In Which We Accidentally the Truck

We accidentally what? The truck.

[Warning: rather long post.] Its been a flurry of activity the last two weeks here. Last week, as I mentioned, I was manning the fort as everyone else was at week-long seminars put on by various NGO's. That week went just fine. Then we pulled into a three-day weekend for Armed Forces day or something. That meant a little bit of housekeeping. I spent the whole day Saturday with the boys in the dorm as we pulled out everything for some good ol' fashioned cleaning. And when I say everything I mean everything. The girls were all watching and making fun of all the odds and ends that the boys were hoarding in there. Water bottles, toys, trinkets, bottle caps of all sorts (which are kind of used like currency around here) were found in their bunks as we cleaned out all the junk.

But the girls got their turn on the Monday holiday when Victor went through their house with them. They got the same treatment in their house while I got to do some much needed yardwork with the boys. I wanted to be there cleaning out the girls house with them, but lets face it, girls can be a little, ummm, touchy when it comes to going through their stuff. And I don't mean stuff in like all their clothes and things. I mean weird stuff. One girl was storing dozens and dozens of old toilet paper rolls. One girl had at least over a hundred pen caps that she had collected. Another yet had a backpack full of not books but pencil shavings. And those were just the girls over age 16 (seriously). The girls did not take to well to the non-stop shame and laughter that resulted from all the boys seeing tons of junk in their trunk because, well, girls.

After that, I spent about two days washing and sorting the old clothes and packaging them up do donate somewhere else (hundreds of kids just down the hill in the jungle would kill to wear good condition 3rd hand clothes). Because of those two days my house still smells “mountain fresh”, or however detergent is supposed to smell. I'm just glad that the detergent didn't smell like cake or cheeseburgers because boy would that make me hungry.

But today's post isn't about what I've been up to. Today's post is for the edification of all you out there. As one of the things I do a lot here at the orphanage is teach and give school lessons, I thought it about time a prepare a lesson for all of you faithful readers out there. This lesson addresses one of my grammatical / literary pet peeves. And I don't even like grammar, but this is still an annoyance of mine. Today, you are all going to learn about irony.

Rainy Days and Support Update

So what's been happening around here lately? A whole lot of nothing.

Its been raining on and off (mostly on) for the last three days, and life has moved from slow to dead slow. Luckily, there are some things we can look forward to here.

You can relax on the spacious veranda of the boy's dormitory.

You can talk about life and work and cooties with Isaty, Martinho, Maparato, Dionisio, and Ganito.

Instead of showering, you can just stand outside for a while. But people will give you never ending grief for it.

And when it clears up and the moon comes out you can wait for that lunar eclipse everyone was talking about only to remember that it doesn't even occur in our hemisphere.

The moon eventually became eclipsed by our palm tree.

Moving on to support: Jesus has been very faithful, through you guys, to have had me almost at budget every month. I'm gonna be honest, I haven't quite hit my target of $300 a month, but support has been far from zero, and I'm super grateful. However, that doesn't mean that every month is going to be fine. Much of the giving is of the one-time-donation type. So especially at this time of year, if you look in your wallet or at you bank statement and think, "Golly! Where did all this extra money come from? I should use it before the expiration date at the end of the year or it will go bad. I wish there's somebody I could really bless with it, like the Salvation Army, or that kid working with the orphans in Africa. That's seems like a far better use of my money then getting this or this, or even this for that special someone in my life." then I know one guy and about 50 kids that guy is serving that would be really grateful for you gift. If that what Jesus want's you to do, then you can send a check out to

TJ Werle

16428 10th AVE SW

Burien, WA (USA)

Please, checks are much easier than sending "Christmas Story" replica leg lamps. $10, 20, 50 or whatever you can do makes much more a difference than you think.

And after the end of the year, I'll get out more precise numbers on how support has been so you guys know how to help and, more importantly, how you can be praying with me for those things.

Merry Christmas, Bom Natal, and Happy New Year

Support Update Oct 2010

So, if you have had a chance to read the letter posted in September, that does a great job at explaining what is taking place and my heart for the orphanage. Now, to give you an update and some specifics, because I know you have been asking how to support. So I’m gonna tell you exactly how to do it (for some reason Evanjafrica has a policy against stealing peoples’ identity and clearing out their bank accounts, so I’ll have to do this the old fashioned way).

There are two ways to support. Both of which are great and help the orphanage in different ways. The first way is the way I would prefer. This involves supporting me directly. The two major expenses I have are travel from Seattle to Nampula and the cost of my visa. After that, it goes to help me get a little more well rounded diet, cell phone, general cost of living things that are above what the kids receive in the orphanage. I’ll accept just general donations, tithes, Christmas bonuses, your child’s allowance, pocket change you stole from a public fountain. I’m not too picky where it comes from, what matters is that you’re excided to be giving toward the work God is doing here.

All things considered, my monthly budget is around $300 minimum. In order to do things like put gas in my stove and some meat on my plate, I’d like my budget to be around $400/month. Both those number factor in things like air travel and visa, which right now I have been paying out of my own pocket.

If donating to support me is something you’d like to do, just know that I’m not taking a salary out of this at all. If Jesus blesses me with awesome donors like you and I have extra money that will all go towards buying coca-cola for the kids, replacing the textbooks we have at the orphanage, or the part of the budget designated solely for soccer balls. If this is how you’d like to support than you can make a check to TJ Werle and mail it to:

TJ Werle

16428 10^th AVE SW

Burien, WA 98166

And my parents are authorized to take care of that while I’m half a world away, so you won’t have to worry about it not clearing for 1, 2, 10 years till I decide to come back home.

If you would not like to support me but want to support what is happening here at the orphanage you send you check directly to Evanjafrica. I don’t personally get any of this, but it goes straight to helping the kids. Checks for that can be made out to Evanjafrica and sent to:

Evangafrica

308 Tuggle Lane

Ridgeville, SC 29472

In either case, please donate whatever you can to whichever way. Please feel free to consider giving something you do monthly, or quarterly, once, or whenever you can. And as always, email me any questions (in the contact section on the left side of the page) and God Bless.

Guess who's going back to Mozambique?

Hey everybody. Its been a long time coming but I can now say I'm officially going back to Mozambique. As my departure date gets nearer (within the next couple weeks), I'll provide more details about when I'm traveling and how you can pray for me.

For now, check out my new support letter, download it to get the full view.

I put a lot of effort and poured a lot into the letter so hopefully that explains most of what's going on. As always, if you want to talk or find out more or have any questions, please send me an email and I'll get right back to you.