Mulungu Ndi Wabwino Nathawi Zonse

My last blog marked the end of the first week, but by no means the end of this adventure~this week's entries are sure to make me smile and cry as I relive the memories of Malawi!  Enjoy!




Day 9~Vacation Bible School & Youth Rally


Vacation Bible School was this morning and I was asked to teach the craft to the younger aged kids and it was great!  There were 3 different classes, each progressing in age a year or so.  So there were five of us selected to explain the craft, Brenda, Ashley, Kris, Kim, and myself.  Praise the Lord for our awesome translator, Carol as we would not have survived without her!  So we walk into the first class room where all the little tinies were seated on the floor.  I look in the front row and there was my sweet Phalles smiling from ear to ear, I haven't seen her light up like that all week!  We taught them Genesis 1:1 and helped them make a spinning wheel describing the days of creation.  They caught on very quickly and overall all three classes went well.  I was sad when it was over.  There was something so powerful about two different cultures (ours and theirs) coming together on the very first verse of the bible to remind us that we ALL have the SAME Creator!  


After lunch I was looking around in the Passion Center Office and saw "God is Good All the Time" written in Chichewa on a dry erase board.  I wrote it down in this journal in hopes of writing it on my heart:  Mulungu ndi wabwino nathawi zonse


In the afternoon I was able to go to the Youth Rally at the Botanical Gardens where Abusa Mark gave the message.  He rocked it!  I wrote down everything he said so that I could send it to Kalipo in a letter, it was that important!  He spoke on Purity and Choosing the Right Friends.  After his talk we broke up into small groups with the girls and boys separately.  Our charge was to encourage them to open up about what they had heard Pastor Mark speak on.  It was like pulling teeth to get those girls to talk!  Janessa and Missy were fantastic at getting on their level and were able to establish a safe place for the girls to share anything they'd like.  It was a special moment to encourage the girls to stand firm on the truth!


Day 10~ More VBS and Vision Clinic


Another round of VBS this morning.  The first session was crazy!!  There were 150 tinies trying to string tiny beads on a tiny string~it quickly became chaotic but we did the best we could.  The next two classes were much better, Ashley took the lead this time and explained it much better than I had in the first class, Praise the Lord!  The little ones just wanted to eat the beads and store them in their pockets for later.  Again, I was able to see Phalles and Kalipo in the classes!  At the end we handed out little goodie bags and their faces lit up~so excited to get their sweeties!  After it was over all the kids gathered in the school yard to receive juice and a snack, but it was very chaotic with all the kids!  For a moment I just stood on top of an old tree stump and just scanned the crowd thinking how awesome God was to allow me on the trip.  I had given Phalles a hug and said, "Tionana", see you later as I always do, but I couldn't find Kalipo.  We had gotten separated in the confusion of the crowd and I was bummed to leave without saying goodbye.  I waited for a bit but decided to head back down the hill on my own.  I had gotten to the bottom of the hill and was about to cross the bridge, and I felt the Holy Spirit saying, "Turn Around". So I did.  As I came to the top of the hill, there was my Kalipo standing on the same tree stump I had been on earlier and he was waiting for me.  I joked with him about not saying goodbye and we both left smiling.  Mulugu Ndi Wabwino Nathawi Zonse


The day ended with the Vision Clinic and it was awesome (i really do say this all the time, don't i?)  I got to help and it was such a blessing to see the excitement when these people could see for the first time in who knows how long.  God gave Brenda this "vision" and it was wonderful to see it come to life.  There were two "examining rooms" that were made up of three chairs and 1 table on the concrete slab that would eventually be a carport.  Two "eye charts" that were actually two of our team members (the patients were asked could they see our faces for distance screening or could they read a card for reading glass screening). At the very back of the "office" were three suitcases loaded with glasses and three team members fitting the patients.  It was the most beautiful optometrist office in the world at that moment! 


There was one sweet lady who was the sole guardian to 6 children and while she was waiting for her turn she said, "I love you so much for being here."  She was absolutely precious!  After she had been examined and walked out wearing her new glasses she said, "I still love you."  The Malawian people are beautiful and their joy is so raw, so simplistic, and so pure.  O how I long for just that.  And to that sweet little lady, "I love you too for just being here...."

Relaxing with the girls at the botanical gardens

Kalipo and friends at VBS

Phalles with her VBS craft

Optometry Office #1~Kara/Fatsani

Optometry Office #2 Brenda/Joseph
Eye charts Jessica/Kris
Fitting Lab in the distance

Week 1~ Comes to a Close

It continues to be a blessing to relive these days through the rewriting of them!  Below are exact entries from my journal for Days 5-8


Days 5-7


So I have fallen a bit behind in my journals~I'll try to catch up!  Friday and Saturday were the Sports Bonanza.  The Passion Center has a team in the Futbol (Soccer) Division for boys and the Netball (Basketball) Division for girls.  The soccer boys didn't fair too well, but gave a great effort two days in a row.  It was so fun to watch.  They kick the ball so high and don't play with the ball on the ground as we do in the States.  I was amazed that several of them played with one or no shoes.  The Passion Netball team won the Championship!!  It was pretty cool.  I watched a little bit of it and realized I had no idea what they were doing and moved back over to the soccer field.  It held more of my interest for two reasons.  1) My sweet Parker enjoys playing soccer at home so much and it made me feel a bit more connected with him despite the distance.  2) My sweet Kalipo enjoys playing soccer in Malawi so much and it made me feel a bit more connected with him despite the distance.  I am telling you being with Kalipo was like being with Parker + 6 years!  God is incredible!


