Alpharetta Cumming Lake Lanier Real Estate Blog

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

The continuing Story of our trip to Mozambique last year...

Tuesday, 10-7-08

We woke about 6:30 this morning; Claire Cunningham had already left the guest house. Breakfast was ready at 7:30…another great meal. We discovered that there was going to be a conference held at the guest house today. All the pastors in the area, plus the district superintendents from more distant regions had brought their annual budgets for review and submission. This made it a good day for us to clear out of the guest house early.

Armindo picked us up early since Zef and the Bishop were going to be tied up in this conference all day. We made our first stop in town to acquire a sim card and some minutes for our unlocked phone. This allowed us to talk within the country at a reasonable rate versus the $2.59 a minute that AT&T charged.

After that we headed out to Chamanculo which is an area in the outskirts of Maputo. There we visited with Rev. Alfiado Zunguze and His wife Joanetta. The Reverend is pastor of the Methodist church in Chamanculo which has about 900 members. He has been the pastor there since 2003 and is currently offering a training course for pastors as well as a bible study at the church. The course for pastors is described as being a mini theology course with 18 students currently enrolled.

We presented a Proclaimer in the Xitshwa language to Rev. Alfiado. To our surprise we learned that he was one of the readers in the Xitshwa recording. He had read the narrator’s text in the recording of the book of Matthew. The original recording was done in a radio studio in Maputo. About 50% of the members at Chamanculo have Bibles and there is a good literacy rate in the congregation. Rev. Alfiado plans to use the Proclaimer in Sunday school and worship services.

Next we went to visit Machava which is also located in the Maputo province, and is one of the five proposed well drilling sites. The proposed well site is located about 3.5 miles off the main highway outside of Maputo. There are currently about 200 households being served by a hand dug well – 21 meters (69 feet) deep. The water from this well did not look like any water I would ever drink. It had a very cloudy and dirty appearance and is drawn up with a rope and a plastic bucket. We met Felix Chilovani, a local resident who lives near the current well and proposed drilling site. He is the one that approved and authorized the proposed site for drilling a new well. He told us that cases of cholera had been reported there during the rainy season. The Methodist church has already purchased the land for this new drilled well which will provide clean water to about 200 families. Additionally, a church will be built on the site to reach out to the many who will use this new well.

When we returned to the guest house that evening, we met a few of the budget conference attendees that were spending the night at the guest house. Over dinner we had a chance to talk to Zeferino Elias Massicame, Director of the Cambine Mission, Rev. Eduardo Filipe Ângelo, district superintendent of the Gaza district and Rev. Olga Lucas João Sincaugo, pastor at Sitila in the North Morrumbene district. Each one of these people expressed sincere thanks for our presence in their country and told us about the need for wells in the areas in which they minister. This further reveals the great need for these life-giving wells throughout the region, and confirms the call God has set within our hearts.

End of Day Tuesday, 10-7-08.

Currently, we are in the initial phase of planning our trip during the Fall of this year. We are researching possible grants for drilling wells and are making plans to visit several other churches in the North Metro Atlanta area to try to gain support for future wells in Mozambique. There are over 50 sites that have immediate need for clean water in Mozambique. We are also in the process of establishing a new cause on our Face book page that will allow for contributions to be made for new wells in Mozambique. We are hoping that through this means we will be able to garner support from a wide range of people from around the world.

Your continued prayer support is needed and appreciated.
Mike & Melody Vanderhoff

Labels: mission trip, mozambique, 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