Over the years, one of the questions I am asked most often is, “What ministry work are you doing in Mozambique?” People want to know what we are doing to spread the Gospel and bring God's Kingdom to the people there. And I understand why they ask. When people look from the outside at what we are doing, they see the Sunshine Nut Company. They see a cashew business. They see a factory, employees, cashews being processed, and a company that has grown over the years. What they don't always see is the ministry that is happening through all of it.
And I think part of the reason is simply distance. We are an ocean away. Mozambique is a long way from the United States, and most of the people who ask these questions will never have the opportunity to come here and see it for themselves. They can't walk through the factory, visit the villages, sit in one of our homes, meet the children, talk with our employees, or sit around a table and study God's Word with the people we have come to love. They can't see the relationships that have been built over years or the conversations that happen when no one is taking a picture or recording a video. So, from thousands of miles away, it can be easy to look at Sunshine Nut Company and simply see a business.
But I want people to know that this IS a ministry.
The Sunshine Nut Company is a business, but it is also a ministry. The villages we serve are a ministry. The homes we have created for children are a ministry. The relationships we have built are a ministry. The opportunities we have to share God's Word are a ministry. Every job, every conversation, every Bible study, every child, and every relationship is an opportunity to bring God's Kingdom to the people God has placed in our lives.
That is really the reason I wanted to write this blog. If you can't come to Mozambique and see these things for yourself, then I want to try to explain them in words. I want to pull back the curtain, so to speak, and give you a glimpse of what God has been doing here for the past 15 years. I want you to understand that what may look from a distance like a business or a collection of projects is actually something much deeper for us. It is our response to God's calling to come here and bring His Kingdom.
When I look back now, I am amazed at the ways God has allowed us to be part of His work in Mozambique. What started with a move to a country we knew very little about has grown into businesses, jobs, communities, homes, relationships, Bible studies, and countless opportunities to share the love of Christ.
There are three projects that have become the primary ways God has allowed us to do that: The Employment Project, The Villages Project, and The Homes Project. Each one looks different. Each one reaches people in different ways. But underneath all three is the same purpose… to love people, to serve them, to share the truth of God's Word, and ultimately to bring glory to Him.
I’d place this right after the paragraph about demonstrating what it looks like to follow Christ. It gives a very tangible picture of how that faith is lived out in the workplace every day.
The Employment Project- Sunshine Nut Company
The Employment Project began with the Sunshine Nut Company. On the surface, Sunshine is a cashew processing company. We purchase cashews from farmers, process them, and provide employment for people. But from the very beginning, we believed that Sunshine needed to be about much more than cashews. We quickly came to understand that one of the most practical ways we could bring God's Kingdom to the people around us was simply by providing good, honest work.
We often think about employment in terms of income, and certainly being able to earn a living is incredibly important. But there is something much deeper about work itself. From the very beginning, God created man to work. Work was part of His design and part of His mandate for mankind. So, in its most basic form, simply providing people with the opportunity to work is fulfilling something God intended for us. When we create jobs, we are not merely creating an income or solving an economic problem, we are giving people an opportunity to do something God created them to do… to work, to contribute, to provide for their families, and to use the abilities He has given them. That realization has changed the way we look at the Sunshine Nut Company. It isn't simply a business. It is an opportunity to participate in God's design for people's lives.
But we also believe that the workplace gives us an incredible opportunity to demonstrate what it looks like to follow Christ. We want Sunshine to be a place where people are treated with dignity, honesty, fairness, and respect. We want our employees to know that we care about them as people, not simply as workers. We want them to see something different in the way we operate and in the way we treat one another. In a culture and environment where corruption and exploitation can be the norm, we want Sunshine to stand as an example of righteousness… a place where integrity matters, where people are treated fairly, where we refuse to take advantage of others, and where doing what is right is more important than doing what is easy or profitable. We want our employees to see that there is another way to live and work, and that following Christ should make a visible difference in the way we conduct ourselves. In that sense, the workplace becomes a place where we can be a light in the darkness, not simply by telling people what we believe, but by showing them through the way we live, work, lead, and treat others.
One of the most powerful ways we see this lived out is in the way our Christian employees begin each workday. Every day, they gather together for a time of worship and prayer before they begin their work. Before the machines start running and the work begins, they pause to worship, to pray, and to acknowledge that their work belongs to God. To us, that is what it looks like when faith becomes part of everyday life. It is not something that happens only inside a church building on Sunday; it is something that can shape the way we begin our workday, the way we do our jobs, and the way we interact with the people around us.
When all is said and done, the bottom line is not how many cashews we process, how successful the business is, or even how many jobs we create. The bottom line is souls.
The Villages Project
The Villages Project is what allows us to be vertically integrated through the cashew value chain, all the way to the farmer level. While the Sunshine Nut Company connects us to the people who work in our processing factories, the Villages Project connects us directly to the farming families who grow the cashews we purchase. Through our community farms and mini factories, we have the opportunity to work with some of the poorest of the poor... families who are often living in remote communities with very few opportunities to improve their circumstances. This gives us an opportunity to do more than simply purchase their crops. It allows us to develop relationships, create economic opportunities, provide resources and training, and walk alongside families and communities over the long term. By being present at the farmer level, we are able to meet people where they are, serve them in practical ways, build trust, and demonstrate God's love through the way we work and live alongside them.
