Hey, i hope you're all doing well.

Summary(ish): This week we only manged to get to Manga a couple of times, because it rained, a lot. So that was quite frustating. However, some of you have been concerned for me about the floods you heard about that are in Mozambique - they're aren't (technically) where i am - much further north, around the Zambezi river. However, the rain is still affecting us, although only really to do with getting to Manga (more dramatic stories about that in a little while) etc, around Beira itself, it's fine. The best bit of this week was probably last thursday, me and Jenni went to the beach and had a nice afternoon chatting (because Oasis had nothing for us to do - another day doing nothing!). The worst was probably just having so much time with so little to do.

The long bit (to read if you want the details):
We have had a lot of free time this week! There was nothing for us to do in Oasis on Thusday (as i already said), and on Saturday and yesterday we stayed in Beira because there was too much rain. On Sunday, we were meant to be visiting a sister-church in Mafambisse, about 40mins or so away, but 5 minutes before we were meant to be meeting the girsl from our church who were going with us, they rang to say it was raining too much in Mafambisse, so we couldn't go! (Incidently, they also talked about "the team's wonderful integrity with time" later in the service, mentioning that "they were nearly at the bus stop when we called to tell them we couldn't go! They would have been there on time!")

This time off gave us a lot of time and not much to do (so we mostly spent our time sitting in Cafe Riviera) which was quite frustrating, and didn't do much to keep our spirits too high. However, we managed to occupy ourselves.

My English lesson on friday went surprisingly well! Attendance is decreasing (but we were warned that this was quite normal), so me and Jenni put our groups together, and taught animals. We had fun immitating animals and playing animal bingo (with animal names instead of numbers, as i'm sure you figured out) and they enjoyed doing some colouring of the pictures! Friday night was pretty fun. We made sausage and mash and roast veg and cookies at Marina's (you understand food like this is quite the treat!), and enjoying spending an evening with her and a couple of other friends.

On Sunday, after being told we weren't going to Mafambisse, we had quite the adventure getting to church. We got off the chapa, only to find that the normal way to walk was flooded. So we rang one of the guys (Carilto) from Church and asked him to come and fetch us and take us a different way round! Which, he did. It was quite the exciting detour, that involved a half-hour walk to church fro the road, instead of a normal 5 minute one. However, this was perfectly justified, for the way we went, we only had to wade up to water that was nearly to out knees, where as had we gone the normal (or a closer) way, it would have been up to our waists, apparently! So getting to and back from church was quite the adventure. As a (hardly surprising) consequence of the floods, we couldn't do community visits yesterday. I joke about it, but it's difficult to see our friends actually living like this. Houses don't seem to be flooded, just all the paths, which is good, but it happens every year.

On Sunday eveing we enjoyed going to a differnt church called Baptista Revonvada (tr. Renewed Baptist, i think!) which was really fun, lots of singing and dancing, and then went for a Chinese afterwards!

Yesterday we went to the cinema (for the second week running!) to see Stardust, which was fun. The cinema itself is amusing, nevermind what film is one, because it's HUGE and always has very few people in. You have to hunt around to find a few seats in a row that work, and there's an interval exactly half way through the film (no matter what sentance they're in the middle of), afterwhich there are trailers (but none before the film starts). So it's always a good night out!

As a team we're doing alright, although still (surprisingly!) a bit sick of spending every moment with eachother.

I hope you're all doing really well,
lots of love,
Sar xx