born in Quelimane and wanted to bring her children back to Mozambique to see her roots and she wanted to re-visit them as well.  She left here at age one, went to live in Portugal, found the gospel in her teenage years and then went to study at the University of Utah when she was sponsored by a family there.  She met her husband, John, at a dance there and the rest is history.  They have five wonderful children and have had an impact on our lives, even though we spent only a few days with them.  Tiago turned 8 in January and they thought it would be special to have him baptized in Quelimane.  As always, it turned into an adventure.


About 30 km. outside of Nicoadala the bridge washed out in front of the Nichols
. It is about an outside of Quelimane.  They had to spend
the night in their car and call relatives to come get them the next day.  They waded across the river
with bags over head and left their car on the other side in the care of a trucker they met.



When we went to pick them up for the baptism they had on nice Sunday shoes.  I told them, ditch
the shoes, get your flip flops and they were glad for the advice.  We were so happy for
a sunny, warm morning without rain.

Tiago was baptized by his dad in the river Supinho which
is off Zalala beach right near the entrance to the ocean.
John mentioned the water was very salty.  We are looking forward to
a similar ocean experience with our grand daughter, Amelia, in Alaska
this summer.



What I loved about this family was they were not ashamed of the gospel.  They gave talks
out on the beach, mom and daughter sang "I am a Child of God" in both Port. and
English and it was so sweet.  We had many on lookers as usual, but they were very
reverent and respectful.  One came up to me afterwards and thanked us
for letting them be part of this religious time on the beach.  It was very special. They felt
the reverent spirit that was there.

Toby has long wanted to try out a dug out canoe.  These guys were watching the service and Toby
said he would give them 20 mt. for a ride.  They were wary of his abilities, but I told them we had a canoe
in our house in America.  He said it wasn't nearly as stable as a Coleman, but still fun.  The
friendliness of the people here towards us is a sweet part of the mission.

This is the sweetness of what I call "creative charity".  Manuel needed some money for
the rest of  his marriage documents.  I offered 200 mt. to wash the outside of the house.  Two
weeks ago I offered it to another man, who washed the same wall.
  During the week both the week the maid and the guard do
the same work.  But we try hard to find small jobs when people are willing to work.



I have grown to really care for our day guard Gildhino.  He has seen the Elders and
others improving their lives.  One day he said, I  want to go back to school.  Although
he is a great reader, he has only finished seventh grade.  I offered him the money for
school and he is taking a class to try and test out in the summer of the classes he
still needs.  He bought some books to study and this back pack and was
so proud to be looking like a student.



This was a sweet moment at Dina's baptism (front, red shirt)  She has been an
investigator for a year, many family problems and personal challenges, but
she made it.  They support of these women meant a lot to her on her special
day  For some reason, I love women all over the world.  We can bond on so many levels
even without the proper vocabulary.

snapshot of life II

I love this picture!  I snapped this picture of Debra and her mother Paula as we waited in the car for Dad/husband to emerge from the government office where he was seeking documentation to enable their marriage.  We have grown quite fond of little Debra who continues robust and cuter each day.  She smiles at me regularly now.  Despite the enormous difficulty we are having in getting documents, we still have hopes of having a wedding and baptism for this family this month.

This has been another week of enormous rains.  As I drove some back roads yesterday afternoon, I found my path blocked by the wall of a home that had just fallen into the street--knocked down by the rain.  On the return, I barely made it through a dirt road that was just minutes from having an impassible chasm eroded into the roadbed.  The kids love to come out and play in the heavy rains.  This one was clothed and thus was publishable.   Many are not. 
As shown below, our own street turned into a river with water backing up well into our driveway.  The missionaries often wear boots in the rain, but the flood waters were simply too high yesterday and most resorted to crocs and flip flops.

These are known as "traditionally built" African women (if you have read the popular #1 Ladies Detective Agency books).  Not everyone in Quelimane is skinny and malnourished.  It is not an insult here to call someone fat.  It is a state that many aspire to.  Great place for us.  These ladies are pounding their raw rice to remove the husks from the grain.  The blue tarp is what they had laid it out on to dry in the sun.

This is Samo Goncalves.  He is in the presidency of the mission and came and visited this last weekend, doing some training for the members and speaking in our Sacrament service.  It is the first time that our local members were able to hear and see a black African leader of the church.  It was great for them for that reason alone--dispelling for them the notion that they might need us white guys to lead (which is an all too real a thought among some).

These are most of the youth of the Quelimane Branch.  We love this group of kids.  We sent this picture in to the New Era (church magazine).  Almost all of these kids were taught  the gospel on this veranda.  You can see that the male/female ratio is running about 2 to 1.  We have many more interested young men than women here.

the dark side of life

Debbie and I have made dear friends in Mozambique.  There are people we love deeply and to whom we have become profoundly attached.  In many ways we are feel like parents to them. The bond is especially strong with individuals with whom we have personally shared and taught the gospel, helped them through the difficult process of repentance and conversion--undergoing that great change of heart and mind and behavior. 
One such dear and beloved young woman we met with this week.  She is such a delightful lass.  Full of joie de vivre and faith and enthusiasm.  She shared with us something that she says she will share with no one else--that she recently went to the hospital to get checked out for unexplained weight loss and horrible headaches--and tested positive for HIV.  I have never taken the time to fully understand the progression of the disease, but it appears to have been a late diagnosis with AIDS symptoms in play already.  She is being evaluated (apparently a month long process here) to see if she is eligible for life-saving treatment. 
I am not prone to depression nor even too much discouragement.  But this news has rocked our little world.  We are so deeply saddened--truly as if she was our own child. 
HIV and AIDS are harsh realities here.  Public estimates of infection are between 20 and 30 percent of the population.  There are still a lot of infections occurring in medical treatment due to unsterile syringes.  This is a very tough place.

