The one where TJ strikes it rich

The currency in Mozambique is the meticais, commonly called mets. What does 1000 mets look like?

I know. Pretty amazing, huh.

There’s a little bit of a catch to this. A while back the economy of Mozambique was in such a tailspin from just plain old printing money that inflation was out of control. After some strategic debt restructuring (Mozambique saying we’re not going to pay it) the country knocked 3 zeroes off the end of its money and fixed it to the U.S. Dollar. I still don’t know how you can just fix currencies like that, but I’m sure that’s better left to the experts that are currently flushing the world economy down the proverbial toilet.

All this happened in 2004, which is about 2 years after Zimbabwe (a neighbor) should have done the same thing and about 4 years before they actually did. You probably heard a lot more about Zimbabwe because the people there were paying like 16 trillion for a carrot. For once, I’m not exaggerating. It also helps that Zimbabwe has a slightly crazy and outspoken leader in Mugabe. And goodness knows that the news loves it crazy and outspoken leaders, no matter what country they're from.

[Insert picture of Vladimir Putin doing just about anything]

As a result, everybody traded in their old currency for the new ones, with the exception of the coin in my picture. They just kept using that and its now equivalent to 1 new met, even though they say 1000 mets on them. They are the second smallest denomination of coin here next to the old 500 met coins still floating around, even though they are not really used.

So, what can you get with that little coin? Not a lot. With 2 of them you can get a roll. With 10 of them you can loaf of bread. With 12 you can get a coke. It’s a good thing that Dr. Evil didn’t hold the world ransom for one million of these, otherwise he would have gotten about enough money to get half a tank of gas.

Should’ve asked for one billion. That would have paid for a new car.

The one where TJ gets some interns

Vincent, Daniel, and Silmone with the director of their bible school.

This summer we got ourselves some interns here at the orphanage. “Summer?”, you ask. Yes, because it’s the southern hemisphere in Mozambique (don’t make me draw a map again) and school break is Nov-Jan. “Interns?” you ask. Yes, because we sure needed the extra hands on deck they were halfway through Bible School and looking to do something kind of Jesus-y for the summer.

Daniel

Daniel grew up in the orphanage here and we sent him down to Bible School last year after he finished 10th grade. He’s probably 21 years old, give or take, and of all the kids here he’s probably the second hardest worker when it comes to helping out with chores and asking for more responsibility. He returned this summer not to stay with us but to come and intern for us. He and the other two guys all lived a couple clicks away at Victor’s Dad’s Church because it has guest housing. This was no little adjustment for Daniel, who wasn’t commuting from home to work, but was more like going to work and home. He always arrived hours before the other two and was busy helping out with chores and his tasks for the day.

Silmone

Silmone is a kid from our church and his mom is one of the two women that cook for us on the weekdays. He is definitely the most passionate and emphatic public speaker of the bunch and a very hard worker just like Daniel. He’s a little more on the side of “If this isn’t completed in two minutes Europe is going to explode” kind of hard worker, whereas Daniel just gets it done without complaining. I asked Silmone to grab my wallet after I left it in the car. You’d have thought we got pushed to DEFCON 1 because he was so serious and urgent to get back to the car and fetch my wallet before the Ruskies nuked us.

Vincent

Vincent is from Malawi and we had no idea who he was until Victor and Christina went down to pick up Daniel for Summer Break. Turns out that, to make a long story short, Vincent is from Malawi, orphaned, and putting himself through Bible School. When Daniel and Silmone met him they were so taken by his story and how arrived there that God moved them to start supporting him and help pay his way out of the money we were sending them to go to school. Because learned Portuguese from spending a few years living in Mozambique, and otherwise speaks “English”. I put it in quotes because I have an easier time understanding him in Portuguese because of all the differences between his and my English.

We had these guys do a little bit of everything for us. We gave them bits of pieces of administrative work so they could see that around here its not all fun and games.

It's only fun and games like 99.9% of the time.

We also got them helping with a lot of my responsibilities, meaning I got to just sit back and relax and wait for them to bring me coffee and go pick up my lunch order. Just kidding. But they were working in the kitchen, serving every meal, leading devotionals at night, going out and buying our food for each month, turning in paperwork and reports, and so on.

Among the other things they got to do was to preach and teach every Sunday in church. Before the service, on would teach Sunday school for the kids, and the second would teach the adult class, and the third would get to preach. They’d rotate every week. We’d figured on giving them as much practice as they wanted as this is all what they are going to be doing hopefully in the future.

Each kid that enters the Bible School has an interview to both consider their character, so the instructors can begin to get to know the kids, and so they can see what remedial reading they need to do to get their basic level of theology up to par so they aren’t raising their hand in class the second week and asking who this Jesus guy is the instructor keeps mentioning. Daniel and Silmone were two of the small handful that passed the theology benchmark and were told their knowledge is up to par. That’s a good reflection on us and Victor and his preaching/teaching. Unfortunately, it didn’t mean that there wasn’t a few theological bumps along the way.

One Sunday in Church Daniel preached about how how our church is deep in sin because we don’t have restrooms or enough benches for everyone to sit in. The point he wanted to make was that not tithing is a sin and that’s why our church is without these things. He probably just got excited and confused in the rush of things. Silmone condemned our church and chastised us for not washing each other’s feet, something that Jesus commanded of us. Unfortunately for Silmone, his sermon prep stopped just before reading the verse where Jesus actually explains what he was doing. And the biggest “What?” of all came when Vincent started teaching Sunday school one week by saying “In this week I’m going to teach about the three circles of hell.” This resulted in about 40 hands shooting up in the air in confusion.

