hey everyone my leave date is just around the corner which is a bitter sweet feeling bc I cant wait to see my friends and family but I will definitely miss this place. it has changed me for only the better and in ways that i probably cant comprehend at the moment. I feel like I know where my place is in this world and a better idea of how to pursue a fulfilling way of life. With this part of my life coming ever closer to an end another one begins. When I return I will have to start fundraising for Mali which is a very intimidating thought but necessary all the same. so if you or some one you know is interested in sponsoring me please let me know it would be deeply appreciated. raising funds is definitely a necessary evil because its needed but I hate asking for money and not being self sufficient but at the same time its good to know that I am apart of a loving community that is willing to support me and my endeavors as they have in the past. for that I can only praise God. well around here its moving into the planting season and that we have done alot of... 100 neem trees, 200+ mulberries, 70 coffee trees, and a couple of acres of corn soy and tephrosia and today we picked up 500 chicks to raise so needless to say we have been busy. well i hope all is well and i hope to see everyone soon love yall!

Hey sorry its been awhile since the last time I posted but between there always being something that needs doing and the weather enabling the internet. But life has been good here I have been working on some new projects on top of working off and on down at the farm lands. One project I helped with was with water sanitation. A scientist named Martin with a PHD in water and sanitation came here for a little over two weeks to do some water testing as well as test out some different water sanitation technologies. So I shadowed him and learned everything that wasn't over my head ha ha but almost all of it I understood because of my engineering classes I took in school. He had a wealth of knowledge that I hope to be able to apply in Mali but we shall see. The other project I'm working on is with what is called a rocket stove which is just a really efficient wood burning stove. but I'm designing one different from all the ones i've researched about. I found one in a book that is a cooking stove as well as heats a 10 ft bench but it cost a 100$ the way they built it so I'm building one that cost essentially nothing but it is labor intensive... I am using slave labor (aka me) dirt, sun-dried brick made of the same dirt, saw dust, straw and one little piece of sheet metal. It should cook a meal while the exhaust from the stove runs through a bench warming it in the winter and rainy season. so as far as I know no one has ever built one the way I am as well as out of the material I am so thats kind of exciting. I will get pics up as soon as I can but i can't find my camera cord... well I hope all is well state side I will be home in a little over a month which is crazy but exciting!

Hey everyone I have recently found myself in a sticky mess with the immigration dept. Here in Mozambique in regards to my visa. So on friday Kyle and I go to the immigration office to renew my visa and because of some confusion on my part they now say I have to pay a 16000 Mtu fee (thats about 550 US$) which is a crazy amount of money for me. So we decide to wait and talk to a guy he knows at the immigration dept but he wasn't there on friday. So on monday we go back and talk to Kyle's friend to see if we can get the amount reduced any but turns out there is nothing he could do and I had to pay the amount... Everyone thinks its cheap to live in africa which it is, unless you are white because white = money. We faced this problem in Mali as well with government officials trying to scam us for any money they can. The problem is that it is in their laws to charge this much because they know citizen who could never pay that much will not need to renew visas where as rich foreigners will... but the problem is I am not rich... ha ha! So now I'm left with little money to last me till dec. So if anyone is able to help out I would much appreciate donations to help compensate for this situation I have found myself in. It would be much appreciated and I want to thank everyone again who helped get me here and have been there for me as long as I can remember and I am sorry to have to ask for help again but I am in a pickle...
On a happier note we are starting a new program this month with the workers to learn sign language so that everyone will have the ability to communicate with Osias. Which will be a double blessing because I have not picked up on the local language here to well which is Chiyao. So by others learning sign language I will be able to help them learn by signing to them and I will be able communicate with the workers better than I have in the past. The first day we did this, Osias's sign language teacher came out and interpreted for all of us so we could ask Osias questions we had never been able to in order for everyone to get to know him better. We asked him what was hard about being deaf in this society and other things like that. He said going to the market was hard for communication reasons. He also just recently had his bike stolen from right behind him in the market and since he is deaf he could not hear someone stealing it from just a couple of feet behind him... Lifes just a little bit harder for Osias in this society which is why I love that everyone is taking the time to learn sign language which will communicate with out saying a word that he is loved. This is the reckless love I think Jesus is talks about when He says "love your neighbor" because it doesn't make since for everyone to stop working everyday just to learn sign language for one person but yet here we are! We just got through learning the alphabet and everyone spelled their name which up to now Osias has never known and that was a beautiful experience. I hope everyone is doing well state side please let me know how things are and message me with any questions you might have. You can also check out Kyle's blog he is the missionary I am working under right now at http://chajila.blogspot.com/. Thanks again for all the help and I miss everyone.

