Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

                               

                                                       Children Christmas Play

Writing to you this month has 2 great losses as we go into Christmas, but two great gains for Heaven.

     

Mike Kalako who was one of our first Bible school students. The past year he had a Job like experience going through great ailments. In spite of it all, Mike would come to classes very weak but enduring. He never had a word of complaint, but always exhibited faith. After being in a coma for a few days, miraculously  came out of it. He had been recovering for a few days and then went home to be with the Lord. Maybe God gave him just enough time to spend with his family before he was taken home. We will miss our great friend and student. He was a great testimony of being positive in suffering.

The other sad news is that Pr Jabulani Zwane's wife passed away after experiencing a seizure. We are all in a state of shock as many of us in the church just saw her at the last

conference. Please pray for Pr Jabulani and his family. That God would grant overwhelming comfort and peace. She leaves behind 3 young children.

We ask for your continued prayers for this Christmas season. We had our baptism last week and Christmas banquet coming up. My parents arrived 2 weeks ago. Also, We just finished 4 years of Bible college so we start the cycle over. We are amazed at God's faithfulness.


                                    Baptism 2016

Merry Christmas,

The Armans

Treats and more treats...

Two of the major ministries we do in missions are Visitation and Evangelism, which are really two of the major pillars in church planting. While they are so effective in receiving and retaining new visitors, they are met with intense opposition from our own self life and the other kingdom.

A great example of these two ministries is our church member named Maria. On Saturdays we take half of our Bible school students and fan out over the entire our community. As a group of students and I was walking through the community we ran into a group of ladies. We asked them if they were Christians to which they replied yes, then we asked them if they went to church. One of the ladies honestly said she hadn’t been to church in 3 years. Lovingly we explained to her the importance of church fellowship in her life and invited her to our church. Amazingly, the next day she came and put up her hand for salvation. You could see on her face that she had been touched. It was incredible to see how all the ladies in the church ministered to her. We sat down with her after the service in our New Visitors table and encouraged her further. Every new visitor gets a packet and in it is a translated copy of Pr. Steven’s booklet: Just Let God Love You in Chewa. Also there is a coupon for a free Coke. It’s our version of the Café. Maria has been coming since for the past 3 weeks, there we saw the results of evangelism in action.

The other edge of the sword is Visitation. In Africa visitation is huge and Maria again is a great example. We told Maria that we would love to visit her home. The first week we weren’t able to trace her house, the next week we tried again. This time we met her at a market near her house: Peter, one of our leaders, Poema, and I were all together. As we met in the market, her face bore a beautiful smile, ear to ear, as if she couldn’t believe we actually made it. She lives about a 15 minute walk from the church, down dusty roads in a house built on the outskirts of the community our church is in. When we arrived at her house, we were touched to see the condition she lives in and her story. She is a middle aged widow that is living with her son and two grandchildren. The grandchildren are children of her older son who also passed away. She doesn’t have a job but just washes clothes on the weekends to raise money for rent in her 1 bedroom dirt floored house. When we came to visit her, she was overwhelmed that we would take the time to come and see her in her home. This is the value of visitation.

We also just came back from bringing 3 of our leaders to a conference in Zambia. It was so encouraging to see all our brothers in Zambia and spend 3 days with the as we see the church in Southern Africa continue to grow. It was 12 short years ago when we spoke of branching out from Zambia into the surrounding countries. Now that is a reality. God is amazing.

Please pray for us as we:

1.       Prepare for Christmas Banquet at the Church – We are praying for 30 new visitors

2.       Our Church Picnic and Baptism in December

3.       Our 3rd Malacon April 15-16,  2017 as we have over 50 graduating

4.       Our Trip to Zambia on April 21-23, we are believing God for big things: that we could rent the whole bus to bring 70 people to Zamcon

Some pictures of this past month:

Ladies tea fellowship at our house

Noah's 1st birthday

GG Chisapo Church

Outreach at the Post Office

Malawi Time

It’s so hard to believe that we are beginning our 4^th year of being in Malawi, but we are back on African soil God is faithful as usual. I am so thankful for our family, the fact of their adjustment from America to Malawi is a miracle in itself. It’s basically 2 days of travel to get here: 8 hours to Paris, another 8 to Nairobi, a surprise stopover in Zimbabwe to pick up people, and finally arrival in Lilongwe at 1:30am. The great thing about getting to the airport  in the middle of the night is that everyone is tired, even the immigration officer. I was able to talk the immigration officer to giving my son a free visa since he was not included on our work permit yet. I said please help the people of God…you can still do that in Africa without offending people…and he had mercy on us.

After the whirlwind trip, we began the reinsertion into Malawian life (which really is the more sensible way of living- as our Malawian brethren would say). The day begins at 5:30am when the sun comes up whether you like it or not.  You are getting texts and calls that early. “Pastor, when is Bible College registration…Do you know its 5:30 am…Yes, so.” Its amazing looking outside our window in the morning since we live just off of a main road: Cars, Deathly old minivans that should have been scrapped long ago (David Livingstone said that he saw the smoke of a thousand villages…I’ve seen the smoke of a thousand minibuses where no mechanic has ever been), Bicycles, and Pedestrians all moving to begin the day. Even with a very low rate of formal employment, Malawians are extremely hard workers and are up early on the streets to find their daily bread physically. This motivates us to minister seeing the great needs both physically and spiritually.

