Mission Zimbabwe
Steve’s Back in Africa
After 40 hrs of airplanes and airports I back in Zimbabwe, Africa. There aren’t any direct flights anymore to Zimbabwe from anywhere except from south and central African countries. This added another layover and flight to the trip. But two days of travel makes it easier to deal with jet lag and switching time zones (10 hr difference from home).
Still waiting for my fuel coupons, which meant that I bought diesel (2500liter minimum order) a week ago from South Africa. So that means I went for a walk this morning looking for some food and maybe if I am lucky a newspaper (haven’t found one that was less than week old yet) The newspaper classifieds is the best place to find anything at a decent price as there is hardly anything in the stores that are still open. But what I did find was somebody selling bread out of the back of his truck. So I forked out $4,000,000 for 8 loaves, which was all that I could reasonably manage to carry the half a km back to the place I am staying. Then I went back for a walk to the grocery store with the equivalent of $20 CAD, that was an inch and a half thick wad of cash in my pocket, to see if I could find something to put on the first piece of bread I’ve had since my flight from Amsterdam to Kenya. I found a jar of peanut butter and some masau jam (a wild fruit tree in the Zambezi valley Zizphus Mauritiana ) the same fruit elephants get drunk on when the fruit ferments on the trees. But I did have to scrape off the mould from the top of the fresh jam before I could find some good stuff to put on my bread.
Now that I put my water filter together and attached it to a faucet with a strip if rubber scavenger from an inner tube, I had some clean water to drink with my PB & J sandwiches for breakfast. Today I will be hunting down some tools and material to build a water reservoir and pump because the city supply to my water filter dribbled to a halt and it is only 9:00 am. But of coarse that will mean I need a back-up Power system to run the pump when the power goes out again. So I am hunting down parts and materials to assemble a means of back-up power as well.
I got side tracked a bit to day because I stopped in at the Immigration office to see what has become of my Visa application on my way to look for backup power parts. I spent most of the morning waiting for them to try to find the application. At noon they still didn’t have it so they said check in later. I did some run-around and found a shop that had shovels so I bought all the shovels they had, only three. Still haven’t found a decent wheelbarrow though. Went back to check if they had found my Visa application Just before they closed, but nothing today, So tomorrow I will be there the minute they open and wait again for a while as I now that “out of site out of mind “ happens really fast here.
Today is Friday and a week is gone. I have a sore shoulder for carrying around the equivalent of $500 CAD in my carry on bag which works out to about $550,000,000 Zim dollars with the largest denomination now $200,000, but most of the bills I had were only $100,000. So that worked out to somewhere near 4,000 notes that are equivalent to a dime or a quarter each. It’s had to buy anything here when all you can fit in your pocket is $20 CAD because that much cash is as thick as a 2×4. Still not visa, But I did get a phone # at Immigration (not something handed out to often) to call instead of wasting my days to keep them looking for the Visa application file. Did I mention it was 35 deg yesterday and 47 deg in the car. Oh we finally found some diesel (whoo-hoo) so I made sure I have enough for a while. Two 200 liter drums should last a little while.
Steve
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Please pray for Steven during his stay there in Zimbabwe (his health and protection). He will be returning back home to Canada in Dec.17th, 2007.
Pray for the release of the VISA .
Pray for the dying nation of Zimbabwe.
Pray for good leaders to rise up in that nation.
We thank everyone for their effective prayer support, and to those who have blessed us thru financial support for this mission, and to those who give great financial support for the mega church project. God bless you all as you have bless others!
If you have any words or encouraging words to give to Steven, please feel free to email them to me at this email address: Stegra@shaw.ca
And i will email all your individual emails to my husband, Steve, in one email since the internet service over there in Zimbabwe is very very slow- snail mail. It takes for Steve to download one email 5 minutes with just words. But if it’s with pics., it takes half an hour for him to download and receive it. And sometimes the line would cut off…Then he has to re download over it again. So please let me know and feel free to email any encouraging words or Words from God that u feel or sence you want to share with us. Thank you once again.
Shalom,
Kostamo family
Grace and kids (Donivin, Ivan, Stefanie and Samantha)
