Alpharetta Cumming Lake Lanier Real Estate Blog

We have finally settled on a name for our new non profit organization. It will be New Hope In Africa. You will be hearing much more about this in the near future as we set up our Face Book and Twitter fan pages as well as our new websites.
Our goal for this organization is to drill wells to provide safe clean drinking water for those less fortunate than us. We have a partner on the ground in Africa that will oversee the work that we will be having done there.

It is amazing to me that for a mere $6000 we can change the lives of an entire village of 600 to 900 people. Tune in later to see what we at Vanderhoff Real Estate are doing to change the world and call us now if you want to know how you can help us change the world or if you just want us to help you change your world by selling or helping you find a new home. We are here to serve.

Labels: africa, clean water, homes for sale in alpharetta, homes for sale in cumming, mozambique

The continuing story of our past trip to Mozambique...

Wednesday, 10-8-08
We awoke to a beautiful day, had a good breakfast and headed out to Chumene (Xumene in Portuguese). It was about 9:30 when we finally left the guest house, which in hindsight was much too early. We arrived at the well site in Chumene about 11 am only to find that the well drillers had been delayed on another project and would not arrive at our site until about 3 pm.

While we waited for the drilling crew to show up, we explored the new parsonage that is being built at the well site. This building is being funded by the Missouri Conference of the Methodist Church and was started once we committed to drill a well at this site. It is a good sized building with many rooms that will be used for worship service and bible studies until such time as an actual church can be built.

The drilling crew showed up around 3pm. Once there, they had to tow a water tank back into town to get water, which is required for the drilling process, and finally returned to begin their work on the site around 4:30pm. They worked until dark, which was about 7:30pm that evening. The plan was to return the next morning and complete the drilling.

We went back to the guest house and had a late dinner. After dinner Zef came by with Manuel, the head of The Living Water Society in Mozambique. Manuel was the one that oversaw the entire drilling operation that day and had come by to pick up payment for the well drilling. We paid him 96,000 Meticais ($3,920.00). This payment was for the drilling of the well only. We would be required to pay an additional amount when it was determined what type of pump was needed to be installed.

We learned from Manuel that over the past few years they have drilled 50 wells. 3 of these wells were not successful and had to be shut down. The problem they are most likely to encounter is salty water. I wasn’t quite sure if he was telling us this now to soften what we might encounter tomorrow or if it was just casual conversation.


Thursday 10-9-2008
We had planned on returning to the well site the next morning, but learned that they had broken a piece of equipment and would not be able to continue drilling until much later in the afternoon. This is really not uncommon when working in Africa. It is often “hurry up and wait” with projects, and patience is required in their culture. So we decided to go visit the United Methodist Women’s Training Center/ School at Tsalala.

In the evening, the school is a training center for women to help teach them skills that will help them get jobs and raise them up out of poverty. During the day the school holds classes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd grades in the morning, then 4th and 5th grades after lunch. The normal class size is about 35 students, however, due to a teacher shortage in the public schools, due to lack of funding, Tsalala has 135 students in 1st grade. We had brought a soccer ball and a jump rope for the students. A small thing like that doesn’t mean much to us…but you should have seen the joy in these kids faces from a small gift like this.

We were hoping to be able to purchase desks for the three class rooms. The students currently have to sit on the floor. We were given some preliminary estimates prior to our trip that the cost would be around $1500, which we were prepared to give. Unfortunately, when we went to visit a furniture factory near the school, we found the cost to be much higher so we decided that we would hold off and see what the price of the desks would be if we purchased them from the vocational school in Cambine.

We found out that afternoon that the well drilling was still on hold due to the piece of equipment that had broken, so we headed back to the guest house. Later that evening we learned that the equipment had been repaired, drilling had resumed and good water had been reached. With arrival of such good news we turned in for the night.

Stay tuned for more about our trip last Fall. In the meantime, some current news:
We are busy preparing for our next trip in the end of September. We were blessed to raise $2,720 in our Shredding Event last weekend. A special thanks to all who brought their documents to be shredded. It was a good start towards our next well. If you feel so inclined, you may make a contribution to Alpharetta First United Methodist Church, 69 North Main St. Alpharetta, GA 30009. Please include a note with your contribution that the funds are for The Mozambique Mission.

