Last week Paul flew a team from a church in Cape Town to visit some of their missionaries in Mongu, Zambia and Quelimane, Mozambique. The trip involved five countries and almost 3000 miles (4500 km) of travel. Enough to get you from London to the North Pole.
He had flown a team to Mongu five years ago and was looking forward to returning to see how the work was getting on. Mongu is set on the banks of the Zambezi River flood plain only 75 miles from the Angolan border and is known for having one of Africa's only inland harbors.
They find that people are willing to walk about an hour each way to church and so their vision is to plant a church within walking distance of each person in Zambia's Western Province which is about the same size as the UK. The area is vast and the calculation is that they will need 65000 churches for the one million people living there. Currently they have 65 churches planted.
We visited some of their churches in Mongu...
and then drove out to one of the bush churches...
The road to and from this church was arduous and dusty, and required a 4x4.
Some of the churches they have planted are many days drive away and when the Zambezi floods - in places up to 50 km wide, it is easier to get there by boat.
There are many aspects to their work including the above mentioned church planting, but they also run a Bible School for the church leaders, as well as orphan care, community development including primary health care, community schools and agricultural development.
You can find more information at their well laid out website at: www.zam.co.za
Strangely enough, one thing I remember about Mongu is the plethora of barber shops as well as the many interesting and almost biblical names given to these businesses.
We spent two nights in Mongu and then headed east via Livingstone, for customs and immigration, through Harare, Zimbabwe for fuel (yes fuel!) and on to Quelimane in Mozambique.
On the way we did a quick lap of Victoria Falls...
The guys in Quelimane have set up projects very similar to those in Zambia. These include:
Schools work...
Agricultural projects...
Brickmaking - for commercial and for building some churches...
A Bible School held in a church.
In the evening the students put mattresses on the floor and throw mozzy nets over the pews to sleep. The kitchen is a wooden structure round the back of the church building.
They have also set up a prison ministry which we unfortunately didn't have time to visit.
One project we did visit involved a long drive down a road lined by coconut trees...
Once there a young bloke shimmied up a tree and chucked a load of coconuts down. Then another bloke attacked them with a machette...
so that we could have a cool drink of coconut milk.
I could go through the details of all the work here but it is better told at the World Wide Missions site: www.wwm.org.za
Thanks
Paul and Cathy
Riveting eh! Seriously though, it was very worthwhile and we had many good discussions as well as catching up with some old friends.
He had flown a team to Mongu five years ago and was looking forward to returning to see how the work was getting on. Mongu is set on the banks of the Zambezi River flood plain only 75 miles from the Angolan border and is known for having one of Africa's only inland harbors.
They find that people are willing to walk about an hour each way to church and so their vision is to plant a church within walking distance of each person in Zambia's Western Province which is about the same size as the UK. The area is vast and the calculation is that they will need 65000 churches for the one million people living there. Currently they have 65 churches planted.
and then drove out to one of the bush churches...
The road to and from this church was arduous and dusty, and required a 4x4.
Some of the churches they have planted are many days drive away and when the Zambezi floods - in places up to 50 km wide, it is easier to get there by boat.
You can find more information at their well laid out website at: www.zam.co.za
We spent two nights in Mongu and then headed east via Livingstone, for customs and immigration, through Harare, Zimbabwe for fuel (yes fuel!) and on to Quelimane in Mozambique.
The guys in Quelimane have set up projects very similar to those in Zambia. These include:
Agricultural projects...
Brickmaking - for commercial and for building some churches...
A Bible School held in a church.
In the evening the students put mattresses on the floor and throw mozzy nets over the pews to sleep. The kitchen is a wooden structure round the back of the church building.
They have also set up a prison ministry which we unfortunately didn't have time to visit.
Once there a young bloke shimmied up a tree and chucked a load of coconuts down. Then another bloke attacked them with a machette...
so that we could have a cool drink of coconut milk.
I could go through the details of all the work here but it is better told at the World Wide Missions site: www.wwm.org.za
Thanks
But now looks more like this.
We were able to recover a lot of the fittings (roofing, pipes, electrical etc) and will clear the area and likely offer the area for future staff to build a new house. Other than that it was a handy source of firewood for a while.
One of the Grannie's used to live in a grass house similar to the one in the picture, but ASAM helped with the building of a brick house. The grass house is now the kitchen.
ASAM have various agricultural projects, one of which are a series of gardens that grow food for the orphan programe.
One lady we visited had lost a leg to a land mine a few years ago. She lives with her daughter who was born blind. ASAM had also helped with building a brick house and one morning we visited her and helped her grind some maize.
The next day we painted the inside of the house for them.
Many of the kids we met had Tinia Capitus which is a fungal infection which prevents hair from growing.
As usual we stayed at ASAM and one day we found a Green Mamba that had been killed.
Or so we thought. Turns out that it wasn't very dead, as I found out when he curled up after I pulled his tail.
We visited the area that has been cleared for an airstrip. 1.2 km long and 100m wide. Still a lot of work to do.
His condition was serious enough that he might even lose his legs, so we picked him up the day after and took him to a hospital 80km away.
It was a very packed few days and we managed to grab a bit of scenery and fly back past a particularly nice bit of Mozambique coast appropriatley called Paradise Island.
Next blog should be in a weeks time about my next trip to Western Zambia and Mozambique.
Mr. fire truck driver said it's heart was still beating when they recovered it but as you could imagine, this didn't last for very long. Being of more than average bulk it made a corresponding mess of the plane and narrowly missed dissapearing into the engine air intake.
Handy that this trip happened when it did cos the previous night Matthew had proposed to his girlfiend who, after the appropriate answer, then became his fiance.
The now in-laws to be, also met us and we had a meal at a beachfront resturante.
The flight back was uneventful and we just had time to get the plane ready for the next day.
The total distance would get you from London to 300 miles past Moscow which helps explain why they wanted to fly.
Other speakers from the US and Brazil also flew in, and the conference went very well. The team made a documentary whilst there and their aim was to live stream the conference via the web to almost 30000 people around the world, although a cut fibre optic cable a few hundred miles away meant that the internet was down in Moz during their stay.
and some in the big tent.
Cooking for all the pastors in the evening was an event in itself.
I managed to meet up with another pilot friend whilst there and spent a few days flying jump seat with him in an Embraer 120, which was fun and very different from the type of flying I usually do.
Mozambique is very colourful and whilst driving around we saw all sorts - including the local bed salesman.
During a rare moment of spare time in Beira, I went to see an old wreck that I often fly over, a photo of which appeared in the previous blog post.
This Saturday I fly a UK team down to Durban to visit a hospital they help support and the day after I take another team up to Chimoio, Moz again to visit ASAM and the Mercy Air remote base. More blogging about that next week.