One learns very quickly what the fundamental needs are for humanity here in Malawi. We used to complain when our internet was not fast enough in the US or when our calls were dropped. Because of the recent drought, there has been water rationing. Water is off for 2 days then on for 12 hours. Thankfully we set up a fairly large water tank in our back yard which we can draw water from when the water is out; but maybe it’s God’s way of identification with the people whom we minister to.  The majority of people in our church do not have running water in their house even in the capital. They go to a common tap to draw water for the day, often having to wait in line;  so walking out to the back yard doesn’t seem so bad. Thankfully our power has been on with very few blackouts, which is great when boiling water to take a bucket shower.

Upon our arrival we had Mindy Stein from Berlin, Germany visit us, and she was put through the crucible of the Malawian welcome. No running water, bucket showers, flushing toilets by pouring water down them, etc. She was a trooper and looked beyond the details to really minister to people. I think Philippians 1:12 describe it best: the hardships that have befallen us have happened for the furtherance of the Gospel. This means that it’s worth it all because the Gospel is preached. Pray for us this year. We have more turnout than ever before for Bible college (over 200 registered), visitation of the cities where we sent the summer missionaries, our National Radio Program, home school of the girls with little Noah in the mix, and the running of the church in visitation, women’s ministries, couples, etc.

More chairs for our church and Bible College

Also pray as my Step mom, Carol Arman, who is receiving knee surgery in the States and will come with my Father hopefully before Christmas.           

Thank you for Your priceless love, prayers, and support; we are nothing without our Spiritual Family,

The Arman Family

Poema's 8th birthday

Our 3th year in Malawi 2015-2016 Slideshow

Year of 2nds

Year of 2nds

As we begin our journey back to Baltimore we are thankful at what God has done over the past year.

- Birth and health of our new son. Noah was born in October and we returned with the whole family in November. To think that a 1month old could travel over 5000 miles is a miracle. Praise be to God that he and our family have our health. We don't take for granted God's covering.

- Our 2nd Baptism. We had 18 baptisms of church members in December along with a church picnic and volleyball. Just a simple thing like volleyball with people who love God and walk in the Spirit can be such a uniting experience.

- 2nd Marriage of a key leader. Around Christmas we did our 2nd wedding in the church. It was so beautiful and such a help to this couple which is a key part in our men's and women's discipleship.

- Move into our new location. As a church and Bible College we have always struggled to fit everyone in the premises we have rented, often having students looking in from outside while others were seated on mats on the floor. We found a new hall that seats 250 which we now rent for the church and Bible College. Although we finished the year with about 180 students will have some room to grow (which we will in the coming semester).

-2nd Graduation and Trip to Zambia. This is really the climax of our year. We had 50 graduates( 20 Diplomas, and 30 Certificates) with Pr Scibelli as our Graduation and Conference speaker and Pr Adam Speedy also visiting. Then 30 members of our church jumped on a 12 hour bus to Lusaka, Zambia for their annual conference.

- Start of "Grace Moments" national radio program. Across from my parents and the Slivas home there is an office of one of the national radio stations. When a friend visited us last year, he encouraged us to inquire what it would take to be on that station given its scope and convenience. We thought we could never be able to afford it as a church, but we asked in faith. It turned out that it wasn't as much as we thought and after we negotiated the price, God put it on a companies heart to support the whole program for the next year. Now we are on live radio every Tuesday in a prime time slot 7-7:30pm reaching the whole country with the message of Grace receiving texts and questions from different parts of the country.

- Opening of our 2nd church. In the Western part of our city is an area which is very open. Pr Albert had been doing a Bible Study there for the past year and about 20% of our members are from there. This past May, Pr Albert started the church there and already has been getting 20-25 people coming.

Thank You for all your Love, Thoughts, Prayers, and Support. Although Malawi may be one of the poorest countries in Africa, they are Strong in Hunger for the Word of God and for bringing it to the rest of the country.

Pray for Us in Detail this Summer:

- Leaders leading. With us returning to Baltimore and Pr Albert in the New Church, we have Commissioned 4 men to speak the main messages and 8 others to do introductions. These are our future Malawian leaders. They will be leading the church and doing the outreaches. Its an exciting time as we see God raising up great people.

- 2 by 2. Jesus sent them 2 by 2 also Noah called them 2 by 2. We have 5 teams going to the 5 major cities in Malawi: Salima, Kasungu, Mzuzu, Blantyre, and Mchinji. Each team of 2 will go for about 2weeks to 10 days evangelizing and doing Bible studies promoting the radio show and future churches and making contacts which we will visit in the coming year. Bless You,

The Arman Family

Team Malawi 2015-2016

ZAMCON 2016

1986-2016 - 30 years in Africa

The churches of Southern Africa came together to recognize and honor Pastor Scibelli for serving 30 years in Africa. 

    Bible College Graduation- 70 students graduated from Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi.

Team Malawi in Zambia