April 26, 2022

April showers of blessings

At the 11th hour, all that we needed for our annual conference  to be a success, was provided by our merciful Saviour through you! Thank you for being a vessel through which prayers and help flowed. Our conference theme was “Recovering All” from 1 Samuel 30:8. We truly have recovered so much from the two years we seemed to have lost to COVID restrictions and missing our brethren.
 

We recovered:
- Our brothers and sisters from abroad. We had 12 Zambians, 10 Zimbabweans, 5 Americans, 2 Mozambicans, and 1 South African brave buses, airplanes, and COVID tests to be together. God commanded a blessing. We had a wonderful time of unity and fellowship. God spoke clearly through each man of God.


One amazing story was Pr Emile from DRC. Pr Emile was told his passport could not be available due to lack of passport books. God overcame that and he got his passport in time to travel. When arriving in Lusaka, he went to the Malawian embassy and was told he would have to wait 5 days for an e-visa. That would have stopped most people, not Pr Emil, he decided to take his chances at the border. Miraculously he crossed the border in the bush with a bicycle. This made it possible for him to attend the conference but would pose problems when he would return since he had no entry stamp. He believed God and we prayed for the gift of Elisha to blind the eyes of anyone checking his passport. He started off with the Zambians. They made it to the halfway point of the Malawi and Zambia border. The real test was the police checkpoint and immigration. The police saw their van was overloaded and scolded them for the minor offense. Then came the dreaded immigration official. He began checking everyone’s passport. Upon coming to P Emile, he was tired. In his frustration, he commanded the bus just to leave without any check. If they had found Pr Emile’s passport without a stamp, he could have been imprisoned or fined a steep fine. They all finally crossed without issue.

Our full Graduation. We finally were able to  have all our students graduate in the same ceremony. We also were in our new building for the first time. It was amazing to see the new church at capacity with 500+ students, guests, and family. We used the graduation as the transition to move Bible College classes to our new building.

A family. About 10 months ago we received Pr Moses with us in our church. He is originally from Uganda who had been ministering in Zimbabwe for the last 9 years. He had planted a church and gotten married with a child. Unfortunately, he was caught in a legal technicality and was deported awaiting a decision from Zimbabwean Immigration. Again things turned for the worse as the immigration gave him a 3 year blacklisting.  He was separated from his wife and daughter with discouragement. But God! After inquiring we found we could get him a missionary visa and have his wife move here. His vision is to plant a church in the Southern Malawian city of Zomba. We have a former church member and Bible College graduate living there. They are set to open the new church on Easter Sunday.

Prayer Requests:
- We are still finishing minor touches to the church building. Please pray for wisdom.
- the Church also owns the plot next door which we would like to put a Christian k-7 school on.
-Please pray for Missions trips to Lesotho and Namibia both in May. We are praying for direction for the future.
-Lastly, for wisdom about this summer, for the family to attend our summer conference.






December 28, 2021

The good, the bad and the beautiful mission field - a year’s recap


                                           Merry Christmas and a Blessed New Year 2022.

 

Well, it has been an interesting year and as you can see I haven't been updating the blog. So I thought I would pop in and give you a little recap of this past year.  I can't even believe 2021 is almost coming to an end.
We started the new year not knowing at all what would happen. Not that it’s not what happens every year but after 2 years of not being able to travel anywhere we really didn't know what it would look like.


And even with all the restrictions, mandates and all the PCR tests, we got to visit 5 different countries this year. (France, Greece, the U.S of A., Namibia and South Africa.)  Some of you might think it’s a privileged life, to be able to travel the world. I always say it’s a part of our lifestyle and if God wasn't behind it all we would probably not be doing it. We know a lot of people/families that could not handle what we are doing every year: the endless packing and unpacking, sleeping in strange beds, constantly meeting new people (lol), different kind of food, cultures and way of thinking,
long lay-overs, so many flights,immigration (lol) and endless car rides… we are definitely not complaining but sometimes it gets old and a bit much.
So after 2 years of staying put in Africa it was a year full of unexpected things, more cancelled flights but many blessings and adventures.
 

As I'm writing this on Tuesday of the last week of the year. Its a hot sunny day. I’m half sitting half laying on my bed. I'm on day 2 of the flu its mild. No we haven't done any test yet. Callia is also down and now Chris is. It’s about 35 degrees C (95 F) in the house and today we don't have power because our neighbors backyard tree fell on our power line. We also just had a great long Christmas weekend so we are all pretty tired and I'm sure it didn't help our conditions now. It has been a weird year of malaria, drought (please pray for the rains to come) and more sickness… we cannot complain as we know it has been a weird few years for a lot of people.
 

And as I'm reminiscing on the past year, the highlight of our year was definitely our yearly conference in April and our long awaited trip to Namibia. A country we had heard about from Namibian friends here and a new vision from our home church.  A place we definitely had wanted to visit sooner. But covid… and after a few weeks and negative PCR tests, we finally made it there. A country we could describe as huge and almost empty of people (less than 3 million) and vast deserts with the Atlantic ocean on the west coast, we met some of the nicest and open people. We will definitely go back. We made it to Cape Town South Africa for a short visit and visited our churches in Pretoria.

 

We had the privilege of having quite a few visitors during the year. Friends from South Africa and from the States for our annual conference and a short term Bible College Student from our home church in Baltimore, Alina who spent 3 months with us.

So there you have it; here are some pictures of this past year in Malawi and beyond.

Baltimore MD Convention

Our dear Zambian Pastor Belias who went home to Jesus in June.

Namibia team

Team Malawi 2021
Couple meeting
Ladies meeting
Preaching under the rain -Feb 2021
Baptism 
Malawicon graduation
Our new building
Christmas Service inside our new building