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In the Piper Line |
CP 169 |
SIM Australia | ||
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Hi. I’m Phillip’s new computer. Phillip and Nicola have wanted to write a newsletter to let everyone know what’s been happening, but it seems like they just have too much to do at the moment. So, I’m going to write their newsletter for them. Let’s see … Phillip’s journal … their diary … their emails … and lots of photos. Hmm, from all these, I think I can give you a pretty good idea of what’s been happening.
By the way, if you’ve got email and you’re not on their mailing list, let me know and I’ll make sure you get their monthly prayer updates. And you can always find their latest news and photos on their website: www.bigfoot.com/~phillip_piper.
Preaching at the edge of the world
During December, Phillip went and preached at another edge of the world. This place was called Maula, close to the border of Mozambique and Malawi. There used to be a road that went past the church, but it had dissolved several years ago and been swallowed up by the scrub. To reach the church, the church members had cleared fallen logs and branches and marked tree trunks to show the way to go.
Physically, this place was even poorer than Girasole (another edge of the world location): the church building was entirely grass and bamboo; the people’s clothes were torn; there were split logs for seats. But while Phillip was there, the idea that they were poor never entered his head. They were full of animation, enthusiasm, proud of being visited by the state director of the church and by the missionary. They lived in sandy scrub and owned almost nothing – but they were not poor.
Hiccups
The rest of December was … eventful.
There was no water and little electricity in the city. Phillip spent a few days away, helping to organize theological training in northern Mozambique. Nicola and the boys had an interesting time while he was away: the house was robbed; Nicola found one of the local crazy men helping himself to food from the kitchen; and their night guard turned up drunk and had to be fired.
Lack of water was an increasingly severe problem. The local hospital set up a quarantine (just a big tent, actually) to handle an outbreak of cholera. Phillip seemed to spend more than half his time just surviving, fetching water for various families. The rains arrived late in December which helped everything.
Christmas was spent with the rest of the SIM team in Lichinga, where they said farewell to the out-going leader of the Mozambican team. When they returned home, they found that they had been given a New Year’s present: the water and the electricity returned to the city.
Nicola goes there and back again
It seems that the biggest thing that has happened so far this year is that Nicola returned to Australia for three weeks during March. Her father was having his 70th birthday and she returned as a surprise birthday present. From the way Phillip wrote in his journal, you’d think that something serious had happened. He seemed genuinely distressed about his wife being away.
Of course the most important thing that Nicola brought back from Australia was me – the new computer! The power supply on their old computer had burnt itself out. Phillip emailed some friends in his old job, asking if they could get a new power supply plus some other spare parts. But they did much more than that – they bought a whole new computer! When I arrived, Phillip was so pleased to see me he almost cried – the fact that Nicola arrived at the same time was purely coincidental.
That was then, this is now
Since then, things seem to have been very busy.
Phillip has volunteered to teach a course on the Pentateuch at the local theological college. The college has never run this course before, so he has to prepare everything from scratch. The course is intensive: 1.5 hours each night, 4 nights each week, 5 weeks in a row. Besides the course, Phillip has still been running his little discipleship group and preaching at local churches. The course starts on April 4 and runs until May 15.
Nicola keeps busy each day with schooling the boys. She is also running a lady’s Bible study, where they are studying the parables. She and some other missionary ladies are also running a “life-skills” course in the local girls’ home, teaching the girls about purity and health.
Joshua and Drew have both been wrestling with the idea of home school (when they’re not actually wrestling with each other). Drew is normally keen to start and, very soon afterwards, even more keen to finish. After he does almost anything, he puts his pencil down, jumps down from his chair and says, “Have I finished? Can I go now?” Joshua seems to go through cycles from not minding school too much to simply refusing to do anything.
It’s been said before, but…
Thank you so much for your prayers and support. We could simply not survive without them. We love receiving your e-mails, letters and parcels too. They’re a great encouragement to us.
With much love,
Phillip, Nicola, Joshua and Drew
Piper
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For further information You can get a nicely formatted version of this newsletter, complete with pictures, either here (in Word document format) or here (in Adobe PDF format). Both are about 350KB in size. Our web site (www.bigfoot.com/~phillip_piper) always has the latest photos, journal entries and news about us. The photos are lagging a little behind (we’re back to having troubles with the Internet), but the journal is up to date. Click here to see some maps showing where Cuamba and Niassa province are. Click here or here to see news stories about Mozambique (updated daily). Click here to see lots of technical articles about Mozambique.
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