19 July 2008 |
| Our trip has finally come to a conclusion - in slightly disjointed circumstances. For our final trip from Hong Kong the group was split up as the plane was overbooked (apparently part of the official policy of the airline). So 12 of the team left at 9:15AM and Matt, Em and I (Rob) had to wait for a 7:30 flight. Thought this was initally a little annoying it gave us a great oppourtunity to explore Hong Kong. We were given spending money (which brought me a new flash) and access to the business lounge (with free tim-tams and everything else). We are now all back home and thankful to God for a safe and productive trip - with valuable contact with our friends and partners in the Gospel from Malawi. |
16 July 2008 |
| Greetings to everyone back home. We are now in the business class lounge at Kamuzu (Malawi) Airport (John Flett talked our way in) waiting for our first flight. We have about 1 hour ago till the flight. |
15 July 2008 |
Final group photo
New tank at Namatete - funded by PWMU
Builders at the Orbus site
Cairn (to be fitted with a plaque) at the Orbus site
14 July 2008 |
Colin lead us in song at the fairwell dinner
Farewell dinner
Banners presented to the Chigodi ladies - coming to a church near you!
13 July 2008 |
12 July 2008 |
| Greetings to all our friends and families. This weekend we are having some time off, travelling and looking at animals. Hopefully there will be lots of good photos for the website when we get back. - Rob |
10 July 2008 |
| Chigodi - the last week Waking up to the noise of chooks scratching in the dirt, the sun peeping in through the curtains, the sweeping sound of grandma next door already brushing the pathway of leaves was rather dreamy and pleasant. We knew this we our last week with the ladies at Chigodi. We had made many friends and knew it would be hard to leave them. Monday saw us in Grace's lounge room, surrounded by boxes that needed to be sorted. It was exciting to see so many donated items, especially ones we had packed ourselves. The generosity of our Victorians was overwhelming. At last the lounge room was back to normal. It amazes us how the Malawian men and ladies can lift and carry such heavy items on their heads. Tuesday was rather special for Cathy and Judy, as Grace took us to Ellen's village to revisit the Nursery School. This centre had only commenced on our first trip 2 years ago. They started with 25 students. Now there are 105. Diane was very keen and interested to visit Chidawati Village too. The children were delighted with our story, songs and items were left them. The young ones, though very shy recited the alphabet for us. As customary, Ellen put on a Malawian spread for us. Wednesdsay we were delighted to see the crocheting that the ladies had completed. They are so gifted - it is beautiful to see. Cathy and Diane showed them how to decorate their crocheted bags. the coloured flowers made the plain coloured bags come to life. The faces of the ladies when they ate the "BBQ" marshmellows was 'something' - we were all laughing. Matt and Rob came during the afternoon to video and fix computers. The students were thrilled and proud to show their sewing, knitting, crocheting and cutting skills for the camera. As they are natural dancers and singers it was not a hard task to ask them to perform before the video. Thursday we awoke with a sense of sadness and joy. Sadness to leave these lovely ladies, but joy to join our team members back at Grace Bandawee. As we went to morning devotions we came face to face once again with the harsh reality of Malawi life. Yet another family death. In our last two weeks at Chigodi we have witnessed the bereavement of 4 family deaths, the sadness of two ladies needing medial attention with malaria, of which one was admitted to hospital with pneumonia. After the long weekend, several women returned to the centre with colds. In morning devotions, we were reminded of God's love, card and knowledge of each one of us from Psalm 139, led beautifully by Cathy. The morning passed with normal household duties and special time with Grace. Grace has amazing drive and vision. A wonderfully gifted woman of God. How special and privileged we felt when we were giving an "Ozzie" style lunch, NO NSIMA, but - potato soup, chicken salad rolls, banana cake and fruit salad. The speeches rolled off their tongues so eloquently. It was too emotional for Diane and Judy to respond straight away. Grace was so overwhelmed when presented with the monetary gift from the Eltham Ladies. She covered her face with her hands and the thought she would be able to purchase more needed sewing machines. We were all moved - we sang 'Bind us together Lord' and 'Until we meet again'. We sense that Malawian women don't show their emotions like most of us Ozzies, but I did see a few wet eyes. After many hugs, kisses and photos we said goodbye. An emotional farewell, but a fulfilling time. I am sure we will be back! - Judy for Cathy and Diane |