On a happier note:

Debbie is standing next to little Izza.  Izza has one dress and this is it.  We were on babysitting duty for many hours yesterday as Izza's parents pursued their documents to get married--and endless process that is still incomplete.  Soon after this photo, Izza fell asleep in the back seat of our vehicle and thoroughly soaked it.  Our car now has a lasting memory of her presence that will likely remain long after our departure.

We had a small youth activity last night with a Mozambican version of jeopardy.  Debbie has always wanted to be Alex Trebec.

The first time

This post might not make of much sense if you are not LDS, but please try to muddle through it anyway.

Here in our little branch of Quelimane we initiated a major program of the church yesterday. It occurred to me, as I led this effort, what an extraordinary experience I was having--one that literally millions of LDS church leaders worldwide will never have, because they serve in places where the church has long been established--and doing something "for the first time" is simply not possible. And they therefore, must live with or benefit from the preceding years of good or bad experience.

One of the wonderful (and compensating) aspects of our assignment here is the fact that we are essentially starting from scratch. Our members have no previous experience, no bad habits (other than those they gave up to join the church), no preconceptions or expectations of their religious experience in the LDS faith other than finding truth and peace. They are largely a blank slate. When Elder Cook of the Seventy visited us recently, he commented with some surprise (and maybe just a smidgen of envy of the experience) something like this: "Elder and Sister Osborn, it is like you have your own private little garden of clean soil here--you can plant and nurture and then see just how your efforts have produced".

Yesterday we introduced the program of Home Teaching to the men of the church in Quelimane. They had never heard of it before but for a few references in their gospel study. Worldwide, and particularly in Mozambique, the success and efficacy of the program in the church is a mixed bag (I am a great believer and adherent). We were able to teach it simply, focusing on its fit with basic gospel principles--and I think, instill a bit of enthusiasm to be engaged in something meaningful. We made initial assignments and all were excited to get to work.  Time will tell if this clean slate is the benefit that I hope it is.

I believe that I will be a simpler and less jaded man upon my return.

We have a lot of lizards here. Many of them are in the house. They eat bugs so we generally don't mind (using the term "we" perhaps too generously). One of the main house lizards we have is pictured below. They are not chameleons but seem to display a little bit of color and pattern changing ability (we see them going at least from light to dark and back, depending on their location).

We had these two frolicking over our bed last night--they were not particularly small so Debbie really was less than comfortable.  After a while it became clear that their antics were more of a courtship ritual than a hunting expedition so we finally turned out the lights to give them some privacy.

Real chameleons are quite cute--but we don't see many of them around.

Location:Quelimane, Zambézia, Moçambique

Whither our Weather

I have always been a bit interested in the weather--as I have always had to live with it I guess.  Above is the African continent (it is really quite big).  Quelimane is the little black dot on the south eastern side.  Our weather here always comes from the east.  It develops somewhere over the Indian ocean and moves east over the large island of Madagascar (off the eastern coast of southern Africa)--and then directly over to us in northern Mozambique.  You can see above in this most current of weather maps, that Madagascar has a system that will soon move on to us, and there is a larger one on deck, waiting to come after that.  You can see that these storms seem to spread rain through a wide belt of sub-saharan Africa.  If you will visit any of these countries, you will find that they are extremely green during the rainy season of December through April or May.

Raindrops Keep Falling on Our Heads...

     Yes, this is the rainy season, but enough is enough.  It reminds me of winter in Alaska.  At first you can enjoy it , snow is fun and pretty and here the ground here needs the moisture etc.  But then day after day night after night it gets annoying.  I have never heard rain so loud and strong during cloud bursts as I have heard here in Africa.  The thunder and lightening are really cool.  But this past week, we had flooding and that is not cool at all.  The previous week there was flooding near Maputo and I guess the storm moved north.  Often the houses that are made of mud simply vanish.  Walls with a stick foundation become transparent.  People quickly move belongings to higher ground, but in some  neighborhoods there isn't any higher ground.
     When we were traveling back from Beira on Tuesday, about an hour and a half outside of Quelimane we saw the worst storm damage.  I have so many pictures it is hard to choose which ones to share.  Along with the flood damage comes diseases in the water.  Bugs enter into your feet and many people get sick from walking through the water.  People have all their documents lost because they haven't been properly stored, rice is wet, clothes float away, you get the picture.  Most of the time families have to wait until the water subsides to dig out the mud and clean up. Then the rain starts all over again. It is frustrating to not really  know what to do to help.  The Elders hope to rebuild some walls next week and we have helped some families with food.
     The storms seem to be born on the northern part of Madagascar and head west into Mozambique.  Looking at the satellite picture on the weather channel, we are still bracing for more water to fall.
     This is what you are missing while you are building your snow forts today!


People carrying their sleeping mats and other belongs to the side of the road.



This house is completely demolished, you can see the roof in the background.



On local streets people roll up their pants, carry their bikes and keep moving through
these low spots in the road.



Outside their home Raul and Bendita walk in knee high water to greet us.  Not much entered the
house thank goodness.

You can see the original mud wall to the left and then the damaged wall in the forefront.  At least
this house had a wood structure to rebuild from.  If you look carefully you can see capulana is
hung to provide some privacy inside the home.

People still have to get to school and work, just more slowly  Note the pink bike.  I have
never see so many pink bikes in my life and they are almost always owned by men!

Ever diligent and fashion conscious, Elder Osborn walks down the road searching for an
investigator's home.



Kids grow up quickly here in Mozambique and learn survival skills
when they are young.  This may beat a boring day at school on many fronts.