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Oops, a day late post

A Jon Post

Sorry this post is a day after the weekend. We went to Lobatse, Botswana to spend some time with some good friends and watch the Superbowl. It’s about a 4 hour drive from where we are staying now and we think well worth the time we got to spend with the sweet Walker family.

We’re getting ready to start our (very) long drive to Angola this coming weekend. It seems like the days/weeks go by so fast and I often find myself trying to find the time to just remember. I heard a sermon recently, mostly focusing on communion, which stirred my heart about remembrance. When Layne and I went to Mozambique in December I had thought we would be waiting there for at least 4-6 months (again, at least) and maybe up to a year or more. We ended up spending just over 7 weeks in Mozambique and I ended up marveling at how much the Lord exceeded my expectations in those short 7 weeks.

With the life we’ve been living it’s been so easy to let myself simply move from one thing to the next as this whirlwind pushes us along. But I think it’s important, and I want to take the effort to remember the moments God stamped my heart, and the hearts of those around me, with His presence.

  • Invitation to a Christmas party at the Hospital oncology ward. Layne smiling, touching, kissing faces. Me… laughing and getting to play my violin with a group of laughing, clapping people around.
  • Meeting a man named Joaquim. Praying with him. Holding his hand. Saying goodbye. Hoping with him for eternity.
  • Meeting a child named Jose Manuel. Hugging him, picking him up and swinging him around. Holding his hand as I walk the grounds of the hospital.
  • Christmas with men and women in the oncology ward. Them, hundreds of miles away from their biological family. My wife and I, thousands of miles away from our biological family. All of us, finding that “Christmas with Family” can still be had in those circumstances.
  • A phone message as I am driving to South Africa to meet with potential partners in ministry in Angola. Joaquim died last night.
  • Hours of moving a satellite dish millimeters at a time until I find the “sweet spot” where we can pick up the reception to broadcast soccer games to thousands of people as a way to connect them to local churches planted in their villages.
  • Watching with awe as my wife displays the sacrificial, unconditional love of God to a dying woman in the Hospital. I have never witnessed such beauty. I wish you all could have seen what I saw over three days of the torturous death of Emilia. Emilia crying out for her God to be with her, Layne whispering softly in her ear the name of Jesus while wiping a cool cloth on a sweaty, tear-streaked face. You would have been so proud. Emilia did not die alone. Love’s promise was fulfilled.
  • Incredible family of Christ found in Jorge and Alice Pratos, missionaries from Portugal. We were welcomed and loved by them in so many ways. They introduced us to ministry at the hospital and entrusted us with making sure the soccer games were shown. Good, good friends.

There are so many more memories but those are the few that jump to my mind when I first start thinking about our time there over the last 2ish months. Thank you all so much for trusting us with ministry there.

We have applied at the Angolan Embassy here in South Africa for our visas and we are praying, praying, praying that they will be ready this coming Friday the 12th. They told us to come back that day, however we have heard that they are prone to delaying those original dates.

I may have injured my shoulder in the showing of the final soccer game in Mozambique. It’s been bothering me since then and, as of the last few days, been getting a little worse. I had surgery on it 7 years ago because of an injury I got in Botswana that year. When you think of it, I’d ask that you pray that it heals back up. I’ve had some trouble with it of and on since the surgery. The doctors expected it and so did I but these past couple weeks have been a little more trouble than usual.

That’s all. I know this is long so I’ll just finish with a quick bulleted list of things we would ask you to partner with us in prayer.

  • Visas to Angola process and are available by this Friday.
  • Finances as we get ready to go to Angola and make some purchases in the preparation.
  • Our vehicle would stay problem free and make the 10,000 kilometer round-trip drive from Maputo (Mozambique) to Luanda (Angola) to Maputo.
  • My shoulder would heal up sooner rather than later. I can’t hug my wife very tight and I really like to hug my wife tight.
  • My wife and I would draw close to each other in this stressful, highly active, trusting heavily on God season.
February 8, 2010
Personal
4 comments

We’re on the move…

This past week has been a whirlwind. After speaking with the missionaries from Angola on Monday, we decided we need to head to South Africa to hand in our paperwork for our visas in person, as well as stick around to make sure they process.  If we do that, it should cut the process time to one week as opposed to one month, and we can still make it to Angola by the middle to end of February.

What that means is that we are leaving Mozambique tomorrow.

This news was shocking. We thought we would have almost a whole other month here. We were  not prepared to begin our ‘Goodbyes’. Nonetheless this is an opportunity that we cannot pass up; it is the open door we have been praying for.