| Builders report Builders beware: God is here, God is there, He could place you anywhere. Our 2nd project was maybe to batten out the Nametete church ceiling ready for lining board or some plan like that. Maybe we could get materials, maybe we would get nails, what about the ladders and scaffold? who would help? This is Malawi you know - time to start is when materials turn up. So I said maybe we could get 1/2 it done in our 4 days - only maybe if everything was there. But Colin M'Bawa and Richard were involved - we knew things would happen. Monday we would start - and we would get picked up on time. When we arrived to our surprise a truck load of timber and nails were already there, plus 3 carpenters and a church elder. all the seating was to one side. There were building scaffold's our powertools and the project was ready to begin! God is Good - All the time. All the time - God is Good. By day 1: 1/2 a side is complete, we even had time to play soccer with the boy's with a plastic bag soccer ball. Day 2 the centre section and 2nd half was completed. 2 big day's effort but the Malawian carpenters jumped and run across the match stick scaffold - a learning curve for us as the power tools are for them - they can see that the cordless drill makes life easy. Day 3 by lunch time project finished totally, with God in control - all things work together for good. Play hopscotch with the kids, soccer, make wooden planes, learning their names. Next to the church the bricklayers are building a water tower for a tank for extra water with funds supplied by our PWMU ladies - all done. O you of little faith - we give thanks to God. - Steve |
9 July 2008 |
| Technolgy Update AS the computer/engineer on the team I have found myself quite run off my feet at times to try and get to all the different areas that need computer/IT attention - something which is showing no signs of letting up - at least in the short term. This post will try and provide a brief summary of the computer stuff that is going on here - possibly to provide a stimulus for future trips to those God has gifted in techonolgical areas - the need is great! All the computers (29) sent over in the container initally found their way to the theological resource centre. There they needed to be unpacked harder than expected as they were positioned at the bottom corner of a room with other boxes stacked on top right up to the roof - forming a virtual pyramid. Fortunately Lloyd from the TRC was most eager to climb the pyramid and fish boxes out for me. Next stop was sorting out the working from the non-working (or ancient). Out for 29 computers 3 were non-working (and were quite effectively scavenged for parts) and one was that old (Pentium 100 with 16MB RAM ) that it was put to rest (when was the last time you saw a turbo button on a computer?). Next time I think we will provide a little more guidance and sort more carefully at the Australian end as it is fairly expensive exercise to send computers half way around the world. The scavenging of the non-working computers proved very useful - as it meant that we had just enough network cards to build a complete network for the TRC praise God! Also the 16 port network hub donated on the comtainer had exactly the right number of ports for the TRC computers and the one network printer - praise God again! At the TRC I have had a excellent helper - Victor, a young Malawian national with an IT diploma who acts as a trainer teaching people software packages (like Word, Excel and Powerpoint). He hadn't had much hardware experience but was an extremely fast learner and was formatting computers, building network cables and settings up networking settings in no time at all. He was a real blessing from God and I was glad I was able to pass on some of my practical skills and know they will be put to good use here. The TRC now has 15 computers running Windows 2000 and Office 2000. There are 5 computers which are designated to be for an 'Internet Cafe' at the CCAP Grace Bandawe Confrence Centre/Hotel and a further 5 which will be given out to various churches or pastors in need of a computer. I have spent two days at Zomba Theological College. Their major needs were a website and the fixing up of their computer lab. I have put together a website which will eventually appear at www.zombatc.org (given 2 weeks - I will post a notice) which they were very happy with. There were unfortuantely a couple of hiccups which I should have seen coming including the American web hosting company becoming suspicious of an Australian Paypal account being used with a Malawian address - in retrospect yes their fraud department was probably right in querying things. The computer lab was a rather interesting exprience. At least half the CMOS batteries (small CR2032 batteries which allow time and date information to be stored) were dead - and so computers were giving a CMOS error when they were started up - much to their confusion. 