[Beens Prayer Partners] update and Merry Christmas (late)

Dear Friends,

Hello. We trust each of you had a wonderful time celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We are doing well, though we have not yet finished our Christmas celebrations.

For those of you wondering what has happened to us, we are doing well. We left at the beginning of December to spend some time with Dan’s parents in South Africa. We had a wonderful, relaxing visit and so enjoyed the chance to see and visit with them again. Karunia and Josiah loved renewing their relationship with “Momo and Papaw” and it was nice for Asher to become re-acquainted with them as he was only 10 months old when we left the States. While in S. Africa we were also able to do some final shopping for things we can’t get here in Mozambique and everyone was able to make a trip to the dentist!The kids and I arrived back in Nampula on Monday the 19^th. Dan and our friend Gito were able to leave Maputo on the morning of the 20^th to make the drive back home in our car (which had been left there after Esperansa’s birth). They were pleased to make such great time on the first day, managing to arrive at the mid-way point after 15 hrs on the road. They took off early the next morning with hopes of making it the rest of the way home by late afternoon. The already poor roads had been made worse by some recent rains so between that and hitting a rock (hidden in the mud road) which resulted in some minor car damage and a flat tire they didn’t make the arrival of late afternoon, but did managed to pull in about 2 AM on Thursday morning!

We did enjoy eating with teammates on Christmas Eve and joining the church we attend here for lunch on Christmas Day, however other than that we are just now beginning our Christmas celebrations. Normally we celebrate the entire month of Advent (which begins just after Thanksgiving through Christmas) as we’ve found that really helps to focus our attention on Christmas’ true meaning. We felt we hadn’t done a good job of that this year – we were greatly behind on many of our activities and studies so we decided to delay Christmas celebrations a bit. On Christmas day we SET UP our Christmas tree and have now begun several of our normal (and some new) activities to help us and the kids focus better. We’re all looking forward to celebrating Christ’s birth in a couple wks!

Rabia, our househelp, noticed our Christmas tree yesterday. It sparked a great conversation as I explained some of our Christmas traditions and the ways we focus on Christ’s birth. (The entire conversation started b/c she’d asked me if this type of tree – evergreen – was the kind prohibited by God in the Garden of Eden. She thought it looked similar to the trees she’d seen in picture Bibles). Later she saw Asher playing with a nativity set (though she didn’t know what it was). She heard me asking him who the baby was and when we said Jesus she stopped to look at each piece and commented how neat it was we did things like that to remember Jesus’ birth!

Christmas Day did bring a large rain storm. We’re extremely thankful for the rain and it’s a HUGE blessing as the rainy season has been very late in starting (normally it begins around Thanksgiving, however this is the 1^st of the rains really), however there were a couple bad points to the rain this year. 1^st of all, though we only underwent loss of electricity and about an inch of water on the floor (which came in through the windows before we could get them closed), many people had the roofs (made of plastic sheeting, metal or grass) blown off their houses. The 2^nd bad aspect of the rains coming on Christmas day is that many people had predicted the rains would come then. Apparently many people, even the Christians, believe that the witch doctors had been holding back the rains so that all the initiation ceremonies could be completed. Since ceremonies were to end by the 24^th they were saying the witch doctors would release the rains to start. Of course we know that our God is far more powerful than the witch doctors, but please pray that people here will come to understand the true power of our God and that they will understand He is far more powerful than the witch doctors around them and they need not fear if they have Christ! Pray we can impart that message to those around us.

Thanks so much for your partnership. We’ll send a prayer letter for January along within a couple days and hopefully you’ll also receive a snail mail newsletter sometime in January.

Blessings,
Robin

Dan & Robin Been
Missionaries to Mozambique, Africa
Our Web Page: http://www.mozambiquemessages.com

[Beens Prayer Partners] Josiah - BIG PRAISE!!!!!

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Dear friends

What a tremendous example of how God answers prayer. Josiah had his
appointment with the eye doctor today. Though in November the doctor
had been tremendously pleased with his progress, he'd still told us to
expect appointments this month as well as in Jan. & Feb. Well praise
the Lord, he was once again extremely pleased with Josiah's progress;
we now only have to patch his eye for 3 hrs per day, instead of all
day, and we don't have to return until late April or May!!!!

Thanks so much for your prayers! Do continue to remember his vision,
as we will still probably have to partially patch all the way to age 7
(he's 4.5) as that's when vision is completely set in the brain - but
what a huge blessing!

Robin & Dan

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[Beens Prayer Partners] Dec. prayer letter

Dear Friends, 30 November 05

Thank you so much for your support of our ministry through prayer. Please know that we consider you definite PARTNERS in our ministry and always remember if you want us to be praying about something on your behalf please do not hesitate to ask! I realized mid-month that I'd never typed an official letter for November. I want to state a few praises for those people who only receive correspondence through snail mail and so those of you with e-mail capabilities may see a few things of older news, but please continue to rejoice with us in those praises!

