We hope that you enjoyed the hot summer in England, and any holidays that you may have had. We are just coming out of winter here, which is quite a relief as the houses are not built for keeping the cold weather out! Last night was the first of many to come where we were kept awake with the sound of mosquitoes buzzing around, and wondering where they are going to land!
It was our 2-year wedding anniversary last month, so we had a great weekend away in the eastern highlands. There is amazing scenery up there, and it is very peaceful. As well as celebrating our wedding anniversary, it was a nice break as we had just had two conferences one week after another, which we were both involved in.
The first conference was the Farming God’s Way Champions conference, where people come from different countries around Africa to learn more about Farming God’s Way and how to teach it in their own countries through the church that they attend. Sean has been putting together a DVD training series, which will be completed very soon and distributed to churches and organisations around the world who are interested in using this a tool to alleviate poverty and teach biblical principles of farming.
The second conference was the Reach the Nation conference that we have every 3 months. This is where 80 site coordinators from around Zimbabwe come and receive training in farming God’s way to take back to their communities and train others.
As part of this project, called Operation Joseph, we are aiming to give the poorest 10% of the farmers who attend training on site, free seed and fertilizer for next season. So my main task at the moment has been to identify the most vulnerable households from a list of 2500!
Church is pretty busy at the moment, as we have our annual conference coming up where all the Newfrontiers churches in Zimbabwe meet together for a weekend of teaching. Sean has been putting together the first Newfrontiers Zimbabwe magazine to launch at the conference so has been working all hours to get it to the printers on time. www.roleastlea.co.zw
I have recently applied for a 3-year extension to my residence visa, so we are hoping to hear soon whether it has been successful. It should be granted, but if not we could be seeing you back in the UK very soon! Currently they have lost my file, so we are going back every few weeks for temporary extensions!
Our other main news is that we are having a baby! It is due at the end of April.
We will keep this short as we hope you have been able to keep more up to date with our news from our web page www.seananddebbiemullens.blogspot.com. This is where we write more regularly about what we are doing and it gets updated about every 2 weeks. There are also a few more photos. It has helped us to keep to in touch with friends and family, without the frustrations of Zimbabwe e-mails!
For those of you who support us financially thank you so much for your ongoing support, we couldn’t do what we do without you! We hope by now that you have received a letter from Oasis with new standing order forms and a copy of our last newsletter. Please let us know if you have not yet received your letter from Oasis.
Would be great to hear all your news,
Love
Debbie and Sean
p.s the photo is of Sean's sister and her boyfriend, Gerry, his mum and us.