11 batteries later all was good (although it does talk of the age of the computers (CMOS batteries often last 8-10 years). As I was leaving it was mentioned in passing - oh and we would like to computerize the catalogue for the library in a database. Being very much pushed for time I provided some instructions on how to setup MS Access databases but wasn't able to properly fulfil this off-the-cuff request (nor did I do the ER diagrams for the data base). This would be a good project for someone to setup for next time maybe?? Half a day was spent at Queen Elizabeth hospital - mainly helping Em^2 bosses (Em^2 refers to Em and Em). They were having internet problems over 3 computers specifically relating to dialup (remember dialup?) and email servers. After some quick fixes - installing the modem and putting the right mail server addresses all is good. There have been a few issues with viruses which has been a point of interest. The major way people get viruses in the west is online - here very few people are online - and so viruses are being transmitted via USB memory sticks - something that takes me back 15 years to the warnings about sharing floppy disks between computers. Good old AVG Anti-virus has been making short work of those viruses! Today I spent half the day at Chigodi womens centre - it looks like there is one powersupply I'll be replacing and one hard drive that is badly corrupted and nearly cactus. Tomorrow I'll be at Rose Gardens Secondary school (apparently there are 5 non-working computers there) and then off to Chigodi in the evening to pick up the ladies and drop of the (hopefully!) fixed computers. Friday I may or may not be at the Synod office - that depends much more on them than it does on me. For those wondering about internet in Malaw - I have rigged up a system of connecting through my mobile phone (via bluetooth) and using the local provider (Celtel). This is cheap (0.22USD/MB), very convient (Matt and I have internet pretty well anywhere) but painfully slow (2-3KB/S). Hopefully this report wasn't too much of a bore - I guess it isn't in the same humorous league as the driving one so I will try to make up for it with some observations I have made: - Electrical safety standards in Malawi are somewhat relaxed (see picture of electrical plug - this sort of thing is pretty common - For some reason I found a tube of lip balm inside a computer??? - People over here tend to be entertained like at home when I fire off bottle rockets - I should probably not be asked to lead hymns that I have never heard of before (I guess they figured I was preaching so I could lead the hymn as well) (thanks John S for choosing the hymn) - When sparks start coming out of monitors and it makes an exploding sound it is a good time to remove the power - All for now, Rob |
Melted electrical plug (and not the only one!)
Victor training a class on the new computers at the resource centre
7 July 2008 |
| John's Zambian journal Saturday (28/6): Bob Thomas and I, together with David Chiboboka and the Zambian minister (Clerk of Assembly) Lazarus Mbewe set off for Zambia at 5.00 am Saturday on the Aussie Bus "All For Jesus". Felix is the driver this year - we think Isaac's been sacked for pot-holing too much. It's a long way to Lundazi from Blantyre but we made good time going north of Lilongwe headed for the furthermost town before turning towards the border. Pulling into the last filling station we were greeted with "no diesel" - which set our plans back apace! But Africans never give up. Mbewe says, "Wilson, it is fine". We drove to a small Malawian village and negotiated in pubs / shops for black market fuel. Bob and I had to lie low and out of sight as we trawled the village so the price wouldn't go too high (not easy for Bob). Refreshed with what we reckon was dodgy coloured diesel at an exorbitant price the driver took us down the most remote and bumpy dirt road towards Zambia. I felt like Michael Palin on one of his "Pole to Pole" adventures when we arrived at the remotest international border you could imagine. Yet here, amid the poorest village, one man operates a wobbly boom gate and stamps "exit" on our Malawian visa … then a dusty walk to another one-man operated wobbly boom gate to let us into Zambia with another stamp and a $50 fee! Lundazi (to be home for 5 days) is only a 30 minute drive from the border, and we take a short cut across the airstrip (not even looking for planes!) to get to Lundazi CCAP guest house by 4.00pm. How much more satisfying an outcome than 11pm with the PTC students last year (going the harder way!) They house Bob and I and the Castle Hotel - built in most unusual medieval style with few comforts but a good sized bed. Bob has the presidential suite which, they boast, was home to former President Dr Kenneth Kaunda when he visited Lundazi. There is no real supply of running water in my suite for shower, toilet or wash basin. Still, everyone's happy to see us. Sunday: (am) We SO enjoyed the 2½ hr worship service in CCAP church. Bob preached on "You must be born again" which was well received. I had the privilege, on behalf of Mission Partners of the Presbyterian Church of Australia and PCV, to sign the historic Partnership Agreement between the two churches (CCAP Zambia Synod and PCA/PCV). What