Progress...

Our Day in Pictures...

Leaving Dinner in our little 'courtyard'...

We say a sad farewell the the Marques Clan as they leave Nampula for two months...

David Cunningham - A treat!!

David and Renee Cunningham came to visit Nampula. While David was here he gave a marriage seminar for the workers and their wives. It was excellent - lots of laughs and new ideas. Hopefully this will be the start of bigger and better (if possible!) things to come...

New Horizons Newsletter

NEW HORIZONS MOZAMBIQUE
VISION
We are God’s raving fans as we do business and farming His way
MISSION
We link with rural farmers in our community to produce THE lowest cost chicken in the world.
VALUES
We do everything:
With Excellence
On Time
Without Waste
With Joy

Eggciting new developments!!

1. Our electricity lines - our first chicken shed now has power!! Woohoo!!
2. Power - no more 3am mornings turning on the generator!!
3. Sinking the borehole - eventually!!!
4. Have you ever seen a spanner as big as this one??

The Team!!

Puff Adder!!

The workers found this enormous Puff Adder just outside our window!! Scott tries to put it out of it's misery by wacking it's head with a stick... It was a tough job! Eventually we managed to kill it and chop off it's head (with Dan's Leatherman!) but it's heart was still beating 2 hours later!!! (Even after Scott and Stephen skinned it!!) Amazing creature!!

An Update...

Life in Nampula, although stretching and challenging, is going extremely well!
Mutangaras - always full of smiles and encouragement, even when soapy water from an under ground pipe flooded their entire room two nights in a row. All your prayers are greatly appreciated!
Dan and I (Ruth) are so happy to be reunited after my 3 weeks in the UK for my sisters wedding and are loving the freedom and excitement that this opportunity brings! (Although I didn't recognise him at the airport because he had lost so much weight and grown such a huge beard!) Dan's Portuguese is now excellent!! Please pray for energy and good sleep!!
Marques - Loving being back after Brighton and wonderful 2 weeks in Zim. Kids loving being back on the farm - riding horses, tearing around on bikes, putting up with dogs roaming around their tent at night.
The chickens are now laying approximately 1100 eggs (ovos) per day and we are always 'sold out' two days in advance!! Please pray for an increase in laying as we are under peak production at the moment.
Church - Our regular Monday morning prayer meeting has been an excellent time of building unity and relationships! Scott is looking forward to Wednesday afternoon leaders meeting - connecting with the core group again. Please pray for a supernatural ability to learn Portuguese for all of us!!
It is so exciting to see some of the women from the local community (Rapale) coming to buy more and more eggs each day as their client base increases! (Their downcast faces changing to smiles of hope - and amusement at my terrible 'Portuguese'!) The workers also showed up proudly for work in their new clothes and shoes after the last payday!
So much change!!

Some Beautiful Quotes...

Give what you have; to someone it may be better than you dare to think.
-- Longfellow

We cannot all do great things but we can do small things with great love.
-- Mother Theresa

Sometimes God doesn't tell us His plan because we wouldn't believe it anyway.
-- Carlton Pearson

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.

-- Jim Elliot

Nampula....the sequel!!!

Eggs and more eggs!!

My day today...

My day started at 5am (or sometime before) as I awoke in our tent or Alpendre d'mor as Dan likes to call it! I stumbled through the wet bushes just in time to take Scott and Andrew to the airport - with Claire, Kimberley and Stephen. After we had dropped them at the airport in time to catch their MAF flight (and a traumatised Kimberley had seen a number of stark naked men 'bathing' in the military compound next door) Claire carefully negotiated her way to the New Horizons Offices.There we dropped off an envelope with a signed cheque for the money we need to pay our workers tomorrow - which is hopefully arriving with Wilfred tomorrow morning!!
Next stop was the Total garage where I bought Truck oil in my best Portuguese.
Back we trundled to the farm for breakfast and school...
I had a number of messages to send, emails to write and phonecalls to make for Scott. Then off to the chicken shed to check mortalities (there had been one during the night) then to pick up Rushworth to start vaccinating the chicks! Vaccines all going well I next went to check on the progress of the grader which is flattening our land for the next 3 chicken sheds. (Took the hubby a sandwich which turns out to be the only thing he has eaten the entire day!)
Next started mentally preparing myself to drive into town and get 140L of Diesel so the grader could continue it's progress....this was my first trip into town by myself!! Very proud!!
After a quick sandwich for lunch I went back to check on the vaccinating and grader. All good!
Then I had to find the workers whose day off it is tomorow and try to explain to them that they didn't need to come to work...quite hilarious!! (My Portuguese is interesting!).
Finally had my first shower of the day and washed my hair - yay!!
Downed a quick gnt and now am writing this...
Claire is cooking supper tonight and my exhausted hubby has just come through the door!!
All in a days work.