One of the places where this work has become especially meaningful is Palma, in the northern province of Cabo Delgado. This is an area that has been plagued by Islamic terrorism since 2017, leaving thousands of people dead and more than a million people displaced from their homes. Palma is also an area where the majority of the population is Muslim. Into this environment, God has given us the opportunity to demonstrate His love in a very practical way by providing people with the dignity that comes through meaningful work. Whether they are working in our cashew shelling factory or working in the fields planting the trees we have supplied, we want people to know that their lives have value and that they have something meaningful to contribute. Our staff don't simply provide jobs and then walk away. They walk alongside these people. They attend their weddings and funerals, they pray together, they work together, and they share life together. Over time, those relationships have become a powerful way of demonstrating the love of Christ, especially in a place where people have experienced so much loss, fear, and displacement.
One of the greatest lessons we have learned through this project is that if you really want to make a difference in a community, you first have to build relationships and establish trust. People need to know that you are not simply coming into their community with answers and telling them what they should do. They need to know that you care about them, that you are willing to listen, and that you are willing to walk alongside them. For us, those relationships have become one of the most important parts of the work. We have learned that ministry is often less about what we say and more about whether people can see that we are willing to live life with them.
One of the ways we have developed relationships and trust has been through a partnership with Living Water Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and our Muchenguentava Village Project in the southern province of Gaza. They have come alongside the work in Mozambique in such a practical and meaningful way. They funded the construction of a shade cloth over the community garden located on the cashew farm, providing a resource that benefits the people working and living in the surrounding community. And now they have just approved funds for a chicken project that will establish a broiler chicken production unit aimed at improving the food security and nutritional status of workers and their families at the cashew processing factory, while also benefiting the surrounding communities and contributing to local socio-economic development.
But, just like everything else we do, we don't see this project as being only about chickens. We are going to combine this project with a discipleship program through CBS, Community Bible Study. This is where the practical and the spiritual come together in such a beautiful way. The chicken project can improve food security and nutrition, while the Bible study gives us an opportunity to nourish people spiritually. CBS changes people's lives when they discover God through the study of His Word, and we are excited about the opportunity to bring that into the communities we are serving.
All of this is what makes the Villages Project so meaningful to us. Whether it is a community garden, a chicken project, a job, planting trees, or simply showing up and walking alongside people through the joys and hardships of life, these practical acts create opportunities to build relationships and trust. When those relationships are combined with discipleship and the study of God's Word, we have the opportunity to address both physical and spiritual needs. We don't always know where a conversation, an act of service, or a relationship will lead, but we trust that God can use every opportunity to open hearts and point people toward Jesus.
The Sunshine Homes Project
Perhaps the most personal way God has allowed us to bring His Kingdom to Mozambique has been through the Homes Project. There are so many children in Mozambique who have lost one or both parents, and many of them have no safe place to call home and no one to advocate for them. God opened our eyes to this need, and we began taking children into our Sunshine homes and making them part of our Sunshine family. Our goal has never been simply to provide food and shelter. We want these children to experience what it means to be loved, valued, protected, and truly part of a family. We tell our children all the time that they are not orphans. They have a Father, and His name is God.
The majority of the children we have accepted into our Sunshine family have never even heard the name of Jesus before coming to us. Think about that. For many of these children, the name of Jesus was completely unfamiliar. We have the incredible privilege of introducing them to Him and sharing with them the love of God. We have even accepted children who came to us wearing witchcraft cords… cords placed on them with the belief that they would bring good health and ward off evil. Seeing these things reminds us just how significant the opportunity is that God has given us. We are not simply providing a safe home, food, education, and a family. We are introducing children to the One who loves them, knows them, and has a purpose for their lives. What an extraordinary privilege it is to be able to share the love of God with a child who has never before heard the name of Jesus.
The mothers who care for these children have also become such an important part of this ministry. As relationships have developed, we have had opportunities to study the Bible together, pray together, and encourage one another. We have watched children grow physically, emotionally, academically, and spiritually. We have seen children baptized and become involved in local churches, and we have had the privilege of watching them begin to understand what it means to have a relationship with Jesus. These moments are precious because they remind us that what we are doing is about so much more than providing a home. We are watching God work in the lives of children and families.
This is also where the Beacons of Light Project fits so naturally into the story. We want the children and families in the community where our Sunshine Homes are located to know the Lord. We want the preschool-aged children in our community projects to grow up knowing that they are loved by God and that their lives have purpose. We want them to take what they have learned into their schools, their friendships, their future families, and eventually into their communities. One of the greatest hopes we have for these children is that they will not simply receive the light, but that they will become beacons of light for others.
His Kingdom
There have certainly been difficult seasons over these 15 years. There have been disappointments, projects that didn't work the way we thought they would, and relationships that didn't develop the way we hoped. There have been times when we wondered if what we were doing was making any difference at all. But God has continually reminded us that the results are ultimately His responsibility. Our responsibility is simply to be obedient.
It is easy to look at everything that has happened over the past 15 years and think that this is our story, but it isn't. It is His story. When we left everything behind and moved to Mozambique, we had no idea what God was going to do; we simply knew that He had called us to go. Now we can look back and see His fingerprints everywhere… in every job, every child, every home, every village, every relationship, every Bible study, and every opportunity to share the Gospel. God has written a story far greater than anything we could have written ourselves, and perhaps that is the greatest lesson of all: when God calls us, we don't have to know how the story will end. We simply have to be willing to say yes and trust Him with whatever we are willing to surrender. To God be the glory, because we have been blessed beyond measure to witness His story and to have a small part in what He is doing. And after 15 years, the prayer remains the same: that everything we do, everything we build, every person we serve, every child we teach, and every relationship we form would ultimately point people to Jesus and bring glory to His name. Because when all is said and done, the only thing that will matter is what God has done for His Kingdom and the lives He has brought into His eternal family.
