The happiest of New Years to you

1st GG candle light service in Malawi

                                                              Christmas Dinner at our house

                                                   Christmas food fellowship with the church after sunday service

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Recap from 2014

The following is an example of all that God did in this year. Pr. Scibelli once preached that God’s Past Faithfulness gives Present Faith and produces Future Hope in Revelation 1:8.

January-March:

- Visit From Pr. Enock(Zambia), Anthony (South Africa), and Matt Roberge (US)

- Our 2^nd Year of Bible College Begins

- Missions trip to Kasungu( a Northern city in Malawi)

April-July:

- Pr. Scibelli visits with Shane Sterner and Colton Herb from Carlisle, PA.

- A group from Malawi attends our regional Zambian Conference

- We attend our International Conference and have a booth to benefit new Malawi team members

- We visit other branch churches in the United States.

August-October: 

- We welcome 5 new Missionaries to Lilongwe: Pr. George and Carol Arman; Matt and Lisa Sliva; and Peter Scibelli.

- Our First Annual Conference –MalawiCon- brings over 100 people for Pr. Scibelli’s Visit

November-December: 

- The 1^st Church Baptism Picnic- 12 members are Baptized; 20 attend to witness the event.

- Christmas Eve Candlelight Service

- Christmas Banquet

- New Year Eve/healing service

Prayer Requests for 2015:

- We have located some land that would be a perfect location for the church: 11/2 acres for $6000, we think we can make an offer for $4,000. We need wisdom from God for the timing.

- While that land is acquired and developed we need an interim place to worship and hold Bible college. We have currently outgrown our room. We are looking around the same area we are in. One hall is available and owned by the government. Our prayer is that they will let us rent it.

- We would like to begin a couples program next month

- We would like to do a missions trip in the next month to a rural village an hour from Lilongwe

- We are praying to be on the radio nationwide

CHRISTmas, exactly.

Merry Christmas to you from the Arman Family. Thank you for your prayers, love, and support this past year. How amazing. We are coming up on our 2 year anniversary being in Malawi. Its hard to believe that we already have some students graduating with a 2 year certificate. It still seems like we have only been here a few months.

   Last month we had our first Baptism. We had 12 people baptized with another 20 witnessing the event. It was so much fun to be together and enjoy watching people make decisions to follow God. We sang songs and had a message and enjoyed each other’s fellowship. It was one of those events in which you say, “This is what we came here for…” to see this type of change in a person’s life.

Our Big event of the year is our Christmas Banquet, which is a staple event for Southern African Missions. We did it in Zambia and we also do it in Malawi. We plan to have a big meal following the service on Sunday. We are praying that we will have a record of new visitors that would come through our doors. They may come for physical food, but that they would continue for spiritual food.

   Finally it seems that God is answering our prayers for our desire to change locations in multiple facets: First, we had a meeting to begin the procedure of renting a government hall to move into. We were interested in this place 6 months ago, but the people in it delayed to move out. The new hall would more than double our seating capacity and put us in an even more strategic location being adjacent to the main bus depot. We are still waiting on their response if we can rent it. We are believing God, that it will be available and within our budget. Secondly, we have begun looking for land for the church. We have found a location that is up and coming in development and that would be an easy place for many of our members to get to. The land in this area is still cheap and we are praying to buy a parcel of land and begin developing it while we are renting a building. We found a few locations that are about 6 thousand dollars, but we believe that we could make an offer of about 4 or less.  Amazingly we have already raised 25% of the money and are believing God for the rest hopefully by the early part of next year. A treasure in a field Matt. 13:44

It is amazing how things go from beginnings to very fast in a very short amount of time. We are so grateful to God and His faithfulness, and for our friends and family all around the world that make up the Family of God. Please continue to pray for us to have Wisdom and Boldness to believe God for the impossible. Merry Christmas.

Newest member of GG Church of Malawi. Steven George Dulli, 5 days old.

                     Pray for our potential land for the church....

