Taking time out

After 6 weeks of hard work, emotionally and physically, we have taken a weekend out to rest in South Africa which has been so good for us. This last week we celebrated our 4 year wedding anniversary, and thought it best, in the midst of everything, to take a couple days out just for us. We thank you for your prayers for us during this trying time. Helena's funeral was as beautiful as one can be in Mozambique. The majority attending the funeral (which is literally just a ceremony at her burial site) were the little girls who lived with and grew up with Helena. And in the end they sang Helena's favourite worship songs as they planted flowers over her burial site. An action that brought all of us to tears. She is laid to rest in Jesus' arms of comfort and unending love, and is remembered in our hearts and minds. And we continue to work through the grieving.

Regarding the clinic closure, we thank you so much for your continued prayers regarding those things we posted as concerns on a previous blog posting. We have had some specific answered prayer -  we have had a book of medical protocols given to us by a Mozambican medical professional - a retired doctor who first trained as a nurse, then worked for the ministry of health training nurses and then became an anesthesiologist. He has knowledge of how many things work within the ministry and amazing connections. He is the only person, when asked about specific medical protocols, who actually within days gave us a book full of them. Hallelujah! Now he would like to come along side us and see us re-open in an even greater capacity than before. This all sounds too good to be true and so obviously when we clearly did not run our "health post" efficiently, we are hesitant at the thought of trying to open a health centre (one step up from a health post) as it requires more staff, more finance and better training and running all around. It would also open our centre to more outside traffic coming on site most days to receive healthcare which I feel makes our children vulnerable, open to greater risk. Please pray for us in this, that we would have wisdom to move forward in that which He is preparing, and that if this man is a gift from Him to get us back on our feet in even a greater capacity for our children and the community, that we would not miss the opportunity and gift.

Moving on, Iris Ministries is a faith-based organization, financially completely reliant month to month on individual's  generosity from across the world. Iris itself is an over-the-top generous, philanthropic organization who tries to meet the needs of whoever comes to us. At times we wonder month to month how we are going to pay our workers, or what sort of budget cuts we need to make to meet all needs to the best of our abilities. And amazingly, every child is well fed, well cared for and not one misses out! Yet, this last month was one of those times. Ministry financial needs were much greater than the finances which we held in our hands or accounts and so we pray and are sending out prayer requests that you would pray on our behalf.
Written to us by our director:"Iris has been in these crises before and we continue to give, be generous, pay salaries and minister to the poor but there needs to be a miraculous breakthrough. In June we have received  50% of our budget requests and other bases have similar problems.
The economic crisis in America continues (90% of our funding comes from there) and the demands of community, churches, outreaches, hunger and desperate situations increase at our door daily. Mozambique has given workers a large increase in May and we have passed this increase on this month. The US$ is down from a high of 38Mets and is now 29Mets increasing our budget request by 25%. In 2011 we are thousands of $$ over budget on car maintenance and school expenses. We need to be wise, good stewards and generous -but above all pray."


We would like to thank those in America (names unknown to us) who contributed a large amount of money to us this last month which allowed us to make a contribution toward the servicing and repairs of the ministry vehicle we as a couple and in our work, use the most. This weekend we have brought the vehicle out to South Africa and after more than a year of hard use it needed a proper service and many things replaced and repaired which cost a nice chunk of money - this we did not want the ministry to pay for (although they will insist) and not knowing if we actually had the funds to cover it, found that in our American account, unusually, there were a couple of big deposits this month which has now allowed us to cover these costs for the ministry. THANK YOU!

4 years later, the location where Matthew proposed

We send our love & appreciation out to each and every one of you!
Blessings from,

Sheri & Matthew Steer