Adjusting to Adversity all the while BLESSED!

Sheri Graham

Sunday 8/10/14 -  After lunch guys picked grapefruit w/Steph & Sarah & Daniel. I stayed home to do some reading. Afterward, everyone was supposed to go to the waterfall to relax, but we were all too tired. Spent “Evening w/the missionary” as Steph didn’t have electricity but we did, so she charged her computer while we asked her questions. We were all too tired for dinner, so guys ate leftover carrot cake from lunch. I ate leftover rice from Sat night. Stephanie appears to be very settled here, as she has 2 pets and is wanting to adopt an orphan. She seems happy, although I can’t imagine how frustrated she is with the delays in opening the clinic. She says she gets a bit discouraged sometimes, but she certainly doesn’t show it. I admire her tenacity & her ability to show Christ-likeness despite the adversity.

Cecil and Enrique working on the clinic. Note: the rolling scaffold is 

 a hospital bed frame, the ceiling hoist is an iv pole & a metal grate.

Monday 8/11/14 - We all worked at the clinic all day today. We prepped it for paint so Enrique will paint tomorrow. This morning Steph found several guys from the saw mill stealing what little water we had in the tank for the Rondavo (we wondered why we didn’t have a drop this am!). We were without water & electricity during lunch, but Steph has a gas stove so she made omelets for lunch. All the other missionaries here are married and have children, so I’m glad we’re here to fellowship w/Stephanie & encourage her. Everyone here is no nice & helpful, but it is different when you’re single. 

God has kept us safe and free from accidents. He is doing work in each one of us. I look forward to our chats every am & pm when we talk about what He is doing and can glean from each other & encourage one another. Anna (wife of one of Stephanie’s workers) does our cooking, cleaning & wash Mon-Wed-Thurs. Once the clinic is done enough that the guys won’t need me, there are several nursing projects for me to do for Steph/clinic and Sarah/orphan assessments & records. I also need to start working on the teachings Carlos wanted me to do for the workers.

Tuesday 8/12/14 - AM devotional, we discussed 1 Thess 5:17 Pray w/out ceasing, in everything give thanks… We will remember to pray before every task for Jesus to help us with it. If the task does not go well, we will give it to the Lord & not get frustrated. We are doing this work for the Lord, not Stephanie, not Roy, not even Maforga. We thank God for the opportunity to work where He is working, and thankful that He is helping us to accomplish it…even if it means His perfect timing to accomplish it means trying again tomorrow, or the next day (we finally got the middle hall light in the clinic working this am after 3 days of working on it & having to just walk away!). The work is frustratingly slow. I pray that we are able to encourage Stephanie & love on her to maintain her spirits, despite the endless delays and lack of ideal (ie Home Depot!) materials & tools. 

We decided that this week we will take a 2 hour siesta every day to refresh our minds, bodies, and especially our spirits mid-day. I needed water to wash clinic walls today. Water to clinic is shut off for now. The Rondova was out of water (our container of reserve for bathing is critically low). Steph had collected a container over the past couple days for the clinic work. As I carried a bucket full of water up the hill from her house to the clinic 3 times (each time getting heavier), I thought of how precious a commodity water is and what we have to go through to obtain it (but at least I wasn’t having to carry it up from the river today). I pondered the comparison of striving for physical water with the living water. But living water is much more precious, and as much as we will work to get the water necessary for physical life, we should strive even greater lengths necessary to obtain the living water. Today I met Chris, one of the long-term missionaries at the Catholic Mission, where Steph has her corn milled. He used to be a high school coach (and he looked the part). Really nice guy & funny- I’m sure Pastor Rick would enjoy him. Enrique painted clinic ceilings. Cecil disassembled water system at one abandoned house to take over to Stephanie’s. Cec & Enrique helped Roy replace hot water heater at Nanna’s.

Cecil, Sarah, Kees, Enrique

Wednesday 8/13/14 -  Dinner w/Kees & Sarah Tanis & their children Rubin & Farai, and their visiting missionary friend Bert. Farai is home on holiday from boarding school in South Africa. Great fellowship. They made coconut tart again – just as good as last year!

They originally came to Maforga 17 yrs ago to manage the boys' side of the orphanage. They expanded to manage the school, and start ministries for the handicapped, prison, and discipleship training.

Farai, Sheri, Bert, Rubin

 I re-organized the kitchen & bathroom, and cleaned the bathroom & swept about 100 cobwebs off the walls & ceilings this am after Anna was done cleaning. Enrique worked on water tower, and cut trees w/Lovemore for tower support beams. I swept & mopped clinic for Enrique to paint floor in the morning. Cec worked on wiring to install more lights on another chicken coop. Then we carried water system to Steph’s so Cec can determine how to install it.