rejoicing and glory given to God. Singing: out of this world. It's a special congregation - it's a pity it's far, far north-east Zambia. (pm) I asked whether I could speak with the widows of the parish. They gathered in the church at 3.00pm and I had the privilege of addressing the Kakowa widows of the Lundazi church. Kakowa is a white African bird, and they have adopted this symbol as indicative of their pledge that they endeavour by God's grace to remain pure for Jesus in all respects while they serve Him and as they undertake skills-training to establish their own IGAs so as not to be a drain on the church for support. Their witness moved the PTC students from last year so it was good to resume contact and to join with them again in prayer. The women send regards to Krissy and the Sandy whom they remember well. I asked Mary (their leader) about their greatest need and she said "Tumbuka Bibles" and Sandy's booklet on the Apostles' Creed - I will source the former back in Blantyre and send them to Lundazi from there. Monday to Thursday, each day: The bus picks us at 8am for the 50 minute dirt track ride to Chasefu, and even more northern village which CCAP have chosen as the site of the recently inaugurated Theological College. Isaac joins us now, together with Victor Chilenje. CTC? Briefly: Zambia Synod of CCAP have been hamstrung for years by a quota applied for the number of ministry students that may train for the ministry at any one time: FOUR. Two may be enrolled at the reformed College in Lusaka (Justo Mwale) for degree students and two more at the CCAP college in Zomba (Malawi) for diploma students. There is no room for Zambia CCAP to grow, evangelise or plant churches. The Synod agreed to commence certificate level training first, then Diploma level, at Chasefu and in 2007 invited our degree graduates and lecturers of PTC (Melb) last year to commence the institution - what a privilege for PTC. Sixteen of the finest, godly and most humble servants of Jesus Christ are gathered there for ministry training. Each day Bob Thomas commenced with a devotional exposition of a chapter of Philippians. Then for the rest of the morning I lectured through 20 centuries of church history and apply various lessons to practical ministry questions. That's three hours of intense but abs delightful work for the Kingdom. These students are the most accepting and receptive students (nearly as good as back home at PTC!). This is what I have come to Africa to do. It is stirring and invigorating work. No text books, without facilities, no drinks break … this is basic conditions. Then that 50 minute bump-drive back to the Castle. Tuesday was a delight … we handed out to each student a gift from the John Paton Fellowship of PTC (Melb). Each of our students had personally signed a copy of Bruce Milne's book "Know the Truth" that our students had bought. The smiles on the face of each African student - their first text book - EVER! Thanks, Simon and other students, for organizing this - PTC has made an indelible mark in Central Africa for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. These African evangelists will carry around your gift of Milne's book for the rest of their days. They now also have a copy of my church history lecture notes (I copied a set before I left). Wed / Thu are a bit of a blur for me because I caught the Lundazi bug. I reckon it was the goat! I'll spare you the details but let me say: "I thought I was going to die! I couldn't get out of bed for two days". The only way I could get relief was hobble to a local "clinic" to find a "doctor" who gave me something by injection. Bob manfully covered for me and has now become officially: Deputy Church History lecturer for PTC. Apparently I missed a great service on Wednesday at which the Synod conducted an early version (one year out) of a licensing service for the 16 students - to enable them to get involved in ministry in their villages on practicum. I'll let Bob describe the licensing service that took place in the church with no roof! Thursday afternoon we drove 4½ hrs on a very bad road to stay overnight at Chipata. Friday we set out at 5am for Lusaka and arrive, exhausted, by 3pm. We're getting used to only two meals a day now, and for this day … only the evening meal. It's what our Zambian friends do regularly. They regularly just have a banana for breakfast, no coffee, no lunch but then an evening meal. It seems appropriate that we do the same. Each day's bus trip starts and ends in a simple yet profound prayer to our heavenly Father. Everything our Zambian pastors do seems to be done most consciously under the eyes of and with the obvious blessing of the Lord. First shower for the week! I visit Justo Mwale Theological College at night to catch up with friends. Saturday (5/7) Bob Thomas is driven to Livingstone for ministry with CCAP at this the most southern point of the Republic of Zambia. He can tell you of his own story and whether or not he gets to visit the most famous Victoria Falls that David Livingstone discovered for Europe. On