Remember way back when we made that beautiful trek to Zimbabwe? We went there to obtain a special visa in hopes that when we returned back to Mozambique we could easily submit documents and get a dire which is a year long residency visa, the dire in the long run is more cost effiecent than leaving every 30-90 days and paying for visas. And it guarantees a visa for a year where when you go out to apply for a visa you are ln t always granted a new one.
When we returned home from Zimbabwe on July 28 we had 30 days to obtain our dires before we would have to renew our visa (leave the country, pay a bunch of money and return). Well sometimes the enemy just creates havoc and this was one of those times. August started a month of trouble with some of our district pastors and with the correction that took place some if them were pulled out of leadership and the battle begun, day after day week after week issue after issue with the Department of Religion, ( they do not SEPERATE church and state here) . It doesn't seem like such a huge deal for us but when we need a signed document from the department in order for us to get a dire it's a HUGE deal. With the amount of corruption here we were really having a hard time getting the correct documents, we arrived at the department of religion 5 days before our visa expired and the man working was NOT happy to see us. He was very angry that his friend was no longer a pastor at our church and was even more upset when we didn't offer him a bribe to overlook the situation. So we left and went to immigration to put in a plea for an extra 30 days to get the documents for our dires. We got it and it expired September 25. On top of the issue at the Department of Religion, we started hearing about many missionaries getting deported after years of being here and visas getting denied with no entry into Mozambique, the chances if us NOT getting a dire were growing. Every couple days we went into the department of religion and asked for them to sign our papers and one excuse after the next we left empty handed. With the month almost over we looked at our options, either we would leave Mozambique and decide what to do next or we would need a Miracle from God to obtain or dire by September 25. The beginning of the week of the 14 we were told that they would sign our documents for a large "fee" since they have worked so hard to help us and they had done so much extra. This is common here to take advantage of your situation and since we only had just over a week we were in a bad spot, but we refused to pay the bribe and wait it out. Finally we returned home from an outreach on Thursday the 18 with good news, they signed our document!! Friday with our hopes high we went to immigration to apply for our dires. In order to apply for residency in Mozambique you have to have FBI clearence which we had obtained while in America, but the documents are only valid for 90 days, upon submitting the papers to immigration they informed us that we needed new FBI clearence. This is obtained by fingerprints which we would have to do IN AMERICA. Obviously we didn't have a record since we had been in Mozambique since April but they weren't so excited about what we were saying, so we submitted a plea once again to the director at immigration to allow us to use our expired police papers. This was Friday the 19th, immigration only works on dire applications until noon Monday-Friday. We left the office and waited until Monday to learn that they hadn't even looked at it and MAYBE they would the next day Tuesday just 3 days before our visas we to expire and we would be kicked out of the country. We leaned that Thursday the 25th( the day our visaS were to expire) was in fact a national holiday and that no work is done on that day - so now we sat there on Monday with 2 whole days to get permission to stay in Mozambique. Tuesday afternoon I received good news that the director okayd our request to use if expired report!! So finally I can say that we the weaver family have officially submitted and paid for our dires to become a resident of Mozambique! And despite or situation we didn't even have to pay a bribe!! You all have no idea what a miracle this is, if we didn't get our papers okayd TODAY then we would be packing bags right now to go into the unknown. Thank you to those who have been praying. We love you all The Weavers
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The beginning of August started a huge international seminar in Biera a city about a 45 minute drive from our base, at a church called Peniel, Eric facilitated daily rides to the siminar for our young adults that we teach in our weekly discipleship class. The siminar ended with 4 nights of teaching from Reverend Emmanual Eni from Nigeria, this particular man was a satanist, he gave his testimony and many people were delivered from demonic spirits over the 4 days he shared. I will share more information in my next blog about this. Immediately after the seminar at Peniel our base put on 2 seminars back to back first was a 3 say worship siminar. Worship in Mozambique is something that desperately needs to be taught, the people love to sing and dance but it is typically not done in a reverence toward The Lord. We had the privilege of having two missionaries from Lichinga a town in northern Mozambique in the Niassa Provence, come and teach the pastors and congregation about worship and praise. When this finished we went straight into a teaching seminar on a new book that was written to teach the local pastors foundational knowledge to bring back And teach to their churches. After these seminars we had quite a bit of down time with the exception if getting rooms ready for visitors and starting some new construction for a family that is arriving mid September. The kids stated school on August 11th, so far it has been an exciting change in their schedules. We are in the process if applying for our dires (year long visas). We have run into quite a few road blocks due to corruption in the government agencies that approve these types of visas. We have sent our documents to a neighboring province to see if we can get help from them , with our fingers crossed we wait for good news that we have been approved for our dires. Please be in prayer for this to happen quickly. We are still learning the language, Eric has stated helping with the worship team in the area of organizing practices and running the sound systems. We had an evangelism the last Friday of the month where we went to a village called Malola. This village is located behind a huge sugar plantation in Mafambese, when we arrived we had to get clearance to pass trough the plantation, we were informed that no private entry or exit was allowed after 5:30pm, it was already 4:00 when we learned this news, so we planned on driving out to the village and telling them we would have to cancel and return to stay the night the next week. When we got to the back exit gate the guard allowed us to stay until 6:00 then changed it to 6:30 IF we gave him a solar bible. ( we don't have access to these ). We went to Malola to visit and when we arrived a crowd was waiting for us to set up the film and being evangelism, unfortunately we didn't have time so we were trying to figure out how to minister when one of the guys we brought called the guard at the gate and asked for more time, ( he got his number so he could contact him if he was able to give him a solar bible) praise God he gave is until 8:00 so we set up, showed half the film spoke a message AND had alter time, we arrived at the gate at exactly 8:00!! It was an amazing night of miracles and heavenly favor. Please be in prayer for open doors and wisdom, we would like to start doing bible studies at peoples houses several days a week in the neighboring villages, we need guidance and clarity on where we can do this. We have church and discipleship here on base and several come but anytime that us white people go anywhere we draw a croud so why not use it to HIS advantage and preach the gospel. We are loving it here, I am however sad to be missing yet another Fall season since it is my favorite but blessed to be here among the people of Mozambique. We would love to hear from you, also anyone interested in visiting please contact us and we can give information, we have housing for singles, couples and groups up to 50 people. Love you all The Weaver Family |
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