2 CFL celebrations, Gender Equality and Holidays!

Well, I can't believe that the time has flown by!  It's been 9 days since my last blog....shame shame Kevin...I hope I don't give my family a bad name haha.  Shon and Giovanna have been working hard with the new curriculum for the childrens club.  They have been attending the classes and have been deciding what are the best possibilities and ideas to rearrange the cirriculum so that more of the children will be able to participate.  They have been doing a great job!  Karen has been enjoying her gender equality survey a lot!  It's interesting to see how people view equality among men and women here in Mozambique!  It is actually a lot more equal among people here than what I had previously thought, which is a good thing!

I have mostly been helping where I can.  I don't have a specific responsibility, but as team leader I have been able to help with everyones projects in any ways that I can.  I love this country so much and it's been amazing to work with such great people from Care For Life.  We had 2 celebrations.  Ngupa 1 and 2 have both finished the Family Preservation Program and we celebrated with dancing and presentations of awards.  Every family who fulfills their goals with CFL will each receive 2 bags of cement and some tin roofing materials.  It was great to be apart of this!

 The leaders from Ngupa each presented a theatre piece as to how CFL has helped their village.

Sabados and Mariamo, both CFL field officers put together a little skit as to why CFL is an important program!  

My white boy dance moves came out on the dance floor and Adilson and I had our own little dance off! Haha Adilson and I have grown to be good friends

What's a picture without a child, right?  This little girl "Dolly" was one of my buddies I hung out with often.  Haha I think her name is great!

These centipede thingys are all over here!  Apparently they are not poisonous so Adilson grabbed one while I snapped a picture

Karen and I made the most amazing cinnamon rolls the other night!  Okay, okay, it was mostly Karen who made them, but I did help mix the dough and stuff.  She has taught me lots of cooking skills and other stuff since I've been her.  She is great!

Today we were walking in a village called Motel Bispo and we found this coconut three that had fallen down, but somehow still managed to grow upwards at the top!....Follow the trunk of the tree all the way to the end and those leaves on the tallest tree at the top of the picture is the top of this coconut tree! Crazy eh!?

Oh my, these kids are seriously my greatest friends! Haha yesterday we went to a village called Jean Piaget.  When I was driving the Landcruiser, I rolled the window down and the kids were chanting..."Kevin, kevin, kevin" hahaha.  I guess they have gotten used to me since being here.  I have also shown them how to make goofy faces too---love these kids!

Well, time is flying by and hopefully I can post some more pictures before I head out!  

Tchao! 

Kevin

Canada Day, July 4th and new volunteers!

Well, to be honest this last week went by a lot slower than most of the weeks I've been here.  Mostly the reason being that it was our "break" week.  We didn't have any specific projects we were working on so it allowed for some more relaxation time than work time, which I didn't mind either.  I've used my time effectively by starting my application for optometry school!  I'm not setting myself up for any big plans or anything, but I thought I would try and open my options up and seeing what my potential is.  My desire to do optometry has grown since I've been here after seeing many people with poor vision and eye care.  Shon (Utah) and Giovanna (Brasil) both arrived this week and they will be developing a new curriculum for the childrens clubs in all of the villages!  They will be great assets to the CFL team. Karen will be starting her gender equality project this week, so I will be helping a bunch out with her in her study!  So I feel like these last weeks will probably go by fast since we will be outside for most of the days working in the villages :)

Can you believe how fast the time has gone by?  Man tomorrow will be 3 weeks until I come home! and only 2 more weeks till I travel to Maputo!  My time has been well spent here and I'm so grateful for the chance I have to be here!

Here is the great Canadian cake that I made on Canada Day!  I figure I would show my canadian pride and make a cake for all of the workers.  Cremildo and I were both impressed and decided to cut the cake together, haha.

I figured the cake I made was worthy of a picture at least!  Here's to you Canada!

