Update from Mozambique

I made it to Mozambique just a few hours ago, and much has happen here in the last few days. To bring you up to speed, I thought it would be easiest to share two quick updates from Pieter, that were sent in the last two days.

Please read and continue to pray for my friends and our team here in Mozambique.

From Pieter:

Dear Friends,
We returned to our Mozambican family late Friday night. So much has happened in our lives the last few weeks and we feel so overwhelmed right now. The loss of Baby Josef was a big shock for us, our staff, and the children. It was even harder to process with the death of my mother. The only thing that kept us going is the knowledge that Jesus is in control.

During last week Social Welfare also dropped of three more children. The chief of Social Welfare now wants to integrate all our healthy children, because we are the only people taking babies. Now that we say our houses are full he wants to make space by moving the older children. This is not our vision, please pray for us as we try and communicate this to the chief. We want to walk with our children for a lifetime.

Today we celebrated children’s day here in Mozambique and it was so much fun, to see the children eat, play games, and even singing a few songs. I think it was a time of healing for our staff and children.

Please pray for Rika and I, we are really struggling emotionally right now and we are overwhelmed by so many things happening. I had no time even to process the death of my mother. We hope to take a short break the next few weeks, as a family. Thank you so much for all your prayers and support.


This was sent out the following day:


Americo arrived at our home a few weeks ago, he is a year and two months old. His mother and father died because of AIDS. He was already on anti retroviral, but his auntie stop giving it to him four months ago. His feet were swollen from malnourishment and he was dehydrated the day he came to our house.

This morning Americo died on the way to the hospital. He slept last night with one of our volunteer workers Amanda and when she woke up this morning she realized he had trouble breathing, we rushed to hospital and on our way there he died.

When we took him in we knew he was very fragile and ill, but we had faith that he will also be healed by Jesus. We know he is with Jesus now and for a few weeks he was loved and cared for by our family and staff.

We do not have words right now to describe all that we are going through right now, we still have faith and hope. Our educators are not doing well and I can see that this is very hard for them.

Thank you for all your prayers, but please continue to pray for us.

Pieter and Rika.