Thursday 8/14/14 -  Cec went to town with Steph & bonded, had lunch together in town. I spent the day making screens. Enrique painted clinic floors. I helped kids make banner for Nanna’s bday party – she’s 85. Womens prayer at 4pm. Africa is praying for David, Christa, Marie & Pastor Rick. Potluck outside Nanna’s for dinner with bonfire, great fellowship. The water shortage makes everything a challenge. When we’re done washing dishes, they’re usually left w/greasy film since there isn’t enough water to fully wash, and hardly rinse. Lovemore injured his ankle Wed afternoon but kept working, including carrying the cut trees uphill to the water tower. This morning he asked to work only ½ day; I doctored his wound & prayed over it. The area is swollen and very painful (I barely touched it & he jumped, but he won’t wince & when asked, he says he’s trying not to pay attention to the pain). When pressed, he really wanted the day off, but didn’t want to neglect his work obligation. Many of the people here are really tough and humble. I love how they’re so grateful for the little that they have – he & his 4 kids live in a small 10x10 mud & thatch hut w/dirt floor. But he is considered wealthy since he & his wife work (his wife is our cook/clean). Cec laid out water system in prep for install & determined what parts they still needed from town.

Manuel’s 1^st cast was very heavy & painful, so he had the doctor recast, which is now less painful. We are still praying God’s will. I’m told that Manuel & Carlos follow their culture’s “protocol” as far as following doctor’s orders. If you go against 1 doctor, you get black-listed with all doctors in the country so they won’t ever treat you again. A team of 15 from Beira arrived last night. Trish didn’t know about it, so she was scrambling in the midst of Nanna’s bday party to prepare dinner and clean the church for them to bed-down for the night. The team is led by Chico from Beira, who is 1 of the 5 that Roy had originally asked a pastor in Beira to send years ago to help w/boys part of the orphanage. Carlos & Manuel (Rubatano) were also part of that 5. The 15 come annually for 1 week to seek the Lord; they also minister to the children while they are here and anything else the Lord has them do. They travel the Beira corridor thru-out the year ministering to the area villages. I can’t wait to hear them speak (& play – Chico writes his own music/songs) this Sunday.

The Lord is really helping me deepen my relationship with Him. There seems to be new insight almost every day, but what is foremost in my mind recently is to bless the Lord at all times: to pray for His help before every task, no matter how small, and to praise Him at the end of every task, whether it was successful or not; to do everything with excellence, because our God is excellent; to open-up my whole self to him completely every morning, so that during the day when my mind is concentrating on different tasks, my spirit is still in-tune with Him. Everything here is a bit more difficult, and takes much longer, since we don’t have many things that I considered “necessities” in the US. But it’s still do-able, and the adjustment is such a blessing. One of my goals for this trip was for the Lord to take me down to the “nitty-gritty” so I can see the world as He sees it, w/out all the distractions of my flesh, my wants & desires, my preconceived notions and expectations – basically, my SELF. He has also been very gracious to do it slowly. 

I’m also learning much from talking with the other missionaries. I heard more stories last night from Trish about the 1992 war & drought that brought 2000 starving people to Maforga from the surrounding villages looking for food; that there was no running water so they had to dig latrines which overflowed w/all the people & Trish contracted Hepatitis; that Roy spear-heading the mercy-shipments of food to the 25,000 starving people in the surrounding area brought him under suspicion & great danger from the 2 warring parties, since feeding villagers that were sympathetic to 1 or the other party labeled him sympathetic to the opposing party (he later found out from a RENAMO leader that he was supposed to be shot 1 whole year prior to the end of the war); that they chose a different place to sleep in the wilderness every night in case they were under surveillance for kidnapping. Trish recounted 1 day that Roy went to deliver a load of food to a village a few miles away, but took 3 hrs to arrive by logging trail since the roads were land-mined; that she had an overwhelmingly desperate need to pray for Roy so she grabbed another woman and prayed face-down for a few minutes, then heard the bombings in Roy’s direction. She had to wait 3 hrs to see him return alive, & he told her he was only minutes into unloading the truck when he had an overwhelming need to leave immediately, despite the villagers pleas to stay to finish unloading the needed food; that village was bombed minutes after he left. So many stories of what Satan meant for evil that the Lord turned to good. I’ve read Trish’s book about their captivity – but what the book doesn’t describe is how years later, they returned to those camps where they were held captive to share the gospel, and how many of those camps/villages now have planted churches!