the road south there is evidence of terrible tragedies: a tourist bus that ran over the top of a car - flattening it beyond description; trucks overturned and demolished. We thank God for safe travel. I spend the day with the CCAP director of the department for HIV/AIDS ministry: Costin. I speak with him throughout the day about the church's valuable ministry to orphans. I have the privilege of spending two hours in the "home" of the Gondwe orphan children that our family, together with some kind hearted people from PCV, have been supporting since the untimely death of their parents in Christian ministry two years ago. What a day of sharing their story and especially of Ruth, only 20, who by leaning on the grace and wisdom of the Lord, is raising 5 children and keeping them on-track for their education. We sat together, laughed and talked and prayed. They live in poverty with no income - yet happy, devoted to each other and active in CCAP Mazabuka. What has God got for them in the future? Are their Christian leaders in this family? Again, out on the roads from 8am to 6pm - with only breakfast! We travel to Monze congregation to see the progress toward church construction with funds supplied recently by the Christian Missionary Church in Mt Evelyn. Sunday (6/7) A rushed ministry with Mordecai - a CCAP minister in Lusaka … then I try to reunite with my ministry team in Blantyre. Am stuck - stranded in Jo'burg for a night! Regards to all - John P Wilson |
6 July 2008 |
Chigodi - week 2 Started the day off Malawi stype, our vehicle ran out of petrol before we were out of Blantyre! When we arrived at Chigodi we learned that our cook's grandson had died and before the next day a Mvano ladie's daughter had passed away - so ladies were missing from classes due to the funerals. Grace's (the director) mother came down with malaria and were were able to pray with her. All this showed what life in Malawi can be like. As a team we were very pleased with the women's skills in learning knitting a pot holder and crocteting a bag this week. We had 2 times without power and 2 times without running water but we were looked after with dishes of water being brought to us from the well. We also had 4 unwelcome guests - 3 huntsman like spiders and a giant cockroach! God's perfect timing has continued to amaze us with our devotions which we had all prepared before we came. Judy spoke last week on Ps 23 - the Psalm they sing at funerals. Cathy gave here testimony on Monday evening with included teh deather of her brother and how she coped. Dianed gave devotions on Ruth which we discovered they were already studying. A surprise adition to our program was a request to do a class on home economics so we decided to do it on recycling - using scraps of fabric different ways, use of plastic bags and empty water bottles for seeds. Also how to use vegetable scraps ect for composting. Judy got right into the garbage heap with a shovel - only 1 woman knew about composting. The highlight of teh week was our cooking class. WE took ingredients to make drop scones, plain scones and sweet potatoe scones. Juty took some women outside and cooked the drop scones in a pan on the fire. The women through it was such a treat even without jam or cream! It was an emotional, happy, tiring and satisfying week all wrapped into one. - Diane |
| Joanne and Melody spent last week at Ntondoko Primary school. This is a village CCAP school of 230 students from Standards 1-4. There are only 2 classrooms; one class has lessons in the church and another in the open air under an Ntondoko tree. Classes start at 7L30am and finish at various times, from 10:30am to 12 noon. It was very obvious that the school operates with very few resources. They were very grateful for the exercises books, pens + pencils which were send over from Australia. Joanne was kept busy coaching netball + football teams, ready for a competition which is about to start. We both had the opportunity to share information about Australia and it was a delight to hear the children singing and Australian song we'd taught. This was especially so given the children's lack of English. During teh afternoons, we continued to be kept busy making teaching aids for the school. - Melody |
Gift to the ladies guild - Michael
View from pulpit - Michael
Laying down the tin - Michael
Battening off the roof - Michael
Steve doing YMCA? - Michael
The church rafters - Michael
5 July 2008 |
| Rose Gardens Chapel Service On Friday evenings we have been sending teams of (our younger) group members to help out at the Rose Gardens School chapel service. This is an amazing and uplifting time of worship and teaching normally run by the students themselves. Typically half a dozen choirs will sing, which is interspersed by Bible reading, preaching and prayer - all run by students (forms 1-4). Yesterday Matt, Bethany and I (Rob) when to the youth program, whilst Joanne ran the childrens (primary school program). In the primary program there were all sorts of excitement as the students were organised to act out the story of Queen Ester - complete with props including crowns and a sceptre. The in the secondary program both Matt and I brought forward testimonies with a gospel message, whilst Bethany delivered a Bible reading from Eph 2. It was enormously encouraging to see all these young people keen and embracing the gospel and we pray that we may be an encouragement to them. |