I refrained from asking, “What in hell are you talking about?” partly because it seemed too easy, partly because it was way too crass for church, and partly because I really wanted to know what the three circles of hell were. I still don’t know…

He also left out the part where this guy makes sure you don’t leave your circle.

As we talked about it, all these gaffes resulted from them just being too excited and too in the moment to fully realize what they were talking about. Except for the circles of hell. I think that resulted from Vincent walking in to catch the last five minutes of a lecture at Bible school, it sounding really interesting, and then running with it because it just seemed too interesting to pass up.

Except for a few small goofs here and there, the three of them were a tremendous help to us here and all the kids loved having them around for a few weeks. Hopefully they’ll be able to have as great an impact where they end up working/serving after they finish Bible School.

The one about Regina

Regina is the senior gal her at the orphanage. She, like her brother Lazaru, has been here for a looong time. Everybody, guys and girls alike, they look up to her, seek out her advice and will generally just hang around her if not much is going on. For me, she’s usually the one I go to when I need a good dose of neighborhood gossip because she always seems to know everything that’s going on. A couple months ago I got the story of how a guy that lives down the hill from us that paid the witchdoctor to bless him and make sure he’d remain wealthy as long as he lived. As rumor has it the witchdoctor told him that as long as he wore pants with holes in them he’d remain rich. The man wore pants with holes in them and remained rich until the he died, a full 6 days later.

She, like her brother Lazaru, has been here longer than anybody else and everybody knows it. You may have heard me mention in the last post that she is 21, and I know a lot of you wondered why the heck do you have somebody living in an orphanage when they’re 21 and can fend for themselves.

Well, the reason we just don’t dump a kid back on the streets or in the jungle when they turn 18 has to do with what our goal is here. I’m sure there’s some fancy mission statement lying around the stack of papers I have here, but the goal is this: to transform lives. Sometimes we go out and find kids, while other times they are brought to us. Their lives already destroyed and headed for death until we step in, ransoming them, and literally pull them from their old life and giving them a new one. Along the way we teach them, instruct them, correct them, sometimes often discipline them, and provide them with the chance to have a future full of opportunity and joy. Spiritually, we do the exact same thing. Or, rather, Jesus does it. When their entire life’s journey is a mirror of the Gospel, it becomes easy for them to see why they need Jesus.

But just as the spiritual journey is sometimes always full of bumps in the road, the journey in life is also. All of the kids here are aware of that fact, and so is Regina. Aside from the normal everyday pressures for our girls to get married young (we’re talking 15, 16 years old over here) or to hurry up and find a man before you’re undesirable (20, 21 yrs), there’s the normal everyday pressure to be cheating in school, sleeping around, or doing “favors” for teachers to get good grades.

But Regina has a very good head on her shoulders, and God has remained faithful to transform her future. The first big piece of that transformation took place a little over a year ago and she found out she got into the Teacher’s Training college after finishing 10th grade with exceptionally high marks. As I’ve mentioned before, grade ten is kind of the benchmark around here for having higher-ed opportunity. This last year she went to Teacher’s college in the morning, and continued with 11th grade in the evening. This earned her the nickname “The Professor”.

To my brothers and the two other people who will get this reference, she's not this Professor.

This December she completed teacher’s training so the staff, her brother Lazaru (pictured below), and a couple of her close friends here at the orphanage went out to dinner at the Millenium Hotel, the best restaurant in the city (it’s really good, but the bar is set pretty low around here). It was an occasion they’ll never forget.

Another one flies the coop

Goodbyes are a very awkward thing in the culture here that I'm still getting accustomed to. When people leave there is often very little fanfare, folks will not talk about it, and if they do they will mention it in a very hushed manner as if its something not polite to be talked about. To make it worse, if somebody is leaving for a long time (or for good) people will avoid them like the plague all day. Case in point, when I left for America the last time I was here, nobody talked to me for two whole days before I left. When the large group of kids left for Beira, there was little fanfare, they packed their things, said a few goodbyes, and left.

There is still something that I can't quite put my finger on. It is as if everybody is just avoiding the difficult part of the goodbye. Its not like the movies where whatever friction that accidentally builds up between people eventually gets dramatically resolved, they let their emotions flow, and dramatic music plays in the background and everybody gets a happy ending.

Pictured: Not Mozambique

The one where Silas wins the lottery

This is Silas (pronounced See-luh) in the in the orange t-shirt. She's standing next to Gizela, Leonora, and her brother Felex. You may be wondering why she's so happy.

This is Silas taking off in a Boeing 737-200 last Tuesday. Let me explain.

Last week, we sent some kids down to Beira for higher education/career training. I put up a post about the five of them a week or two ago. Well, the post that I put up was made the day they left, and things changed a little bit. Simply put, the kids that are at Young Africa Institute trade school are in an incredible position. After Victor went down to set the Claudia up in the dorms (they only have dorms the girls) and the boys in a rented house, he went and checked out the campus and met with the instructors and the head of the school. Here's how one conversation went.