Eight to Mozambique

We have a group that left for the Gorongosa Region of Mozambique on Wednesday, June 17. Neil has been there before and writes this bit:

We take our first anti-malarial pill on Tuesday and leave on Wednesday. We are driving to Minneapolis to get on our 25 hour flight to Johannesburg (via Amsterdam with a layover there). We spend the night there and get on a short 2 hour flight to Beira, Moz. Gorongosa is 3 hour drive on a good road.

Some background for some of you may be helpful. This trip to Gorongosa is many years in the making. God has been teaching many of us at Orchard Hill Church that the way to help people, either here or overseas, is by developing a relationship with them and the other things (money, other aid, etc) will play a natural, obvious part as the relationship progresses. Gorongosa was presented as a place where we could become involved in a long term relationship under the organization Food for the Hungry (they call it their Community to Community -C2C– program). We expect to be involved there for many years but also the goal is to have them stand on their own at some time in the future as real transformation happens. We also expect to be changed in the process as God will use this relationship to grow our hearts along the way.

Our trip this time will focus on assisting them to build class rooms, but really, we are developing that relationship and doing whatever we can to help push back the spiritual darkness, the poverty, the lack of access to education and medical care, while helping to develop their indigenous leadership (the “5 Giants” according to Rick Warren’s PEACE Plan). Pray that we will do whatever we can to walk with God and the folks of Gorongosa in this process.