Cob house builders

One of the places we visited while in Northern Mozambique I did not mention in these blogs, but now so many people are finding out and are extremely interested. Therefore, I must include it for all to see.

While in Lichinga, we visited some American missionaries who were invited to build a compound in a Yao village. Their ministry may appear somewhat natural, but it is exceptional, and I believe God is using it. Not to mention what visions it is stirring up in us for a base of our own!

These missionaries met as young couples in college preparing for service to Africa. Then they moved over to Mozambique - two couples are here in Lichinga and three others are in another location.

These two couples were allowed to make a compound in a Yao village near Lichinga. They wanted to make things that could be built of all natural and locally available materials and be useful for the Yao people. So they found a cob house building book (published in Oregon) and began to build. (Cob is a mixture of earth, sand and straw.) The places are amazing! So artistic, creative and free.

They also designed a wood stove that is amazingly efficient - it will cook 21 pots of water with the same three sticks of firewood that would normally only cook five pots of water. This is such a great benefit because the women travel four hours each way to cut firewood and haul it home on their heads. The stove was "marketed" in this way-- they would come and build it for free for a person (it is made of cob, as are their houses), if he will find two others who will come and watch the process. Then the three of them will build stoves for the other two. This stove project has caught fire! They are all over now.

These missionaries are planting sunflowers and developing a cold-press to make oil for cooking. They have a tilapia pond from which they take daily scoops of fertile water for their hydroponic garden; they plant the "miracle plant" moringa, which has so many health and nutritional benefits (many relief organizations hope it can make a big impact on poverty world-wide); they designed a "chicken tractor" to contain their chickens (which most Africans don't) and fertilize their ground; they give out a breeding pair of rabbits with the condition that when they have babies, another breeding pair are given away again; and the list goes on.

See their website for the full story: www.yaomission.org/images/holtons/construction_site/construction_site.htm

Look what God can do with a vessel who is submitted to his instruction and whose aim is to love the poor. God will give us creativity and wisdom. He will use the schooling and experience we have and go far beyond that for His purposes. No one should think himself/herself unqualified to be a missionary. What skills do you have that God can breathe on for His glory - handyman skills, mechanic, nursing, teaching, gardening, ditch digging, love for kids, horticulture, construction, diaper-changing, midwifery, agriculture? The list is endless.

When we walked with care workers through Maputo, I first began to get discouraged at the endless sea of need. No one had an income he could depend on; everyone had an orphan or two or four they were trying to feed; some were chronically sick - probably HIV. Then God began to put hope in me that there is a solution in Him to the insidious poverty, disease, ignorance, and social and familial dysfunction. His answer? You and me. He sent us into the world to be his hands and feet, to be his salt and light. A community of Christ-bearing servants can do miracles in such a place. Lord, send your workers!