 Joao Bueno (him and his family live with us in the Care For Life building) married Kelly from Utah.  They have 3 boys Connor, Caelin and Chase and they are so great!  To celebrate July 4th Joao (actually from Brazil and works for CFL) decided to make us pizza!  It was super delicious!  Kelly even added banana and avocados to one of the pizzas.  It was surprisingly good!  I had never tried that before!

I'm sure you are all thinking what is going on in this picture!  Well, the bugs couldn't resist my lovely feet I guess!  These bugs are called "Matakenhas"--- mut-uh-ken-yas... they are basically almost microscopic in size and they live in the dirt and soil.  They get into your feet, bury themselves and then live and lay eggs.  That's about as simple as I can describe it.  Pretty gross!  I had 2 of them, one on the top left and bottom right of my foot! Haha

Here's a close up of one of the bugs!  Can you see inside the little white ball that there is like a tiny strand of brown?  That's the little bug that gets into your foot!  

Adilson was a life saver as he was kind enough to take them out of my foot!!  Haha everyone had a good laugh because originally I thought they were little tiny rocks that had been embedded into my feet, but later found out that they were not, haha.

Sorry for the backwards picture, but here is a picture of different eye diseases common in the human eye.  Anamicas who is the nurse at CFL gave me a little "optometry" lesson about vision and the various problems that people in Mozambique face.  I was so grateful that she was able to teach me what she knew because I told her that I was planning on doing optometry!  I love the people here and also working for CFL.  It was has been a very rewarding experience so far!

I hope you all have a great week!  and I will talk to ya next week!!

Love, Kevin

I am Canadian!

Happy Canada Day Everyone! (tomorrow of course)  I wish I could be there celebrating but I also can't pass up the chance of being back in Mozambique, so I guess it's okay to miss out one year.  There is also just 3 weeks left until I leave Beira, and only 1 month until I come home! How crazy is that? Man the time is flying by.  In my mind it seems like I've been blogging every other day but then I realize that

a week has already passed.

This week was a little slower than normal because Karen has been preparing her Gender Equality study, so that hasn't left me with much to do.  Although I did get a chance to walk with the health team in one of the villages, viewing the booklet that they use to teach about proper health guidelines and such.  Since being here I have come to realize that education is so valuable.  It's difficult to become well established here.  It requires a LOT of work and I've realized that I haven't really had to work hard to GO to school, but I have worked hard while studying in school.  But even having the chance to go to university and pursue courses is difficult, so I am so much more grateful now for the schooling I am doing right now.  Even though I may not be too sure as to what I want to do now, I do realize the working hard in school is important and that I can't take it for granted.  So that is one of the lessons I have learned so far.

I have realized that if Optometry is something I do want to do in the future, it will be a great benefit for possibly helping people here in the future.  People have poor vision here and they are in great need of eye doctors.  That made me really excited and more determined to think about optometry as a career!

Also, it will be interesting to see what July brings because I'm not too sure what my responsibilities are going to be!  But I'm excited as usual!  

Anyways, on to these lovely pictures!

Julie and Jen, this one's for you!  There were these 2 twin boys in one of the villages that I thought were awesome with their thumbs up! haha

 
Joao Jone and his wife, Catarina.  This is a great man with a great family!  I worked along side this man while I was a missionary in Inhamizua and it was a great privilege seeing him again!  I love his family so much!

Constancia and her wonderful family!  Her childrens names are Yurin, Jennifer (woohoo!), Kafrina, Nhasha and Efugenia.   Constancia is the Inhamizua relief society president and has served in that position for about 4 years!  She retold me a story of when she was feeling very down and that she remembers I gave her encouragement and told her that if I asked for help in my calling that the Lord would help her! Wow! It's so amazing to see all these memories that people have of me while as a missionary and it has really reconfirmed that my mission was a success in my eyes and the Lords eyes.

Karen and I were doing some rearranging with all of our suitcases and found some BUBBLES!  I felt like a little kid all over again, but who am I kidding?  I feel like a kid everyday! haha

One of the great members Raimundo from Inhamizua!  He is very dedicated to living the gospel!