I am now back in the swing of things in Mozambique I have been biking down to the farm which is about 8 K from the house with quite strenuous hills. Me and Osias are working on the permaculture design I drafted we have hand dug 6 ponds and a water holding tank planted orange and coffea trees and dug trenches for a spring. Its been alot of hard work but fun working with Osias. Osias has been deaf since birth so i have been able to get a half baked idea of what its like to be deaf in a impoverished society. He is actually one of the lucky ones because his parents have actually stuck around instead of abandening which aparently happens alot. In fact just a couple of days ago I met a deaf kid who was 14 and his parents had just left him so he was trying to sell his parents house for food money and Osias is going to let the boy stay with him. On a whole any one with a handicap is usally left to fend for themselves resulting in a harsh kind of natural selection... Osias grew up in Lichinga where he was able to attend a school that taught him sign language and how to read a little. Through this program they were supposed to recieve a monthly allowance to pay for food and cloths and other essentials since they would be in school with no income of any sort. But the man teaching then pocketed almost all the money and gave them about 4 dollars a month to "live" on. This is just some of the stories he has told me about his hardships. he has been to jail because he was givin permission to barrowed someones bike and a officier thought he stole it so since he could not eplain the situation he was simply thrown in jail for I think like 4 months before someone relised where he was and why. Being deaf here is hard because no one want to hire a deaf person ther is no such thing and rights for a handicap person so he would take any kind of crappy job he could find. About 3 years ago some chineese came to the province to mine for gems in the mountains about 200k from Lichinga illeagaly. He told me some horrific stories of people working for the chineese who were promised good money yet recieved unthinkable oppression. He said if people tried to steal gems or just did something wrong they were killed or torchured. hesaid he saw people get thier heads removed and their privates cut off. He said he was attacked several nights and has the scars to prove it. He escaped there and now works for Malo Ga Kujilana (place of reconciliation) fitting... He is a great guy with good morals he eplains what he knows to be right and wrong to me i think more of a reminder to himself in having to deal with the memories of a torn past. He has a wife who is 14 which is not uncommon here age wise and has lost two babies which I can tell was hard for him but he says they are in heaven now so its ok. He is a simi devote Muslim enough to have good morals and know how to go through the motions of the prayers because there isnt a deaf service or anything so his knowledge of Muslim practices seems to limited. He has been great to work with he enjoys the simple things in life and the animated ways he tells stories has been like watching him paint a mural of his story its been beautiful. Me and Kyle went and visited his house and met his parents and siblings and its obvious no one has ever cared enough to do anything of the sort because every day since then he has told me about me goin and meeting his parents and that was last week sometime that we went. So these past couple of weeks have been rewarding and Im looking forward to many more. Oh and a little heplful tid bit is the reason we can comunicate so well is because I took sign language in high school and even though African sign language is different it hasnt been to hard to figure out. Overall its been a good past couple of weeks and i hope all is well state side i miss everyone! love yall!

Sorry I'm just getting around to writing about Mali but I had to get back into the Moz groove and plant my garden and such. As for Mali it was GREAT! It was so good to just be there and be able to dream about what life might look like and how different things could be reconciled. Like harmful animistic and muslim practices, agriculture and increasing a variety in their diet because they pretty much only eat maize, sanitation with latrines and clean water and healthcare with sustainable natural medicines because they are unable to afford almost all western medicine. Seeing the people suffer was hard but good for me in the since that it has welled up a passion in me that I believe can only be quenched by going there and doing everything I can to help. One of the hardest days was when we stumbled across the forth picture below of the kids in the dump what u cant see is their house just to the right.  So seeing the kids run around in literal crap and trash was needless to say hard... Well the pictures below that one were all from timbuktu where we got a tour of the city by a local pastor that we had a contact to. The first picture below was us riding donkeys from a dogon village back into town. Below that was a sandstorm that came over us which was kind of crazy and below that was a mosque in a dogon village which is really pretty but that about it because they don't pray in it or even have an imam. So its more like just the cool thing to do is to be muslim but at heart they are all animistic at least thats what I have concluded thus far. Well let me know if there are any questions about Mali because thats about all I can easily conclude. love yall!

