Iris Ministries Inc. Weblog

by Cassandra Soars

Iris Ministries

Pemba, Mozambique

24 June 2010

Photo gallery:

<http://www.irismin.org/childrensday2010.htm>

Children’s Day is so much fun for everyone involved, just as Christmas Day is eagerly anticipated by both parents and children. Children’s Day in Mozambique is a holiday that occurs on June 1st each year to celebrate children. In Pemba, the Iris celebration always includes presents, a chicken feast, sodas and games. This Children’s Day was beautiful and the presence of Jesus was wonderfully present as we spent time playing and eating together. Early in the morning, our precious ones opened their gifts.

Heidi and the missionaries gave gifts to every one of our children, and this year it only took four hours to sit with each child while he/she opened his/her presents! The girls’ gifts bags were heavy with treasures, and they all received new clothes, many of them purchased by missionaries in America. They were so excited, trying on the clothes as soon as they pulled them out of the gift bags! The boys also received bags of gifts and were most thrilled with their new video games, making the Mozambican LELELELE sound of joy. The video games are all still functioning almost a week later, which is a small miracle. One small boy, Manuel, carries his game with him everywhere, playing even while talking to his friends and visitors and missionaries. He can’t unglue his eyes from the screen.

After they received their gifts, they all ate together in the refertorio, talking excitedly and devouring chicken and soda. The missionaries smiled as they watched the children enjoy their food and gifts.

We were also delighted to have 200 of Mieze’s children eating lunch with us. Mieze is a small village about 20 kilometers away from our Pemba center. The Mieze children will have another chicken feast on Friday, celebrating Children’s Day, and will receive their gifts on Saturday, officially making it Children’s Week for them.

After lunch our Pemba children decided it was so much fun to play with their toys that they didn’t participate much in the games that were primarily organized for the village children, who also came to eat a huge chicken lunch. The line for the food kept growing from morning until evening.

We had a visiting team from Global Awakening with us, and they stayed up late the night before Children’s Day, making balloon animals so that each child could have one. The children from the village left our center with big smiles as they carried their balloon animals home. Most have never played with balloons before.

In total we fed over 3,000 children and shared His love with all who came, giving them not only cups of cold water in His name but also cold sodas and chicken and presents. What a great joy and privilege to see His presence and love more and more in each one of them, and to have the opportunity to celebrate them in this way!

A few days after Children’s Day they had another great surprise. The visiting team who came to build a playground for the children finished the playground. It is a beautiful dedication to the life of Michael Ann Goll, and her two adult children came to help build it. Her daughter said it is a great way to honor her mother, because the playground will continually bring joy to the kids every day for a long time to come. She most enjoyed teaching the kids how to slide down the fireman’s pole or how to use the zip line. Each day there was so much new joy, and getting to see the children’s reactions was so much fun.

The memorial to Michael Ann Goll had been in the planning stages for the past year-and-a-half, and they brought most of the materials from the U.S.

Everyone can remember back to their childhood days when there was nothing better than spending hours and hours on the playground, making yourself dizzy on the merry-go-round wheel or swinging as high as you could on the swing, or going lightning fast down the slide. This playground also includes a zip line and a fire pole, which the kids had never seen before! At the dedication Heidi and the team blessed the playground and remembered the life of Michael Ann as the kids giggled, laughed and screamed in the background. Then Heidi was the first to climb up the ladder to the platform and go down the slide, landing on her backside, amid cheers, laughter and clapping. Pastor José and Aurora, the Mozambican pastor and director of the children’s center, were soon to follow. They reveled in this moment when they could relive part of their childhood, where most likely, because of the country’s poverty and civil war, they never had the opportunity to experience a playground. It was a gr

eat day of joy and celebration for everyone, and a precious bookend on Children’s Day.

Cassandra Soars

Communications Director, Iris Ministries

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Thank you for all that you have done to make days like this possible at Iris Ministries! To us, ministering to the Lord and preaching the Gospel includes loving our children in every way, providing them with an early taste of heavenly joy! They know Jesus and are worshipers as well, and have much to teach us adult believers!

Much love, Rolland

You can email me at rolland@irismin.org with your inquiries, and I’ll either answer you or route you to appropriate people on our staff.

Dear family,

It has wrecked our hearts to watch the natural disaster in Haiti and its effects. We have been partnering in prayer for God’s breakthrough and victory to show up in this desperate situation.

Once again, we have felt the heart of God to bring His love to a place in such a need of Him. Therefore, Iris Ministries is presently putting together a team to provide on the ground support, medical help and assistance for earthquake victims in Haiti.

Around 3 million of Haiti’s residents have been affected by the quake and we will be sending our team to Port-au-Prince where the worst damage was centered.

We are putting together a team including nurses and missionaries that will be leaving the last week of February.

We believe that Haiti is a perfect opportunity for God to show up. It is only God who can bring relief to His children that have gone through such a traumatic disaster. We want to bring God’s love in action.

Here are some of the things we intend to do:

-Feeding at least 10,000 people.
-Bringing medical supplies and help relief.
-Praying for the sick.
-Partnering with Orphanages that have been affected by the devastating earthquake and are in desperate need of help.

This is a wake up call for us to partner together as a family and make a difference as God’s instruments of love and power in the worst situations on the earth.

We welcome you to be apart of this amazing opportunity in any way you feel led.

We are receiving donations for the Haiti project. You can help and partner with us, provide emergency aid, including medical supplies.

For information on how to contribute, please visit:
http://www.irismin.com/contact_support.cfm

You can also contact info@irismin.org if you have any further questions or would like to be involved in any way. We are extremely thankful for all your prayers and love.

Much love and hope in Jesus,

Iris Ministries