Joanqueiro is another wonderful member from Inhamizua.  Him and Raimundo helped me around on Friday visiting some families!  It's amazing how much I had forgotten my way around, haha.  But thanks to my wonderful friends it was easy!

I guess I have a new obsession!  Okay, okay maybe I have always really liked high top shoes so maybe it's a hobby let's say, haha.  Anyways I bought 2 new pairs of shoes!  I definitely haven't bought any shoes like these before (aka I'm a fairly conservative shoe kind of guy) but I decided I would be a little different haha but I love them!

I served with this Elder in my mission!  I didn't serve as companions, but we lived in the same house when I was serving in Maputo.  His name is Jackson Sande and he is a great guy!  He is now married and has a beautiful little girl!  It's great seeing people I knew from my mission!  He actually is serving on the high council right now so he is strong in the gospel!

No One in My City Has Swagger Like Me!

Hey there everyone!  Well another week come and gone! What's new right?  Is the time flying by or is it just me?  I still think it's funny that I'm blogging.  Can't say I saw my self doing that while I was here, but I feel it's helped me help other people enjoy in my experiences here in Mozambique.  Don't be thinking that I'll be getting Pinterest, or anything like that! haha  So all of our volunteers have left! It's kinda sad.  Nate and Dr. English left on Thursday, followed by Nancy and Michelle Sunday!  Karen and I will be working on her gender equality project the weeks to come and I will also be helping out with the Health team to keep my time occupied!  We have 2 more volunteers coming the first week in July, so we will be even smaller then, but I'm still loving it here! Every day is a new day!

Haha, this is one of my favourite pictures because of this kids face in the front left, haha I think I love taking pictures most with the kids because they are crazy like me!

My favorite kind of shopping is shopping for this material called "Kapulanas" They are special types of cotton cloth that are imported from India and Nigeria and you can use them to make clothes and other cool things! I like all the really cool designs!

Here was a really cool little house in one of the villages where we were doing a service project! Lots of the houses in the far away rural communities are like this and are very humble circumstances.

Here is Lino our driver!  He drove us around everywhere we needed to go and was the greatest guy to be around!  He was always happy and willing to go the extra mile to take us to wherever we needed to go!

Isn't this little girl sooooooo cute!? She was just giving me all kinds of smiles throughout the day, but was difficult to catch with the camera! haha so I kind of caught her in the middle of one of her smiles!  

 We had the opportunity to help one of the widowed ladies from one of the villages to build her "latrine"---an outhouse that is common to all families.  It was lots of work, but I enjoyed learning how to mix cement, place the blocks and to fill the blocks in with cement!  It was a great project!

Here's another great picture with some of these great kids from one of the villages we were in! They are incredible to be around.  They have so much zest and energy for life!  They remind me of my niece and nephews and how much energy they have!  

Here you have it folks!  I know the higher odds are probably not in my favor for growing a beard, haha but I thought I would give it a try haha! So here is my 5 week progress so far! Don't worry I will shave when I get home....maybe. hehe

When I first laid my eyes on this T-shirt I had to buy it!  It took me like 3 weeks to actually find one, haha but I feel like this shirt describes my funny, sarcastic personality.  I talk like I have "swag" mostly cause it keeps me entertained, but don't worry, I'm not a true gangster, haha.

I hope you are all doing well! I'm grateful to be in such a wonderful place!  It is amazing being here in the most wonderful place---a place which I can truly call as my second home!  

Love you all!

Kevin

I love fruit, especially fruits of labours

Well, another week has come and gone! Things are starting to wind down and we are heading into our last week before our volunteers leave! Nate and Dr. English leave in only 2 days! Then this sunday Michelle and Nancy will also be leaving! CRAZY! time has been flying by.  Teaching in the communities as been going well.  Our promoters from all the villages have been doing an excellent job with teaching the children how to perform the vocational training tasks.  Our help was only minimally needed this week, which was great to see that most of the communities were able to independently perform the tasks.

Here, Karen and I at a community called Jean Piaget.  These kids were pretty excited to be there learning how to make baskets with Melo, a Care For Life staff member who has the most amazing way of making everyone feel comfortable and happy!  He's the kind of guy that I wish more people could be like because of his outstanding personality.

