To Maputo

Thanks for all the prayers!  We continue to see how the Lord is speaking into our lives here in Africa!


Yesterday we were able to safely travel from Chimoio to Maputo, a 1200 km trek from Central Mozambique to the extreme South.  We made great time on decent roads and didn't have much stress until arriving in the city traffic, which is best described as chaotic.  Maputo is the capital and largest city of the country and we can already see an extreme difference from the Northern parts of the country.  The trip was uneventful, which always a praise when it comes to traveling!


Last Sunday, we left from Chimoio headed to Blantyre, Malawi.  We successfully made it through immigration and made it to our destination in the early evening.  On Monday, we spent the day taking care of more visa issues so that we could re-enter Mozambique later in the week. Then Tuesday morning we headed to the extreme south of Malawi into the bush to visit a couple more child care centers.  We drove several hours from Blantyre to the city of Nsanje, almost to the Mozambique/Malawi border, where we stayed for the night.  One of the centers we could drive to so we visited it that day.  The other was much more remote, requiring a 25 minute walk through a plantation (after the end of the dirt road), a 25 minute canoe ride across a river (that has hippos and crocodiles), and then another 90 minute walk.  That was a tiring morning!  Be we were blessed by the kids for sure!


So that afternoon we headed back to Moz, and after some interesting conflicts with the Moz immigration causing us a two hour delay, we werre greeted by a rather rugged 200 km drive on dirt roads.  This set us back some so we were forced to stop 3 hours short of home to stay in the city of Tete, Moz.


Thursday morning we made it back to Chimoio, rested and clean and got prepared for our trip yesterday from Chimoio to Maputo.


We were blessed to experience some of the remotest and poorest parts of Malawi and Mozambique.  We really are seeing a broad range of culture here and now we get to se the city.  Thank you for your prayers for our vision trip!  We are believing that God is speaking vision and strategy into our ministries!  We feel much more knowledgeable about what it would take to start church planting here.  Pray that God will continue to reveal himself to us here!


It's very interesting to learn about new culture and to be able to compare it to Brazilian and American cultures and see how missions may interact with these two cultures!  I look forward to giving more info about our trip when we get home to Brazil!


God Bless!
John & Silvia