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Today Cathy, Dianne, Melody and Judy; along with Grace, Ellen and Irene from Chigodi visited Nahachi CCAP Mvano. The drive was a long one along rough, bumpy dirt tracks and a narrow wooden bridge, but the wonderful melodious welcome was worth it. We met in the school Principle's office. A very organised young man is Charles. In June they had 1,170 students. All classes from 1-6 double stream, 7 and 8 standard classes are single stream.From there we went to the chapel which also operates as a class room/s. Here we were joyously welcomed by the Session Clerk, Willy Khungwa and the Mvano women. We were given an overview of the Mvano, objectives and challenges. Their mission is to be strong and united in God's work - working together in God's name to encourage the women to love one another in Jesus Christ. The Mvano have many responsibilities. They are to teach through bible studies, spread the word through charitable works (to learn to care for the sick, orphans and he elderly) and to counsel back-slidden Christians. They must also look after their own families, being examples of cleanliness and hygiene, to be disciplined themsleves in teaching their children the word of God and mould their children so that they can be models to their peers. Where possible they are to teach sunday school, encourage all to observe the Sabbath. Most importantly they are to encourage all to avoid traditional cultural teachings and witchcraft (some such traditions include initiation ceremonies for young girls into puberty and the cleansing of a woman from widowhood). To create an income, th Mvano women pool their resources - ie. sewing clothes by hand, crocheting and baking. the variety of baking is the most we have seen so far. The session Clerk Willy Khungwa, a farmer, is very generous and lends some of his land to the Mvano women to raise chooks for eggs, either to sell or to use for baking, the breeding of bees and fish ('chambo' - a small tasty fish, and mud fish). The water for the 2 fish ponds comes from a small stream. Willy is quite ingenious with the way ho irrigates from the small stream. We were grateful and privileged to visit this area and absolutely thrilled to see and witness their faith in action. - Judy Flett Construction Team Week 2 When we left Mpita last Friday, all the trusses had been constructed but only one had been lifted into place. As we drove along the dusty track that leads to our site we could see that the remaining 22 had been lifted up. Although they had been placed up and temporary battens nailed on, they had not been straightened. We had to square and straighten the trusses individually. This took considerable time as we had to release the temporary fixings first. Steve and Peter (the Malawian carpenter) were the "monkeys" climbing all over the place. Once the battens were in place, the trusses had to be levelled by either recessing or packing, depending on the particular level - both up and down and laterally. The overhanging tails on the trusses were aligned and cut off, the valleys in at the intersections were completed. This all took until Thursday night! Finally this morning we were at the stage we had been waiting for - laying the roofing on. We were able to clad the front section of the church prior to lunch. But as we had to leave immediately after lunch we were not able to see the "finished product". Fortunately we were able to take pictures of the almost completed stage that we achieved. There are still the two wings and the rear of the chucrh to be clad, as wel as the four valleys. This should be completed this coming week by Peter and Innocent, the Malawian carpenters who have been working with us these past two weeks. We have completed our time at Mpita and are looking at a new project next week, either at Namatete or the Orbus orphan centre site. The time spent in the village community has been a special time for us as we have worked alongside the local people, getting to know them and building relationships. The children of the village loved us being there and especially each evening when we were leaving as we would hand out lollies! The building has been somewhat like our lives at time, we could not understand what or why something was happening, but when we looked back, it was all for a purpose and in the end we could see why things had happened the way they had. At the conclusion of our time in the village, it was a paticularly moving moment to all gather arm in arm in a circle in the church with the village community and children all in the middle, for a time of prayer. - Doug Brownley. |
Colin feeding orphans at Namatete
Matt busy filming orphans at Namatete - Rob