Thank you for your encouragement and support! Mike and Melody Vanderhoff

Labels: africa, mission, mission trip, mozambique, real estate, vanderhoff, wells

Monday morning breakfast was served at 7am. Zef came to pick us up and took us to a currency exchange facility where we exchanged $3000 US Dollars for 73,500 New Meticals. We then headed off to the headquarters of the Methodist Church of Mozambique where we were able to meet with the new Bishop, Joaquina Filipe Nhanala. She is the first female Bishop in Africa and a truly amazing woman. She had just recently returned from a Bishops’ training conference at the North Georgia United Methodist Church Retreat Center at Simpsonwood.

Bishop Joaquina had just been appointed and this was her first week on the job. We spent the morning talking with her and found that her priorities are very much in line with what we hope to accomplish in Mozambique. She feels that the key to helping her fellow countrymen is to introduce them to Jesus Christ. One of the best ways to attract the people is to first provide an easily accessible supply of clean drinking water, her people’s greatest need. At the well site they can then build a parsonage to house a pastor who would offer church services at the home until such a time that a church can be built and finally a school.

We learned from the Bishop that there are 90 churches in the southern conference of Mozambique and 135 in the northern conference, plus an additional 52 sites for future church planting. 90% of the people at these locations get their drinking water from rivers, streams, ponds and marshes. This means that over 200 of the churches in Mozambique could use wells to provide fresh clean drinking water along with their message of hope. We are beginning to see the scope of our task.

After our meeting with the Bishop, we returned to the guest house for lunch and to plan the balance of the week’s activities. That evening before leaving the guest house we had another great dinner.

After dinner, we were invited by Zef to the English class he teaches at the local university. We were able to participate in the class by conversing with the students in order to let them practice their English and to see if they could understand us with the different accents we each have. Not that Melody and I have accents, but it seemed to the class that Eric did have a bit of a Southern accent. They were extremely warm and friendly with lots of questions. Everyone wished there had been more time to interact. It was a great opportunity to meet these students who are soon be the new leaders of their communities, in both business and government.

After class we returned to the guest house and had the opportunity to meet Claire Cunningham. She is a missionary that was born in Zimbabwe and is now living in the Northern part of Mozambique. The guest house we stay in is used by many people affiliated with the church. It is a place of comfort where you can have a hot shower (most of the time), get a good meal, have a clean comfortable bed and wake to a great breakfast.

We finally turned in around 11pm for our night’s rest.

Labels: africa, mission trip, mozambique

Our mission to Mozambique, Africa was not the typical mission trip of taking a team, building something, conducting vacation bible school, loving the people, then heading for home. This was a mission team of three, which consisted of Melody, myself and a missionary from Atlanta, Eric Owen. Eric was in Mozambique with Melody last year and is fluent in Portuguese, the predominant language of Mozambique. Our mission was to lay the foundation and develop a long term growing relationship that enables us to spread the love of Christ in a country of desperate need. To partner with Bishop Nhanala of the United Methodist Church and work towards making a better life for her people by drilling critically needed water wells, doing various construction projects, working with the Cambine orphanage and clinic, and distributing Proclaimers which are devices that play a recording of the gospel in native dialects. God blessed us with enough raised funds to drill one water well this trip and we were able to visit the locations and document the next five areas of greatest need for future water wells.

Our trip to Mozambique accomplished a lot and was a great success. The trip began on Saturday morning as we headed to Atlanta to catch a Delta flight for Johannesburg, South Africa. Our flight left at 3:45 pm that afternoon and arrived in Johannesburg some 18+ hours later. We had time to grab a sandwich and wait about an hour before catching our next flight to Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. We finally arrived in Maputo at 8:40 pm Sunday evening.

The Lord was walking by our side as we went through immigration and were waved right past customs without anyone looking at a single suite case. We still had not figured out how we where going to explain why we had three suite cases of used children’s clothing, six Proclaimers (that look like new portable radios), six soccer balls and jump ropes when we where just traveling as tourists.

We were greeted at the airport by Armindo Chauque, the mission team coordinator for the United Methodist Church, who does pretty well with his English. After all of the luggage was loaded we headed for the UMC guest house that became our home base while we were in the capital city of Maputo. When we arrived at the guest house we were greeted by the staff that ran the house and prepared all the meals. They were Luzia, Rosa, Maravilha, Albertina (Beti) and Salvado. They had prepared a wonderful meal for us which we immediately dug into. Why we did, I do not know since we had three meals on the plane and one in Johannesburg. I guess we are willing to lose a day, but not a meal. After our meal we settled in and turned in for a much needed good nights sleep.

Stay tuned more to follow...

Labels: africa, mission, mozambique, united methodist church, vanderhoff, wells