Wednesday, May 12, 2004 Hello friends, family, and supporters! We are a little belated on this latest newsletter, but you have not been forgotten. Let's see. Lots has happened since our last letter, first of all we moved yet again, this time to Montepuez, the second largest city in the province of Cabo Delgado. We are living now about 2 1/2 hours from a grocery store, hardware store, and otherwise civilization. (That town also happens to be on the beach and have an Italian Restaurant!... What else do you need!) We have moved into a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house along with the Smiths, and the rest of the team has found housing as well. We just received our container from the States and it made it through customs here without any hang-ups, what a blessing! It was definitely an experience moving 6 families in one day. We started at 5:00 a.m. and finished around 7:00 p.m. Without a doubt, we're going to check that off our list of "things we'd like to do again". We are still in the process of obtaining land. It has taken us a little longer than we'd expected, mainly because we failed to factor in drunken chiefs and corrupt politicians. haha. But that's the way things work here. This is also an election year and where we are living is the center of the opposing party. And so, it has become a little awkward trying to convince the governing party that we have no political agenda by wanting to move deeper into the bush. There is some remaining political tension between these two parties because the civil war is still fresh on their minds. So please pray that God will give us wisdom in knowing how to handle this situation. We started Makua lessons a couple weeks ago and that has been going well. Although it's been a bit tough trying to build up the motivation to learn a third language. We've just begun to get really good at our Portuguese and the fact that we're learning Makua through Portuguese (because very few speak English) has made it a crutch for our Makua learning. We start our conversations in Makua but the minute it gets difficult we revert back to Portuguese. I'm sure that'll get better with time. It's completely different than learning Portuguese, at least in Portuguese we pronounce the letters the same in english. But it won't be so foreign after another six months. Well, we did have a semi-hilarious moment the other day. Our house got broken into a couple nights ago, but our night watchman chased the guy away before he could come inside. Well, I promise it was actually a funny story. .... kind of.... We got woken up (about 2:30 am) by our night watchman yelling in Makua into our window (He doesn't speak a lick of portuguese, we only keep him because he's like 100 years old). So I gathered from the hostility in his voice that there was a thief trying to break in, so I went outside where he showed me where in the fence the guy broke in, what he stole and what not. He then proceeded to do something that I thought was only done on Scooby-Doo. He wanted to follow the Footprints...... so we followed them..... for about a quarter-mile! Then I thought to myself... Hey, it's now 3:00 a.m. and I walking down a dirt road in the dark tracking footprints of a guy who just stole some of my cheap junk. So I turned around and went back to bed. Well anyway, everyone and everything is o.k. This kinda stuff happens, it was never a matter of if, it was only a matter of when. Our health (both mentally and physically) has been good. We both have been trying to shake strep throat and I've had a few cases of Jardia. But besides that, we've been doing great. Thank you so much for praying for us this month. We really enjoy hearing from you and praying specifically for your lives as well. The Peace of the Lord, Rusty and Ann Caldwell Points of Prayer: 1. Continue praying for us to receive land 2. Health 3. Language learning 4. Our relationships with the team 5. Our Marriage 6. The Makua people