Kalipo and Phalles show up everywhere I am and I love it!  Kalipo is so well mannered and has immediately taken on the role of my protector.  If any other kids begin to overtake me he is quick to have them move back.  While sitting at the soccer game he would clear out anyone who sat in my line of sight.  He really enjoys playing Frisbee and is already trying to make it arch way out and come directly to me.  He can sing and loves to dance.  I truly believe My Parker and My Kalipo are different flowers from the same garden.  


Phalles was so quiet and shy when I met her.  She wouldn't reciprocate any emotions to me (not at all surprising or even expected) and now she is a big ball of excitement when she sees me.  Holding my hands and wanting to wear my sunglasses all the time.  I had a rip in my skirt and in her resourcefulness she noticed it and tied it together to "repair" the tear and it was really quite cute!  Her smile is so welcoming and her eyes tell such a story.  What a precious child.


The sun was hot these two days, the days were long, and the kids were many.  Last night my body shut down and I felt drained of life~like never before.  I've been worn out and even exhausted, but not like this.  This was complete fatigue.  Sweet Nurse Brenda made me go to bed @7 p.m. and I rested very well.  So thankful for the prayers from my team and family back home.  I woke up on Sunday feeling 90% better!  


Day 8~


Wow one week today!  Pastor Eric put it this way:  We have packed 25lbs into a 5lb bag so far on this trip.  It's been an amazing first week.  I am excited for the second, but also bummed that it will be over at the end of it.  


Today we split into groups and went to several of the village churches.  I attended Pastor Lawrence Mandwalla's Church and Chris Weaver gave the message.  Chris was fantastic  We all got to share our testimonies along with members of the congregations and a youth group came a long way to sing!  I was amazed, they were wonderful.  One moment that was so sweet for me was seeing the Pastors 3 year old daughter approach him at the pulpit with her little hand extended wanting daddy to give her money to put in the offering plate.  It just reminded me of my children of course, but it was another board in the bridge from Ohio to Malawi.  Little girls need their daddy's and that outstretched hand starts early and continues late, doesn't it?  Praise the Lord that our Heavenly Father can give beyond what we can even imagine.   There was nothing but praise and celebration for our Savior in that one room church.


Two other things happened today.  A girl from the Passion Center was buried today.  We had heard that she may have had Malaria, but someone else said she may have had a brain tumor.  Either way it's a harsh reminder of how much death is a part of this culture.  There's a purpose in the way God's plan is orchestrated here in Malawi, but it seems so hard to understand.


Also, precious Linda, a little 4 year old girl who lives at the Passion Center was taken to Blantyre Hospital for another operation to regain use of two more fingers on one of her hands.  A little background:  Linda had taken a radish when she lived with her grandmother a year or so ago because she was hungry.  Her grandmother practiced witchcraft and punished Linda by holding her little hands over an open fire.  When she was brought to the Passion Center (as you could imagine) she was broken and bruised, very distrusting, and filled with sadness.  Through the love of the staff at the Passion Center, serious prayers from those in Malawi and America, and doctors in Blantyre she is smiling, loving Jesus and regaining use of her hands.   We lifted her up at team time tonight for peace, and comfort and quick healing.


Well, that's catches us up to tonight (Sunday evening).  Tomorrow is Vacation Bible School.  There should be between 150-700 kids.  The real number is a surprise!  I also have a chance to attend a Youth Rally where Pastor Mark will be giving a message on Purity.  I pray that God gives me boldness and confidence in the Word.  I was so glad to talk to my sweets tonight!  I miss those sweet voices~And I so miss my Lovie....I can't wait to tell you guys everything!

Phalles in my glasses

Church on Sunday

Outside of Church

Abusa Lawrence Mandwalla and our Team (that's his sweet little girl)

This is a video of Kalipo dancing with his friends at the Sports Bonanza, he's in the khaki shorts and t shirt.  I think this is so fun~I wish I could share it with him he would think it was so cool to see himself!

Raw Emotions

Tough to rewrite this one today...i knew it was coming so I have procrastinated a bit.  Anyway, here's the next page of the story!


