Dear friends and family,
Lots of things have been happening as usual …
We were able to finish the food distribution in our province (Manica) … we were hoping and praying for another truck and the Lord answered … so we could go to Tambara … but men, we suffered ’cause the road there is not exactly a good road … first we got stuck in the sand … we had to unload the whole load that was on the truck … with some wood, stones and dried grass underneith we finally managed to push it out with the help of some other locals … everything back on … it was getting dark … we continued … I knew there was still a river we needed to pass, but I wasn’t too worried since I had been driving through it a couple times before bringing food there … this time though when we were almost through, just 1 m missing … the truck stopped driving … someone pulled us out but didn’t want to pull us until Tambara, even though it was only 12 km … we tried to make ourselves as comfortable as possible to sleep on top of the bags of maize … after about 2 hours another bigger and higher up truck came, loaded with people and things … I got up to speak with the driver to please pull us until Tambara … he was willing to help, thank God … someone offered we could cook something at his house … so I went with another person of our team … we had dinner at about one in the morning and went back to sleep on top of the bags of maize ’cause the former provincial pastor had created confusion with the districtal pastor there so we couldn’t stay at his house as planned … we were able to sort out things the next morning … the food was given to our orfans there … but we were still stuck there with a broken down truck … many people were trying to help us ’cause they understand the problem … about every truck there has suffered the same way we did at some point … there are 5 trucks just standing around for 2 years, unable to be fixed … I was praying … and the Lord sent an 2 “angels” … first a good mecanic (who wasn’t working there as a mecanic, just happened to come there that day to do an “Aids project”) who discovered correctly what the real problem was, then someone with a bigger truck who had been an educator for about 10 years to one of our team members growing up in orfanage … so they knew each other very well … he offered to leave that day (which he hadn’t planned) and carry our truck back to Catandica for next to nothing … praise the Lord … our truck was being pulled and pushed up on a hill to get on the other truck, just big enough … later on in the evening when we were almost home that truck couldn’t drive any further due to tire problems … I couldn’t believe that … so we slept on top of the truck again … 
– just without maize this time … after the tires had cooled down we continued, driving slowly and reached home … praise the Lord!!!
oh well, things happen when you go to the bush, feeding the hungry, but God is always there and there is always a solution, some help that God sends …
also, our wonderful driver and mecanic together with the other people from his family managed to fix our truck and it is perfectly fine now …
Now I need to tell you something, maybe not so nice … I had to leave in Catandica … and that quickly … so for now I am in Chimoio, staying with friends who are also missionaries with Iris … my things, the car and our truck are here also … as soon as one of our national leaders can come here we’ll work out what will happen with the centre there … right now I don’t know … I only know that God knows … please pray for this situation … that God brings peace, for the children, my protection and that I can continue to be here …
there is a lot of witchcraft against us as missionaries at this moment, but we are at peace in the midst of the storm …
Let me share with you a bit about our last trip to Simbabwe …
It wasn’t easy, to say the least, but we managed, praise the Lord!!!
It took us over a month to organise all the documents, I didn’t know what to do anymore, just pray … the agricultural authorities in Harare just didn’t want to give us their permission to bring in the food, but finally they somehow decided to give us their paper - thank God!
I got my Dire (residence permit) back from the immigration, within only a few days and the livrette of my car which I had sent to Maputo to be changed, since I have a canapee on now … – thank you so much Iris Ministries South Africa, it really helps.
One of my friends here had organised a 12 t truck, but the night before we were going to leave I found out as I was personally talking to the owner, that the driver didn’t have a passport, so it wasn’t quite possible to go with them … I had to find another truck … quickly … I did … made an agreement with the owner … everything was fine, I thought … the truck showed up at the factory the next morning … it was small and only for 4 tons …
I know that overloading is normal here, but 3 times the weight?! Nevertheless they started to loaded the truck, it almost broke down just by standing there with the weight on it. I kept on talking the owner, telling him that we’ll destroy his truck, if we went like this. In the end he agreed that the weight is too much … so off I went running around town to find yet another truck … finally I found a strong 8 t truck and I thought we could probably try with this one … back to the factory … as the truck was half loaded the owner decided that he didn’t want to go anymore … so we had to unload again … many people were trying to help me and promised trucks that would be coming … none of them ever showed up … we had to stay in Chimoio with friends that night … I thought everything would be okay to go the next morning, but once again the trucks which were supposed to be there never came … so I left again looking for a truck and this time God gave me success … I found a good 16 t truck which could easily carry the weight and that time the load actually went on the truck, stayed on there and we left!!
Since I know the director of customs now it wasn’t a problem to do the customs papers on the mosambican side and even on the simbabwian side we were amazingly quick this time. We were already outside of the border when the problems started … some people wanted to inspect the food … okay … we let them see … as we finished they came up with another paper which we should have, but didn’t … I refused to bribe them, so we stayed there for a while … they wanted to confiscate our truck … it wasn’t funny … in the end the guy gave me back the papers and asked us to pray for him … I thought that was good … .
We continued driving to Harare … at about 11 p.m one of the tires of the back of my car came off … thank God I was driving slow at that time, waiting for the truck driving behind us … we spent all night trying to resolve the problem … but then continued … now we had to drive to Harare during the day which was not so good ’cause there was lots of police around then … 3 times our truck was almost taken by the police … they wanted what was on the truck, so were coming up with something that supposingly was not okay with our papers … it was a miracle that they let us go every time after speaking to them for a long time … God has been faithful!
It is not the easiest thing to do something that noone else does … all of the NGOs are still not functioning in Simbabwe … there is still no international aid coming in … and what we had on our truck is what everyone wants there to eat these days, but is not available anywhere … neither the police nor the military is getting paid anymore, so they’re trying their luck to get something from the cars & trucks driving by by being corrupt …
We spend about a week there to distrute what we had to the many orfans and HIV positiv widows, then had to go back … it was also nice to see some wild animals like elefants and zebras in Kariba … :-)
We managed to distribute most of the food, but not all of it, so I’m planning to go back as soon as possible … despite of colera … and if God provides more I’ll go again, even though passing the border with food on a truck is not exactly fun, but it’s worth it …
Greetings from the crazyness …
Love & blessings,
Claudia