Our schedule looks like this:

Feb. 1 – Drive to Pretoria (Stay at Operation Mobilization base)

Feb. 2 – Hand in visas at the Embassy

Feb. 3-4 – Get our vehicle tuned up and ready for Angolan roads

Feb. 5-8 – Drive to Botswana to visit Mike and Heather and watch Superbowl with them

Feb. 8-12 – Drive back to Pretoria. Wait on visas and buying things for life in Angola, which includes being prepared to live in tents for months at a time.

Feb. 13 – Drive back to Botswana

Feb. 14 – Drive to Namibia (Happy Valentines Day!)

Feb. 16 or so – Drive with missionaries to Menongue Angola. Stay about 4 weeks in their shared missionary housing.

Mid-March – Drive to Luanda and visit Operation Mobilization missionaries and current running programs. Stay about 4 weeks, most likely in tents.

Mid-April – Drive back to Menongue. Stay about 4 weeks.

Mid-May – Drive back to Mozambique for at least a couple of weeks.

If we decide to partner with Operation Mobilization and them with us, we will need to leave Angola for 3-6 months to wait on our long term work visa, which will then be good for 2 years. That time is a little up in the air right now, but we trust that the Lord will guide us as He always has.

For now, “Goodbye” Mozambique. Who knew we would grow so attached?

We can look back over our time here and see nothing but the hand of God. I am humbled beyond belief. I feel like we have grown leaps and bounds in a mere 7 weeks.  It makes me excited to see what lies ahead.

This week has been __________ for me. Humm… I am without a word to fully describe it. Horrific. Hard. Beautiful. Stretching. Traumatic. I have blogged a few times about this week, and I do not feel the need to rewrite it here. You are welcome to read about it at: www.africangypsy.blogspot.com

This morning we said our “Goodbyes” at the hospital… well we spent four hours with them, but eventually said “goodbye”. It is hard to leave them.  I stayed in the hospital visiting with the women, while Jon was able to wrap up his relationships with the men by going to church with them at their home church, a neat opportunity. Boy are we going to miss them…

Here is how you can pray:

  • Pray for safety while traveling
  • Pray that our visas would process quickly while we are in Pretoria
  • Pray that our vehicle gets in perfect condition without spending too much
  • Pray that our hearts remain open to God’s will. We want to hear clearly from Him, and not just decide based on desperation. We are asking for a ‘Yes’ from God rather than not a ‘No’.

January 31, 2010
Angola, Mozambique, Visas
8 comments

Jon and Layne’s Newsletter

Hello all faithful blog readers. We wrote and sent out a newsletter this weekend so we’re just going to post the opening paragraph and give you a link to download it if you haven’t already got it in your email. We don’t want to overwhelm you with things to read and our newsletter is plenty. Blog readers may already know most of what’s in our newsletter but there’s some extra in there too so go ahead and give it a read. Thanks all!

Dear Friends and Family,

Every day we remember how blessed we are that you believe in us. Every day we remember that we are not here alone. There is a beauty in the breath that comes from that knowledge. The first thing God said that was NOT good was to be alone.
Some of you may feel alone right now. Know that God says that is NOT good. And know that you are not alone. We are together in this. You are choosing to be a part of this with us.
Together.
Christ, us, you.
Together.

Download the entire newsletter here

Us

Thanks for your love and support

January 24, 2010
Angola, Mozambique
3 comments

GOOOOOOOOAL!!!!

A Jon Post

It seems like there’s something new to talk about every week recently. It’s funny because I struggle with wanting to keep these posts short enough to be readable (I understand the “DEATH BY HUGE WALL OF TEXT” syndrome that so many internet readers suffer from), wanting to keep everyone up to speed on latest news in our lives and ministry, wanting to give you all the individual stories and a glimpse into the emotions, and wanting to put a bunch of pictures up so you can SEE what we’re doing.

So I’ll put it to our readers. Chose one of these and let us know what you are looking for from jonandlayne.com. If you have thoughts or more suggestions that just a vote in this poll leave a comment and let us know how you’d like us to communicate with you here.

[poll id=”2″]

Anyway… I’ll do a newsy, pictury post for this one until I hear more from you about what you’d like to hear.