Hen Night!

Our chickens have started laying about 200 eggs a day - which is brilliant news!! However the shed where they were housed was a bit small and the chickens were cramped and uncomfortable (this means less eggs!!). So the decision was made that it was time to move them to their lovely new chicken shed!! Scott estimated that this would take about 2 hours...so moving began at about 5pm. However we only had about 30 chicken crates to move them - each crate taking 10 chickens. We needed to move 1700!! (A bit less after we had counted them and realised that some - 400 - had 'gone missing'!)
The workers were amazing!! The two that were catching the chickens managed somehow to carry five in each hand!! Dan would then put them in the crates and I would count them. Then Scott and Wilfred, along with the workers, would load them onto the truck and deliver them to their new home!! Very exciting!! This whole procedure took about 7 hours and the guys were eventually finished some time after 12!!
Then chickens LOVE their new home and are very happy with the innovative nesting boxes - check out the picture!! Kimberley and Stephen had a school excursion to the shed yesterday and were very excited to find 6 eggs in the nesting boxes!!
We also hit another milestone yesterday as our chickens layed their 1000 egg!!
(This will be blown and set next to our first ovo!!)

Driving through Mozambique - chaos!

First Month in Nampula by Danny Tanser

School begins!!

Claire Marques very bravely decided to homeschool Stephen and Kimberley while we are in Mozambique! She has been AMAZING - preparing lessons, amassing resources, thinking up exciting topics and ways of teaching different concepts!!! They are set up very cosily in their Alpendre with desks, blackboards and a 'resource' tent.
Kimberley, 'School here is fun, but kind of different...there are lots of people coming by with wheelbarrows etc'.
Stephen, 'School is fun and mom is a good teacher'.

Electric Shock Therapy

It all began so innocently with a request for gravy...Being the good wife that I am I immediately acquiesced. Because our room is still only partially completed and we don't have enough plug points (and because for some reason Mozambique has these incredibly stupid two prong plugs!!) I leant over the stove (placing both hands firmly ontop of it!) and proceeded to try to unplug the stove and plug in the kettle. The result was a massive explosion of electricity up my arm across my chest and down the other arm!!! It was incredibly painful!!! I screamed and burst into floods of tears...feeling that I was about to throw up and faint all at the same time. My dear husband lead me outside to console me while I had a good cry - needless to say it was very theraputic! I am now petrified of plugs, ovens, laptops and anthing electric!!! My hands still tingle but my chest and arms have stopped aching - yay!!

Sssscott, Sssstephen and lots of Ssssnakes!!

Every day the workers clearing the bush for our new homes and chicken sheds find and kill about 4 snakes (cobras, puff-adders and many other delightful varieties!) - cobra in Portuguese! Scott and Stephen love to collect all the dead snakes (usually keeping them in Claire's fridge for a while) and skin them. Thankfully this cobra bit the only worker wearing boots!

Marching Ants!

The other day we ran into some black ants on the move!! They were incredible - in a perfectly formed line, carrying larvae bigger than their own bodies... Scott and Stephen were particularly intrigued and when Scott ventured too close he got a nasty bit on his toe inside his croc!! (He immediately got goose bumps and started sweating!! Hilarious!!) The boys then proceeded to steal a few larvae from them and off we happily went!!

Moving into our tents under our newly constructed Alpendres!

Had a fantastic day!!
Very busy...cooking, washing, checking chickens and various other (back-breaking) things!!
Tonight we all sleep in our tents under our lovely Alpendres...hope that is the correct Portugese word?!
Dan is cooking two chickens on the weber tonight....smelling delicious!! (I'm sure we'll be sick of chicken very soon!!)

Marques' and Mutangara's move out to the farm!

Today the Marques and Mutangara family will be moving out to the farm!! Yay!!
This will save them the hour (or more!) trip in from town each day - potholes, crazy traffic and loony taxi drivers...
The Marques will be joining the Tansers in tent-camping style (long-drops and portable showers etc...) and the Mutangara's will be moving into an almost finished room!!
Think the menu for tonight will be braai's all round..