Happy Thanksgiving

This weekend we celebrated Thanksgiving with our OMS team. We all gathered at the Glancys house. As Chelsea shared in her update a couple weeks ago, we feasted on a 32 pound turkey. We had 16 people and barely made a dent in the turkey, though we did our best. We'll have stories to tell about the turkey, and the challenge of finding an oven big enough to fit it for many years to come. It was a fun day and a great time together with the team. We wish you a Happy Thanksgiving and pray that you have a fun, relaxing, and safe holiday. We have many things to be thankful for and wanted to share some updates.

Family
Kris' parents visited us in October and stayed for about two weeks. It was great having the opportunity to spend time with them and seeing more of both Mozambique and South Africa with them. Our only disappointment was that our time with them went too fast.

English Program
The program is going well and we are excited to share it is now being run completely by Mozambicans. Timoteo is leading the program with the help of other church members and volunteers outside the church. He is completing his studies at the Language Institute in Maputo to be an English teacher and should be graduating in December. It's exciting to watch him develop as a leader in the church and in the English program. Now that the program is completely being run by Mozambicans Kris and I are spending more time teaching at the Christian Academy in Mozambique and helping to coordinate Christian Micro-Enterprise Development.

Christian Academy in Mozambique
Kris continues to enjoy teaching first and second grade. I'm enjoying teaching Pre-Algebra, Algebra, Business Math, Economics, and 11th and 12th grade Computers. One of the neat things about the school is all the different countries and cultures represented across the student body. Even though all the instruction is done in English, it's been a learning experience about how different English can be culture to culture. Chelsea and Jessica like the school and are learning a lot about many different cultures in Africa and around the world.

Christian Micro-Enterprise Development
Over the past several months I've been working together with Steve Kuhn, our Field Leadership Team, and leaders in the National Church to develop a strategy to identify and remove barriers to economic development for church and community members. Our strategy has three components; business training and mentoring, access to business opportunities and resources, and village-based savings and credit services. Click here to learn more about village-based savings and credit services and why they are important for rural communities, where most of our church planting work takes place.

A Good Friend
We've shared in previous updates about a good friend of our family, Jossias. Jossias has helped us with learning the culture in Mozambique and has been active in the English Program. We want to ask for your prayers for him. Over the last couple of months he's been ill, having problems with severe headaches and dizziness. He's not sure what the problem is, but his doctor is advising him that he needs to be in the hospital. He's preparing this week to travel back to his home province of Manica to be with his family and to go into the hospital.