Praise God with us for the many blessings He has given.

• Perhaps most notable: Praise God with us for the safe arrival of our newest family member. Esperansa (The Portuguese word for hope and pronounced “S” - pe- ron – sa) Elizabeth Been arrived on the 20th of October. All went well with labor and delivery, for which we are greatly thankful. She is doing well and growing and the other kids have adjusted to her with relative ease.
  
  
• Praise God for the safety we had in traveling back to Nampula at the 1st of November. Dan ended up flying back with us and we left the car down south in Maputo with teammates. He will bring it back north later this month – after we've spent time with his parents here in Africa.
  
  
• Praise God for each of our workers (Rabia, Rasul, Lázaro, Ernesto, Abel, Jafar, and Victor) who so faithfully kept up their jobs and looked after our house and such during our absence.
  
  
• Praise God that we were able to re-settle back into some routine here in Nampula and that Dan was able to get back to work at the center in town.
  
  
• Josiah had his November appointment with the eye doctor in early November. The doctor was extremely pleased with the improvement his weaker eye received from the patching. In fact he made comment that he's never seen such drastic improvement in such a short spacing of time!!! We are continuing to patch his eye full time – he has an appointment next week and will also have to see the doctor in January and most likely February – after that we will see what the doctor wants to do.
  
  
• Within the last couple weeks we became aware of the need to change to a new printing company for the handling of our hard copy newsletters as our most recent newsletter has been sitting there since late September with nothing done to it. Praise the Lord with us! After sending a text only copy of this newsletter and an explanation of the situation to the various mission committees of our supporting churches we received an offer from one that they would oversee, produce, and mail our newsletters for us if we would let them. What a tremendous answer to prayer!!!! Thanks Lord and Hazel Dell Christian!
  
  
• Join with us in praising God for the gift of life and the ability to serve Him. Dan will have a birthday on the 15th of this month and Robin will celebrate hers on the 19th. We thank the Lord for this past year He has given us to serve Him and for the year which lies ahead!

Pray with us for the following:

• We are heading to S. Africa this weekend to meet up with Dan's parents and have a visit with them there. Please pray for safety in travel – for us and them. Pray we will have a wonderful visit. At the end of our visit, the kids and Robin will fly back to Nampula while Dan will drive back. Pray he will have safety in travel as well as an absence of car problems! A good Mozambican friend of ours will come south on the 18th to then accompany Dan north on the 19th.
  
  
• Pray for Dan and our teammate Shawn as they finish preparing lessons and curriculum plans for the classes which will start in January. Pray now for these classes and those church leaders and ministers who will be involved – that they will come to understand the Lord in a more personal way and will understand better His Word that they may then impart It's message to their congregations.
  
  
• Arlindo, a national friend, will be making a trip next week to Mogingual. This is one of the 3 heavily Muslim locations along the coast (with little or no church presence) that we'd asked you to be praying about in regards to it being a discipleship point for Dan. Arlindo is going instead of Dan as he can better assess the situation there. As a Mozambican, he will be able to pick up cultural things that Dan might miss. The area will also not be as apt to put on a false show to impress Arlindo and therefore he can gain a more accurate perspective of the area. After his trip he and Dan will sit down to discuss his findings and whether or not to pursue this area as one for discipleship.
  
  
• We have now entered a time known as “The Hunger Months” in Mozambique. Food gathered from last year's harvest is pretty much gone so the food around becomes scares and very expensive. Many people go hungry during these months (more so than normal). The congregations in Natia, one of Dan's current discipleship points, has already reported 2 deaths from starvation. Pray for the people of Mozambique during this time and pray for us as we seek to now meet not only the HUGE spiritual hunger of the people here but also to meet some of their increased physical hunger. Our teammates and us will be taking about a way to work through local churches to provide some type of food relief.
  
  
• Pray that Josiah's vision problems would continue to improve, Pray also that God would provide the money we need for Josiah's January and February visits to the eye doctor in S. Africa (there isn't an eye doctor here in Nampula or even Mozambique to handle these eye issues). It's a huge blessing that we could combine his December appointment with the travel we already had planned this month, however we don't have the money necessary for these future trips which will cost about $1000 per trip for Dan & Josiah to travel to South Africa. The $1000 is what it will cost to travel to South Africa and back to Nampula. We trust that God will provide the money needed.

Until next time!
Robin and Dan

PS – check out our website – if it's not updated now it will be within the next week or so.

Dan & Robin Been
Missionaries to Mozambique, Africa
Our Web Page: http://www.mozambiquemessages.com