This week we’ve been pretty busy every evening. Our Portuguese missionary friends (Jorge and Alice) invited us to be a part of showing the African Cup of Nations soccer games in some townships around Maputo. The African Cup of Nations is a HUGE deal here in Africa as each African nation competes to be the best soccer team in Africa. People love it and it’s a great way to connect with the average African. We partner with a pastor who has a church in an area of town, go to a soccer field very near the church and set up a satellite dish, projector and 8×6 foot screen and draw huge crowds. The pastors get a great opportunity to speak of the love of Jesus to the entire neighborhood in the area of his church, the people get to see a soccer game, and we get to set it all up and cheer and laugh and connect with people on a great personal level. Our new Land Cruiser serves as a wonderful mobile-soccer-game-show.

The showing of the games is a bit of an evening commitment and we have been spending each night from 5:30 until 11:30 out in the townships to do it. It’s thrown us a little off in our schedule but it’s just for this month and we’re happy to be a part of it.

Click on the picture below and hopefully you can get an idea of what we’ve been doing.

We’re still going to the hospital on a near daily basis to visit and love the friends we’ve made in the oncology ward. I’d like to write more about that but I think I’ll wait and tell you more next time I post.

Thanks for reading, voting, praying, giving. We are so proud to tell people here of our incredible support base. You are the envy of many missionaries we’ve met. We love to boast about you.

January 17, 2010
JonandLayne.com, Mozambique
9 comments

News

Has it really only been a week since we updated on here?

I feel like so much has happened since we last “talked”. I have some good news and some sad news. I’ll start with the sad, so that we can end positively…

Our new friend at the hospital Joaquim lost his life Thursday morning. We knew it was coming. Everyone did. Death loomed over him for about two days. Each hour he lived we felt like a miracle had happened.

He was fine. He was laughing and having spirited conversations with Jon just one week earlier. But then it seemed like we came in one day and he had taken a turn for the worse. Two days later he died. It was a blow.

I have never been involved in ministry like this. Watching people die. Loosing people so regularly.  It is changing me. I cannot pinpoint exactly how, but I feel it; I know it is happening. Lord, you must know what you are doing. ..

I wrote a bit more about Joaquim at www.africangypsy.blogspot.com

And for the good news. The Angola news. That’s right, Angola news again! Thank you for your prayers. You have been a part of all of this!

Jon and I needed to head to South Africa this week to reset our Mozambican visas, and as I told you a couple weeks ago we had and interview with a potential ministry to partner with for Angola. Well after 11 hours of travel south, we had the interview, and it went really well!

The couple we met with have a really neat heart for the Lord and His work. Their views and approach to ministry seems to line up well with what we believe. This was important  for us to feel connected in this area! They have been in Angola since 1996 and have established relationships with the government and people. (Huge advantage!)

The organization is call “Operation Mobilization”. Many of you may have heard about them. They have a small team working up in Luanda and then do work part of the year in a town called Menongue, however there are no permanent missionaries there. If we begin working with them, we would be permanently in Menongue (pronounced maNONgay). You may remember us talking about the town of Namibe, where we originally wanted to work. After talking and praying we feel a release and peace about changing locations in our hearts if all were to work out.

Our hearts remain focused on the orphaned and vulnerable children, especially those affected by HIV/AIDS. Their ministry has already started construction for a children’s center in Menongue, but it has yet to be completed, and they have no one to run it. We are praying about being the ones to do just that.

Here is the approach we would like to take towards pursuing this:

We would like to get a temporary visa (3 month) and do a bit of a trial run with them. We would go visit both the Menongue site and the one in Luanda. We could get a feel for the town and the local people.  We would work out all details and get all questions answered. (One meeting over lunch is hardly enough time!) If we can, Lord willing the paperwork can get processed quick enough, we would like to meet them in Menongue, Angola on February 20th.

If paperwork does not work out, we would push that date back until May, when the couple would return to Menongue.

From there, if we receive confirmation from the Lord and things work out, we would be required to leave Angola until our work permits could be processed. That could could take about 3 months to 6 months. During that time it is yet to be decided what we would do. One possibility is that we would return to Mozambique and continue working here while maintaining our Portuguese.

Here are ways you can pray for us:

  • That our paperwork for a short-term visa would be processed quickly
  • That the Lord would continue to speak to our hearts and confirm His plan for us
  • Wisdom and discernment

We welcome advice or thoughts on any of this! Thanks for your constant love and support. We could feel the prayers during our travels to South Africa and on the day of our meeting.  We love you!

Enjoying Tiramisu coffee and a Hazelnut/Caramel coffee!

(This is the only coffee shop we know of in all of southern Africa that has flavored coffee. Yum! )

January 10, 2010
Angola, Mozambique, Travel
10 comments
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