Hey I am back from Mali safe and sounds it took a long time to upload these so I will tell you more about all of it later. Hope all is well state side.

Hey everyone I haven't had internet in awhile but I finished up the Anamed coarse last saturday and it was AMAZING and eye opening... It was taught by a docter from South Africa who used to be in a hospital but then he found natural medicines and found them to be in most cases more effective and with ALOT less man made chemicals and side affects because of those chemicals. He told us how after researching these different chemical compounds that are in most everything from food, soap, definatly cleaning agents and medicines that these chemicals in them weakin immune systems and cause cells to mutate causing cancer. So he started using natural medicines in the hospital but since those are not "real medicines" he was told not to use them even though patients would come back and ask for Dr. Cleve because they said they wanted his medicine because of how well it worked! He and two other guys taught us of all kinds of differnet natural medicines and how to make ointments and tinctures out of garlic, ginger, artimesia, neem, aloe, and more. Its truely amaing how well these work as soon as we got back a lady with an eye infection came to us and we treated here with an aloe ointment and it cleared up in a day. So it was really exciting to use plants around us to cure ailments. God has givin us plants all around us that do SO many wonderful things! Like dandilions they are everywhere in houston and they do wonders for sinus infections and many other things. And the best part about all these plants is that for the most part they are free if you know where to look or they cost a couple of dollars to buy seeds and grow them yourself. If anyone has any questions about any of this or what they could use when they get sick please ask because I would love to answer any questions about ANYTHING! so needless to say I am excited about all of this and I hope all is well back in America!

Well I'm moving into a new era I'm my time here all the other interns have left but a girl from portugal is here and me and her are designing a permaculture plan for the farm. This term permaculture is new to me but I will explain it the best I can. Permaculture is a combination of two things permanent agriculture and permanent culture meaning this a plan to both have a sustainable source of agriculture and to preserve the culture of any people. So in my design I must efficiently place the house structure, plants, dams, living fences, animals, water systems, sewage systems to where EVERYTHING is benefitting something just as everything is being benefitted. These methods focus on using only renewable sources of energy like solar panels and water turbines. The goal is to set up a system that is self sustaining where it can run on its own on a day to day basis where you would work a total of like 30 days out of the year yet you would have a constant source of food. So designing this has been a challenge but fun because in this process they are becoming more responsible in their actions with the earth. So ill keep you updated on how the process is going we are still in the research stage but toying with designs till then much love to everyone.

Kyle and Rusty have started meeting with people from surrounding villages in hopes of creating a community of people who trust and love each other. This is a picture of a house we helped build for the village chief because his house fell apart in the last rainy season, but this one should be the last house he will ever have to rebuild. This is because we build it out of cob which is a clay, sand and straw mixture that becomes very hard and we will thatch his roof which can be good up to twenty years compared to the grass and plastic roofs that have to be annually replaced. It was such a good feeling to be able to help this community build this house for one of its members. this community gets together once a week to work on various community projects like building stoves for one another, building rabbit of goat cages, or just helping someone harvest their corn. so I hope all is well on that side of the pond and I love you all.

Moz

hey everyone I'm sorry it has taken so long for me to update everyone but life has just recently slowed down enough for me to set this up. Everything thus far has been awesome the people here are the most hospitable people I have ever met! and I've been working with Lucky who you cant really see in the photo but he is the black guy in a white shirt and he has a soccer team that I practice with. these girls are all young girls he has bible studies with and is trying to find ways for them to support themselves in attending school. this is one of his ideas in the picture we are building a bread oven for the girls to bake bread and sell in the village. He is a huge role model for these girls. I will write more soon thanks everyone who supported me for letting me be apart of something so much bigger than me