PCM News: August 2012

27 August 2012

Marromeu I Presume?

-->

Last week Paul flew an Education Ministry team to teach for a week at a YWAM DTS that was being run north of Marromeu on the banks of the Zambezi River in Mozambique.

The team taught the students how the ‘classroom in a box’ could be used to reach some of the communities that they will work with in the future.

At the end of the week MAF flew some guys down from N. Moz for the weekend to see and discuss the education work with a view to using it themselves in their ministry.

Paul's accomodation was pretty standard for this type of trip. Nine days sleeping on someone's porch with their cat and pregnant dog.

Nensa, where WYAM are based, is in the bush about an hours drive from Marromeu (which itself is eight hours drive from the nearest town of any useful size). One hour’s drive further on is Chupunga where Mary Moffat is buried. She was Dr. Livingstone’s wife. Dr. Livingstone is best known as an explorer and having someone once greet him with the words ‘Dr. Livingstone I presume’. There is a lot more than him than that though. He was a very principled man and his three driving passions were Christianity, Commerce and Community. The first of these were what drew him to Africa in the first place and his passion for the Zambezi was the vision that it would eventually be used as a highway to transport the Gospel into southern Africa. This had only moderate success as he ended up spending more time discovering large lakes and categorising plants and animals than he did preaching.

I’m not trying to suggest we are taking over the baton – his legacy leaves far too large a baton to carry anyway, but by working in this area we do feel somewhat proud to be a very small link in continuing his dream albeit 150 years later.

Anyway, Mary is buried in Chapunga where there is now a Catholic church.

Just down a small lane in an unkempt graveyard by the River Zambezi is her grave.

Cell phone reception in Moz is improving dramatically but there are still huge holes where reception is non existent. The YWAM base at Nensa would fall into this category but gets a ‘marginally unreachable’ tag due to a handy mound of dirt where the faintest of cell phone signal was discovered. It became so popular it was almost worn away so they built it up with a few spare bricks.

One day soon it will get a thatch roof to stop people getting frazzled by the sun as they frantically type sms’s and then hold their phones in the air to get reception.

Two of the girls who work with YWAM live in Marromeu and just happen to have a war relic in their back garden - as you do. Not sure but I think it's a Russian T38 tank.

It's become a bit of a feature but more specially with the kids who think it's the best climbing frame and swing ever.

I write this in Marromeu at the end of this trip. I fly home tomorrow and next week Cathy and I are off for two weeks to celebrate our twenty fith wedding anniversary and Cathy's 'big' birthday.

Paul and Cathy

A short history of us

Not long after we were married we felt that God had some full time work for us overseas. This initially began with a move to Sheffield in 1992 to work for a Christian management training company. Three years later we felt the Lord's prompting that another change was imminent and this led to a move to Africa where we helped set up a youth program with the Lesotho-Durham link in the capital Maseru. An initial three year commitment turned into four after which the youth work was handed over to the nationals.

Then, after feeling God was moving us into mission flying Paul enrolled at a flying school and completed his South African commercial license with an instrument rating in December 1999.

We moved from Lesotho to White River in South Africa in June of 2003 where we now work with Mercy Air. Mercy Air was borne out of Youth with a Mission (YWAM) and is a sister, although smaller organisation to the more well known Mercy Ships. We are situated near Nelspruit and provide a service to missions and the development/aid community in the southern African region but mainly serve Mozambique.

We operate four aircraft at present - a Quest Kodiak, a Cessna 310 and two Airbus 350 helicopters which are often used for the relief flights.

When not flying Paul is responsible for flight operations and is Mercy Air's Safety Officer.

Cathy, who is a registered Nurse and Midwife works part time at Africa School of Missions which is a bible college preparing missionaries for overseas service. She teaches in their School of Health and is part of a team which visits a number of rural clinics during the week. She is also helps with the hospitality ministry that Mercy Air runs.

Matthew spent four years at Rhodes University in Grahamstown where he studied photo journalism. He has now flown the nest and is living with his wife in Durban. They have a young daughter named Isabella.