Hello there, spider.  I was too scared to touch this guy because I figured he was dead cause he wasn't moving much.  So, one of the younger teenage boys just grabbed it with his hands without even hesitating, haha.  Not something I'd feel comfortable doing especially if there was a possibility that it could still be alive!

Here's another picture of Melo and I working with the children from Vila Massane Community.  We had 85 children in total there! Luckily, most of the kids were too young to be learning how to sew backpacks.  That would have been a lot to handle if they were all learning!  Once again, a success at this village!

Haha, this little guy was soooo funny.  He kept calling me "papa".  He would come running up to me and hug me and he kept playing hide and go seek and would not detach himself from me.  It's nice when kids do that.  It's so amazing to see how innocent children really are and that they have a natural love for the people around them and a very forgiving spirit.

This past sunday we visited Manga 2 branch.  I served here for only 4 weeks on my mission but found it to be a great branch!  While we were there they confirmed a girl (probably about my age) named Mariamo.  She was one of my investigators while I served  here as a missionary!  How crazy is that!?  The best part of being here in Mozambique is seeing some of the fruits of my labours.  I didn't really know what to expect when I came back to visit, but I'm glad I did and I'm grateful to see that lots of people I helped have progressed in life.  I'm so grateful I served a mission.  It has blessed and will continue to bless my life!

Love you all, thanks for your support!

Kevin (or as Karen would call me, K-bot)

....And then there was a Canadian

Well hello there everyone! It's been a over a week since my last post, so I guess that means there should be lots to talk about! (and there is, of course.)  Our first week with the new volunteers was a success!  The amazing thing about our CFL team is the fact that we all get along soooooo well.  Seriously, we work hard and have fun!  All the americans (which they all are), just love the Canadian.  So, hows the weather there in Canada?........eh? ----hey what do you call a beanie in Canada? haha it's a toque......you get the picture I'm sure.  I seriously love being from Canada and am grateful that I can joke with people about my country because I feel that Canadians are chill and we are a happy people!

This past weekend, we got to go to Gorongosa National Park, home of true african animals! Although we didn't see lots of animals, it was nonetheless, beautiful to witness these animals in their natural habitat and to witness Gods creations.  The park itself wasn't too far away, probably about 150 km or so, horrible roads though, seriously every 30 seconds we were dodging ginormous potholes in the middle of the road!  But, the trip was well worth it!

Here was the beautiful sunset the friday night we arrived there!

My new bestie Nate! This guy is great.  Let me tell ya, we get along great and it's been nice having another dude around.  Girls are good.  Dudes are good too.  This picture caught us right as we were scoping the scenes for some wildlife!

Look it's Pumba! haha.  This park was FULL of warthogs.  We counted all of the warthogs that we saw in the park while we were there and we counted 193! Don't worry, these guys won't be going extinct anytime soon!

Talk about a sweet hotel gig! I mean, this may seem simple to most people, but when you go from sleeping on a thin tiny little mattress, with not much cushioning and waking up as if you are the weiner in the hot dog bun, this bed was incredible!

We crossed one of the major rivers on the way to the park called Rio Pongue.  I know the picture isn't too detailed but behind me there are ginormous rocks with a nice stream running through it before filtering into a larger basin on the other side.  It was a great place to take some pics!

Now switching gears a little bit! This week we have started to teaching the village Promoters how to sew backpacks, make little baskets out of yarn as well as small money wallets made out of yarn.  The reason that we are teaching these adult promoters how to make these things is so that they can teach the children (ages 9-14) how to make them.  With past volunteers who have come with Care For Life we have just arrived and taught the children.  We thought it would be more effective for the promoters to learn how to teach the children, since after all teaching self-preservation is one of CFL's goals!

