The Piper Family - Missionaries in Mozambique

keeping in touch with us

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Contacting us in Mozambique is not quite as easy as it was in Portugal. But do not despair. It is possible!

emails

For emails, please use phillip_piper@bigfoot.com. This is our permanent email address and will always reach us - no matter where in the world we are. The phone lines here are still not all that fast, so please don't send us any large emails, or any forwarded funnies.

If you want to speak to someone in person, our phone number is +258-27162842. We're looking at getting a Skype phone. If anyone would be interested in calling us on a Skype phone, let us know and that will probably encourage us to "look faster" at this option.

finances

To get in touch with SIM regarding support arrangement or all matter financial:

SIM Australia
PO Box 42
Penshurst
NSW 2222

02-9580-1422

Please note: Under Australian tax laws, financial support for missionaries is not tax deductible :-(

letters

Letters can be sent directly to us at the following address. It should take about 4 weeks for items to arrive -- give or take a month or two :-).

CP 169
Cuamba
Mozambique

Please do NOT send packages to this address (see below). Several packages have disappeared into the void.

parcels

Packages can be safely sent to the following address:

SIM
Box 136
Blantyre
Malawi

Please be aware that they may take several months to actually get to us, so no blue cheese or cream cakes in the parcels, please -- otherwise the latter might become the former :-)

Important

On all packages, you must fill out the customs declaration, particularly the 'Commerical Value' box. Without this, the post office will automatically charge a large amount of customs. If you are sending gifts, it is entirely truthful to put '$0' as the commerical value, as the goods have no resale value.

Please don't declare a package as being over US$50 (AUD$100) in value. This also automatically attracts a large amount of customs. On one package with a declared value of AUD$150, the customs official decided that we needed to pay AUD$250 in customs!

what to put in the parcels

Getting a nice parcel from home is one of the things we love most. It's like a surprise Christmas. If you want some ideas on what to send to us, you've come to the right place.

For who	What	Comments
The kids (big and little)	Chocolate, Chocolate bars (Mars, Violet Crumble, etc.). Tim Tams	Always a favorite to see when we open a package
The kids (little)	Bubble gum; smarties; Lifesavers; Yogurt Tops	These are "strictly" rationed treats for the kids.
Phillip	Computer magazines with CDs (e.g. PC Authority, Australian Personal Computing); Spice packs; Powdered coconut milk; Rechargeable batteries or good normal batteries (AA and AAA); Blank DVDs or CD (rewritable if possible)
Nicola	Scotch finger biscuits or shortbread; Eco or Caro (i.e. a caffeine-free coffee substitute); any encouraging Christian books; any cake decorating things for kids; dried fruit; almond meal; nuts; craft stuff; jigsaw puzzles.	You can't buy anything like this, even in Malawi
Joshua	Burritos (actually we all love these); books of all kinds; Upbeat Christian music
Drew	Lego; Magnetics; anything sweet!
Isabella	Any little girly things; Kids videos

If you would like to send a DVD or video, here are some videos we'd love to see (or that we used to have but have since "disappeared"):

For the kids	For the bigger kids
The Incredibles (the whole family loved this one) Treasure Planet Sinbad Shrek 3 Spiderman 2 and 3 Kim Possible (but not the movie, we have that)	Spanglish You've got mail 10 things I hate about you Casanova (never seen but it looks fun) The Matrix series

new look

We've changed completely the look of our website. This new design is a clean, minimal approach, emphasising legibility and affordance (things do what you expect them to do).

Click here to let us know what you think.

[2007-07-03]

recent changes

It's been a while since we've been able to update our website. Here are some of the changes:

[2007-05-31]

new rss feed!

For the technically inclined, our journal now has an RSS feed. Use your favourite news aggregator or your Yahoo home page to see what's been happening to the piper family.

To copy the URL, right click on the RSS link above, and select "Copy Link Address".

[2006-05-23]

random photo

Why do we ever think that we will be able to stop our boys going into the water if they are near it? We didn’t bring a change of clothes for either of them. The coolness of the day, the coldness of the water, and Joshua’s ear infection were why we didn’t want them to get wet. But none of that prevailed. You can see the cotton wool in Joshua’s infected ear.
[taken: 2002-07-05 12:43:13]