"…but God meant it for good"(Gen 50:20)

SIM withdraws from Mozambique

As many of you are already aware, in mid-January, our mission, SIM, was asked to leave Mozambique by its partnering church, the Igreja União Baptista de Moçambique (the United Baptist Church of Mozambique). The withdrawal must be completed before July 2001, though most missionaries have already left. The announcement of SIM's dismissal was a complete shock to the mission team. The reasons for the dismissal are not completely clear. SIM is now considering its options for future ministry in Mozambique.

For us personally, our call to Mozambique is unchanged. When we heard this news, we too were shocked. But after prayer and thought, we decided that it didn't really affect our plans. With God's help, we will still serve Him in that needy country in the next year or two. To do that, we still need to learn Portuguese, and that remains our goal for the next 18 months. Please pray for the SIM missionaries as they seek God's will for their lives now.

Pray that God will use this withdrawal to ultimately strengthen and purify the Mozambican church. Despite the changes, living in Portugal is very pleasant. There is great coffee, good food, and good roads. The people are reserved but friendly. They love children: Joshua and Drew have been doted on wherever we've gone.

More floods in Mozambique

Mozambique has suffered yet another round of flooding. In this bout, the floods have affected 400,000 people, and 75,000 people have lost their homes completely. The lower Zambezi has broken its banks entirely and whole towns are now waist deep in water.

Click here to see more information about the most recent floods.

Click here to see a news stories about Mozambique (updated daily).

Click here to see lots of technical articles about Mozambique.

Please pray that God will stop the rain in this region (much of the flood waters come from other countries), and that the international community will continue to provide emergency services. Also pray that nations will honour pledges made during the last floods for long-term assistance to rebuild the country's infrastructure.

On the importance of caffeine

The shop is filled with light, smells, and sounds. The aroma of fresh coffee mingles with a bitter haze of cigarette smoke. Chairs scrape on hardwood floors, and the noise of trucks and traffic rumbles through the open front door. Small swirls of customers descend, discuss and disperse. And everywhere the frustratingly opaque Portuguese language murmurs, chatters and shouts.

Welcome to the café, the hub of Portuguese society. Here, businessmen transact, couples dawdle, teenagers lounge, workmen relax, and everyone drinks coffee.

Portugal runs on coffee, and cafés are its' refuelling stations. Coffee is the single reason for cafés' existence - after all, the Portuguese word for coffee is "café." Sure, they sell nice little cakes and (often) good cheap lunches, but it is the coffee that draws the regulars each day.

The function of coffee is often not social interaction, but simple chemical enhancement. All cafés have a standing-only bar, for those who don't want to be delayed or distracted from their coffee by conversation. There are even "express" cafés, which have only the standing bar - no seats, no tables.

People duck into a café for a quick caffeine hit before returning to face the world. The ritual is: walk in; order uma bica (short black); strenuously stir in sugar; down the sweet, heart-kicking blackness in three intense sips; pay; leave.

Coffee is Portugal's obsession, but smoking is its addiction. Nicotine ranks behind caffeine as the second of life's essential vitamins. A quick survey of our café reveals that three out of every two Portuguese adults smoke. There is no social stigma attached to smoking. For two lifetime non-smokers, it has taken time to become accustomed to the perpetual haze.

What must be the effect on the national psyche of 90 per cent of the adult population being dosed high on caffeine and nicotine for the majority of the day? None as far as we can see. People have been uniformly polite and patient with us and our broken Portuguese.

For more information than you could possibly want about coffee, click here.

Language learning

We were warned that the 3-9 month period was a discouraging one - you learn a lot but you don't seem to get any better. For us, this has certainly been true, though there have still been glimmers of light. We were able to hold a simple, stunted conversation with the owner of our regular café about Carnival (which is like the one in Rio, only smaller). Occasionally, we understand an entire sentence on the news.

We can often understand Eunice (our language tutor) when she speaks Portuguese, but we still find it very hard to understand anyone else. In some moments of dark humour, I imagine that Eunice has actually been teaching us Esperanto, which is why we understand so much of what she says and so little of what anyone else says! The real reason for this is the fear factor. When we're listening to Eunice, we're relaxed and calm. But when we're listening to someone else, fear and panic set in, and the brain freezes up. In this state, we don't hear very well, and when we speak, we say stupid things. Recently, a policeman was giving us a parking ticket (again). He was grilling me (in Portuguese) about where was my driver's license, and whether the car was insured. In an attempt to gain some sympathy, I tried to say "Eu não falo Português" ("I don't speak Portuguese"), but in a moment of supreme brain fade, I said "Eu não gosto de Português" ("I don't like the Portuguese"). He looked at me, and for a few moments there was one of those awful pauses, those "Oh no" moments when you realise that you have just done something completely stupid. As you can imagine, this did not improve my standing in his eyes!

Once we have come close to our ultimate goal. One morning, we were listening to Eunice talk about one of her childhood experiences. Afterwards neither of us could remember whether she had been speaking English or Portuguese. We had understood her meaning without noticing the language that she used. That day was unique - everything just clicked then - but it was a sign of things to come!

Praise God for the glimmers of light that encourage us. Pray that we will both significantly improve in our ability to understand what people say. Also pray for Joshua and Drew that they will understand more Portuguese.

Through all of our experiences, we have had many words of encouragement from friends and family at home. Thank you for all the support you have given us. As we expected, this has been a humbling experience but your support has helped us to hang in there!

Phillip, Nicola, Joshua and Drew Piper