I also mentioned that we had gone to a childrens orphanage in a place called Nhamatanda.  We sewed backpacks with the kids, played soccer and the girls painted nails for whoever wanted too! (and some their teeth too!) As you can tell in the pic below, this young boy decided painting his teeth was the new in! haha, maybe not in canada at least.  This orphanage is ran by Pastor Domingos and his wife.  There are 72 kids in the orphanage and it was seriously the most humble place.  They sang for us, thanked us for coming and really showed their appreciation for us!  It was a great experience!

I'm grateful for the time I have here! It's crazy I've almost been here a month (I knew it was going to go by fast!)  Hopefully things are going well in Canada!

Miss you all! Love ya

It's Kevin, not Kelvin

Alright, it's about time I post a new update on this blog of mine! Lots has happened since last time!  First off, the title of this post is funny because whenever I tell people my name here, they always think it's Kelvin, so I'm usually always correcting someone!

 Linda, (Care For Life president) who is a new mom to me in a way, left back home on Thursday.  She was followed by Ruth and Patrick (Researchers from the University of Utah) on Saturday.  I had the most amazing first 2 weeks with these great people with strong work ethic!  It was a great way to start the summer! On Friday we had the privilege of receiving 2 new volunteers, Nancy (Idaho) and Michelle (California).  Nancy will be teaching vocational training with Karen and I and Michelle is a journalist who will be writing a couple of stories and taking pics etc.  They are great additions to the team! On Saturday, Dr. English (Arizona) along with his intern Nate (Arizona) arrived and will be helping out in the health division.  Dr. English is a dermatologist and will help quite a bit while here.  Nate is probably one of the coolest guys I have met.  Super chill about life and super stoked to be in Mozambique!  These next 3 weeks with these volunteers will be a hoot!

Here is a lovely picture of Ruth and Patrick-Coworkers!  They were like my parents while I was here.  Very smart, lovely and kind people.  I'm grateful I was able to know them while I was here in Mozambique.

 Ruth and Patrick gave a lecture at the Pedagogic University to the public about Social Work in Foreign countries...or something like that.  A lot of it went over my head, but I was impressed with what they did.  They were here doing a research project along with a group of students from the Pedagogic University in Beira which is why they spoke.  The picture above  is a list of all the famous Africans who had spoken in the same lecture hall!  Some of them, to say the least, include Nelson Mandela and Samora Machel (first Mozambican president)

Nothing like eating fish for dinner! Seriously, we have a wonderful maid, Isabel, who cooks us the greatest food in the world.  Okay, I will admit, fish heads don't seem like the most appealing thing, but I like to think they are more for decoration, haha.  Regardless, I love the food here!

I finally had the chance to visit my old Branch Inhamizua where I served for the last 7 months of my mission!  I made many friendships and felt strong the love of God in this wonderful place.  This wonderful couple above (Amisse and Pascoa), got married a couple of weeks ago and their little girl Olivia, was the girl I blessed as a baby when I was Branch President.  It was so great to see how big and grown up she was!  Her father and mother were not as active when I was a missionary, but look at what they have accomplished now!  They are married and now have plans to go to the temple someday.  It's awesome seeing some fruits of your labour.  I saw lots of other people and have plans the end of June and in July to visit lots of families from Inhamizua!

Meet Ajax.  Our friendly neighbourhood spider man.... oh wait, no its actually just a spider.  A very large spider.  Yes, there are very big spiders in this country.  Usually if you keep your distance, they will keep theres' haha.  I know the picture makes it obvious that its big, but to put into perspective the spider is at least as big as the palm of my hand, if not bigger.  Yup. Very big like I said.

We also went to our first orphanage today! (sorry no pics at the moment!) It was the most incredible thing ever! The kids sang for us as we arrived and sang for us as we left.  Pastor Domingos runs the orphanage and manages 72 kids! How crazy is that?  He is an incredibly religious man with great faith in God and has the biggest heart and loves every one of the kids.  We taught them how to make backpacks along with playing soccer, and painting nails (for the girls of course!)  My heart was strengthened as I was there and realized that God has a great love for the African people.

Anyways, thanks for reading my blog.  I hope you are learning something new about my adventures in Mozambique! Love you all