About Us
We are Brad and Jennifer Salyer. We are originally from Texas in the United States of America, but we've been living in Southern Africa since 2003. We live in Balama, a rural village (think mud huts) in Mozambique, a country in South East Africa. Balama is actually the capital of it's district, but to anybody from our background, it's still a village. Although there was not cell service nor electricity nor paved roads when we arrived here in 2006, much progress has been made and we now have 3 different cellular providers and the main part of the village has electricity. Our neighborhood is still waiting on the electricity to be wired this way. Our house electricity is provided from 12V batteries which are charged by 5 solar panels and 1 small wind generator. We are also still awaiting the road to be paved all the way through our village, which will essentially catapult us up to “town” status.
Besides being the father of eight children, Brad focuses on two different types of mission/ministry work. First and foremost he is an evangelist and church planter. He especially loves to ride his motorcycle into even more rural villages who have never heard of the hope and peace and freedom that can be found only in Jesus Christ. Secondly, he uses his more than 40 years of mechanical experience to serve other missionaries by providing service and repair work to their vehicles.
Jennifer is the mother of our 7 boys and 1 girl and serves as chief cook/ bottle-washer, web designer, logistics coordinator, tea connosieur, artist-in-residence, maid and teacher, among other things. Since there are no restaurants or grocery stores nearby, creativity and lots of work must be used to provide meals for a family of 10 on a daily basis. She likes to read, paint and embroider whenever she can make the time to do it.
Our children are Kanon, Gunnar, Magnum, Remington, Colt, Warrior, Bianca and Thunder. They are affectionately known as "The Artillery" or "The Arsenal." Five of them have been born on the continent of Africa. The teenagers like to play music, soccer and chess. The younger ones are Lego-obsessed like most western boys their age. We homeschool using the unschooling approach. All of the older ones have taught themselves to read, so we supply them with books. If you would like to read the unique story of why it sounds as though we named our children after weapons, you can SUBSCRIBE to our newsletter and you will receive our story "The History of the Salyer Artillery" FOR FREE. If you are already a subscriber but do not know our names story, then just SEND US AN EMAIL and we'll send that story to you.