Day 4~Widow and Hospital Visit

My goodness we have been here only two days and have absorbed so much.  The electricity has gone off twice already and I don't really mind.  The simplicity is so refreshing.  Especially when it goes out at dinner/team time in the evenings.  There is something so intimate about 30 people sitting around tiny candles and holding flashlights to see what they are eating.  It's a fun part I will always remember.  

So this morning were the Widow visits in the villages.  I wasn't actually supposed to go on the widow visit because it was my duty to go to the market with Jon to buy supplies for the bags that would go to the hospital visit in the afternoon.  As we were loading up the Pajeros, Jamie (an advanced team member) offered to take my place with Jon at the market so that I could experience the widow visit as it was her favorite part in years past.  I was so appreciative.  This group really knows what it means to work as a team.  

We loaded up the Pajeros and were off to the village where several widows would be waiting for us. There were actually two villages to visit so our team split up to meet with them both at the same time.  When we arrived Pastor Eric asked me and two others to speak to the widows.  First there was a short panic and then immediately I knew what to share.  My "heart" verse Isaiah 41:10.  The Lord had given me that verse at a time in my life when I wasn't walking the path HE had laid out for me.  But in my own circumstance of loneliness and desperation I cried out to him and this verse was how he answered me.   Being with the widows was such a sweet moment.  Their bodies were plagued with pain after years of hard labor and to see them sitting there so welcoming of us was such a blessing to me.  After our talks we all handed out care bags with flour, sugar, oil, and rice to each widow and then prayed for their needs individually.   Thank you God for using Jamie to make sure I was in the place you wanted me at the time I needed to be there.  Those sweet people blessed me more than I could have imagined.

We had a quick second to recover before heading out to the Passion Center so we could regroup for the hospital visit that afternoon (uggh).  Jon and Jamie had returned with the supplies we needed to fill 150 care bags for the guardians of the children at the hospital.  We had to stuff all the bags in a hot second and the team did not disappoint.  We formed an assembly line in the Passion Center lunch room and before you knew it we were loaded up and heading to the hospital.  Several Passion kids were chosen to go along on the visit to pray and translate prayers for the sick children.  When we arrived we had to wait because the parents were feeding their little ones.  You see in Zomba the children are primarily cared for in the hospitals by their guardians (mom, grandmother, aunt, cousin) and sometimes wait weeks just to see a doctor.  While we were waiting we noticed a woman walking around the courtyard, where several were having lunch from the hospital, preaching the Word of God to any who would listen!  It was so cool!  

Then it was time....I didn't want to go in.  I wanted to turn and run, but I couldn't.  Once inside the ward I saw caregivers at the bedsides of their children just loving on them and doing anything they could to keep them comfortable.  And the reality of it all was more than I could have imagined.  I looked across the room and saw a team member sinking into himself to hide his sobs.  I know him and I knew he was seeing his own wife and prematurely born son on those beds, knowing that if God hadn't chosen them to be U.S. citizens that one or both of those sweet family members would not have made it.  A member of the Passion staff, Fatsani, shared the gospel inside the terminally ill ward and at the end he asked who would like to know Christ as their savior and over 1/2 of the guardians raised their hands.  Fatsani was on fire!  Can you imagine someone just walking up and down the halls of our own U.S. hospitals telling patients about the eternal healing our savior can provide?   I mean really, we could learn so much!

The "ward" was one big room lined with twin sized beds.  There were sometimes two or three patients sharing one bed, some on the floor all just waiting to be healed.  There just wasn't enough room for all the sick.  I just sobbed seeing children with 2nd & 3rd degree burns laying helplessly, and those with heads so full of fluid they couldn't sit up.  It was more than I could handle and I had to leave the room for a moment to get my emotions in check.  The last thing I wanted those sweet things to see was more sadness.  After Fatsani's message we took bags of supplies to the bedsides of patients and prayed with them.  I didn't have a translator with me, but the word "prayer" was universal, they knew what I was doing and to whom I was praying.  I chose to go to beds that held children close to the same age as my own Parker and Hallie.  It was heartbreaking because I could see my children there and I knew that if these children were in the U.S. they could be healed.  But that's not what God wanted me to do there, he wanted me to stand in the gap for these children.  The last bed I went to was a toddler whose pregnant mother grabbed her hands when I began to pray as if to say, "be still child, we are approaching the throne of grace."  And that's all I could do was to pray for God's mercy and grace for the children he created and strength for their families.  Death is such a normal part of life there, and it is here too, but the rawness of it in Zomba was so real and so painful.  

Team time tonight was a mesh of sobs and brokenness.  It was a sweet time for our team.  Doing the widow visit and hospital visit in one day was emotionally draining.  One was a group of people I hadn't planned on seeing and one was a group of people I didn't really want to see.  In the end God allowed me to be blessed by both opportunities as I saw their faces as He sees them~with love.


*Note these pictures are from others on our team.

Greeting the Widows

Sharing my heart verse

One of the widowed men bowed in prayer

The supply bags to hand out to the widows

Hospital Courtyard (where the woman was preaching)

A glimpse at the hospital