Our Girls?

You hear alot from us about "our boys"!  As the parents of sons and parents/mentors/cheerleaders of our nine interns, our lives are full of "all things male."   Male voices singing, bouncing basketballs, broken windows from overzealous soccer players in our yard, boys dorm type pranks,  advice giving on girls and relationships and choosing a mate.   Our interns are not permitted to date while participating with us in the program, but that doesn't stop them from thinking ahead! :)

We've noticed, however, that BECAUSE we have 9 handsome, gifted, EMPLOYED young men at our house, the "stop bys" to our house for any reason under the sun by young ladies is increasing.  In our 25 de Junho ministry, the number of young ladies who attend on Sunday FAR outnumbers the young men.  Some of these young ladies are quite forward, verbally expressing their interest in one or other of the boys.

  Even just a little farther outside of the city of Maputo, in our Agostinho Neto location which is very rural, the ministry is almost entirely young men.  Young women are busy working at home.  They often tend to be less forward and much more timid around young men.  Still, we need to reach them.

The question is always in our thinking, what do we do to reach and teach these young women, even if their intentions for coming are only focused on the young men in our midst?

At this point, Lynne and Mary are the only women, grounded in their faith, here to work with these young women and Mary's effectiveness is somewhat limited by the fact that her language skills are still very basic, she works another full time job and has small children at home.  

Well, we pray ALOT, especially Lynne, for wisdom and a keen intuition and look for opportunities to "go deeper" with the young women the Holy Spirit points out to us.  To give us a heart for those we are to pour our lives into.

This is Martinha, 20 years old, she is a student at the Institute of Technology, studying to be an accountant.  We met Martinha through her mother who works at a local store Lynne discovered while exploring the neighborhood two years ago.  Lynne and Martinha's mother quickly struck up a friendship when they discovered they are both followers of Jesus!  Martinha's mother is a single mom who works seven days a week and worries about her young adult children.  The church they were trying to attend was very far away from their house and she was eager for Martinha to get involved with our ministry.  Martinha is also a believer in Jesus.

Katia is another young lady who just recently came to faith, though she has been attending church regularly for the past 9 months or so.  She is just about to complete the first discipleship course.  She is a high school graduate and preparing to take the entrance exam for university.

In the last two weeks, God has given Lynne some great opportunities to get to know these girls better.  

Will you pray for them to go deeper in their faith and become passionate followers of Jesus?  Will you pray for more of the girls in our ministry to come to faith in Jesus?

Will you also pray with us for another young woman(American, Brazilian, Mozambican, Portuguese) to work alongside us, helping and mentoring these young women, maybe even starting up an internship program for them as well?   As a "icing on the cake" kind of request,  will you also pray with us that this young woman would already have a basic understanding and ability to converse in Portuguese?  We believe nothing is too hard for God and He DESIRES to give us "icing on our cake" when we come to Him in faith, deeply desiring for these young ladies to bring glory to Him with their lives.

These young people are the future of Mozambique!