December 8, 2000

Dear Friends and Family,

Two-thousand years ago the Savior was born, and He ministers the good news throughout all the world today through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Lord has wonderfully answered our prayer to minister in Africa by bringing us to Mozambique. We are learning that one of the costly facets of mission work is change. We have come to appreciate the absence of the word "goodbye" in the Lakota language of our Sioux friends in South Dakota. Next month we move again, 600 miles north to Chimoio, where we hope to be based for the next two or more years.

Our neighbors across the hall here in Maputo are Mozambicans born of Pakistani descent. They have been very kind to us, once even giving up the coveted parking space in front of our apartment house because "this is how Mozambicans treat their guests." Naj, the wife and mother, speaks Portuguese and self-taught English. The first month we were here she offered to help in any situation, knowing our linguistic limitations. We have traded favorite-recipe snacks, and their daughter and Anna Lena play together. Asmah speaks little English, and Anna Lena’s Portuguese is spotty, but they can still play a mean game of "Go Fish." Our neighbors are fasting during daylight hours in observance of Ramadan, one lunar month in which Moslems remember the hungry. Asmah’s father, Abdul, spends time in prayer every day of the year.

Last Sunday Charles was invited to preach at the evening service of the Methodist church, and dressed up for the first time in his new white suit. He met Abdul, coming up the stairs, who said,

"You look smart!"

"I’m going to preach tonight," Charles said.

"So am I!" responded Abdul, holding his Koran, the sacred text of Islam, with his fingers wedged between pages he was marking.

Returning from the church service, we again met Abdul and his family. They had just broken fast, and were on their way to the mosque. Abdul was dressed in a long, white robe. Charles told him, "Now you look smart!" and Abdul responded with his warm laugh.

The next day, Abdul asked Charles to pray for Asmah, who has been diagnosed with diabetes. We were impressed by the vulnerability and trust expressed in this request. Our neighbors have become our friends, and we are glad there is no word for "goodbye" in Lakota.

Today at least 14 African nations are embroiled in what one British Broadcasting correspondent calls "Africa War I." A CNN journalist refers to the violence that rages across the continent from Angola to Eritrea as "a curtain of fire." Of the world’s AIDS victims, 70 percent are in the southern half of Africa. There are famines, hellish poverty, government corruption, and crime. Some
continue to wield their religions as instruments of destruction.

How long, O Lord, until Messiah returns and establishes peace on earth? How grateful we are for the moments of good will when men love their neighbors as themselves. It is at those times that once again we experience the hope and joy of Jesus’s birth. The Bible assures us that all who seek God with true hearts will find Him. Someday we hope Abdul and his family, all of you, and we, too, will be found among the "great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the
Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, saying, Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and unto the Lamb!" (Rev. 7:9-10)

We wish you a Merry Christmas and blessed New Year!

Charles and Diane, Micah, Jonah, Anna Lena, and Isaiah

The 2001 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 44