dear friends and family,

sorry for the delay in my updates, but after over 3 months of training in south africa, i’m finally in mozambique!

flying through fields of cotton candy. 'twas beautiful.

finally arrived! beira airport.

beautiful view from the seafood restaurant along the coast.

driving westward towards chimoio.

if you haven't noticed yet, i love the sky :)

although i’ve heard much and seen much of the people, projects, and surroundings through pictures and stories, mozambique is definitely not what i had expected it to be. i was imagining a more lush, tropical-forest type of environment, but this place has generally been… flat and brown (?). maybe it’s because of all the mud and rain. the rainy season has just begun a few days ago, actually. it was supposed to have begun over two months ago, so this delay has caused a drought and famine in this place. people are literally starving.

the poverty is so blatantly visible here, much more so than in south africa. driving along the main road, you can see run-down huts made of mud and tree branches, children with tattered clothing and no shoes walking miles at end, people physically struggling to ride their bicycles as they're hauling loads of home-made coal to sell in town all for $3.

it has been less than one week, but there is already so much to say.

but all in all,


it is good to be here :)




thank you for all who’ve been supporting and praying for me. these past three months have been the longest but shortest three months in my life as of yet, and every moment has been amazing. the stresses of “the airport incident” are still fresh in my mind, and i thought i could never redeem myself from it (hehe). but that’s what’s so amazing about it all: it’s not about me or what i do, because at the end, God’s grace is enough, and it’s more than enough to get me through.

more than anything, though, these past three months have been such a time of peace. people here have been saying that God meets people in africa like no other place; i didn't really understand what they meant, but i think it's somewhat true. and it's not necessarily because of what i've been physically seeing or experiencing. the words in Scripture have never been so clear in my life; they're alive, and they're truth, and i think i've only begun to understand that.


so thank you,


for sharing this experience with me.

:)

Come and see what God has done: he is awesome in his deeds toward the children of man.
-Psalm 66:5