Oh just on the main road, where only cars should only be allowed... had to pull over...lol

On our visitation day, thursday, visiting one precious family, Nixon and Joanna and their daughter Chimwemwe...
All the neighbors kids came to say hi and Chris started a small bible study/Christmas story using the ground instead of a sketch board :)

Our 2 new african ornaments of the year..

1st Baptism, "Salvation, and Stuff"

We just had Greater Grace of Malawi's first Baptism after a month of planning. It was full of joy and comedy. Since we are in a tropical climate, there are pools that are functioning year round. The problem is that many of these pools, whether they be in a small hotel or a restaurant don't usually want a church group of 40 people blasting into their premise and breaking the ambiance. Or if they do, they will charge quite a high premium on it. Thankfully, there was a small pool at my parents and the Sliva's compound. Unfortunately it was far past its prime which was probably in the mid 90's and hadn't probably been used since then. But as with anything, a little cleaning and hard work had it up and ready for the baptism. We had a month of announcements to invite all that wanted to be baptized to prepare. We also had a baptism class to explain what Baptism really means. Many have the misconception that Baptism saves a person. So the class dealt with many of these things.
We ended up baptizing 12 church members. It was awesome! Some were new believers, some "never got around to it". It was a great time of fellowship, singing, and snacks.

                                                                 This video just for fun...:)

"In everything give thanks for this is the will of God..."1Tess 5:18

"Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, His Love endures forever." Psalm 107:1

Am I thankful?

This is this time of the year again where friends and families come together to celebrate and as you all, we have a lot to be thankful for; our health, our children, our home, God's faithfulness to us.  I ask God to remind me of my blessings and all He's done for us throughout the years on the mission field. This year I am thankful for a team and our team members. We had such a great time of celebration with them for thanksgiving!

We are here on the foreign field where God has called us and where we have seen His faithfulness first hand, when we don't know for sure if we will have enough gas in the car or enough food for the coming week or if we'll find friends in a new foreign place; but we can say God IS Faithful and we choose to be thankful with the things that we have and not what we are lacking...

.... yes I can say this time of the year is a reminder that we are far from family and friends, we miss them, miss the cold (a little bit), miss sitting but the fire on a cold night, miss a steamy hot pumpkin spice latte from starbucks, and of course miss the snow and snowboarding in the Alps...

But I am thankful for this country here, the people, the heat, the rain and the mud, the wind and the potholes, and the dust, our house and our car and this city that cannot understand that when the sun is set, and its dark out, it is NOT the time to shut the power off to conserve energy ... but thankful to know that now we have people with us that go through the same thing as us lol...

"Let us come before His presence with Thanksgiving and make a joyful noise unto Him with Psalms." Psalm 95:2

Happy Late Thanksgiving

                                                                                                       

Malawi's first conference with Pr Scibelli and on to Lusaka, Zambia....

                                                                             MALAWICON 2014

                 And on to Lusaka, with one stop for Ice cream on the way...

On the way to Lusaka, we discovered that they are re-doing the roads - which is a great thing btw- but the only road (for a while) was the dirt one that you see here...can you imagine going on a road like this for hours, this is the main road to the capital of Zambia lol and it will take them a few years to finish considering the trip is about 12 hours!

We also had good roads  (good for african standards), thank God!

Pr Belias' School (GG Pastor in Lusaka) : Fipelua Private School. He opened the Christian School about 5 years ago on his house property and built all the classrooms himself around his property wall! Now he has about 300 students - nursery to 7th grade.

Saturday: Relationship Seminar

Our GG Church of Emmasdale in Lusaka has opened the first Greater Grace Christian Academy of Southern Africa -ONE LOVE ACADEMY- WITH ABOUT 25 STUDENTS SO FAR!

                                 Women Seminar 2014 - Lusaka Zambia

Preparing the traditional zambian food: Nshima (made w Maize)

The church ladies, hard at work, cooking for all our church people - want some chicken, anyone?

Healing of Grace

Here is one picture before we are on our way to Zambia for yet another few conferences :)
This one is from our first conference in Malawi: Malawicon 2014

Team Malawi Picture 2014

and some more pictures from this past week....

Grandpa George and Grandma Carol's house

                                                This sunday morning church service