Dispatches: Malawi 2017

Mission: Malawi 2017

By Gary Fallesen, founding president, Climbing For Christ

Mission: Malawi 2017 team: (back row left to right) Elaine Fallesen of Rochester, NY, USA; Damson Samson of Kambona, Malawi; Dr. Steve Quakenbush of Canon City, CO; Pastor Duncan Nyozani of Blantyre, Malawi; and Bill Marsaw, (front row left to right) Gary Fallesen, Dave Smith and Mark Erbelding of Rochester.

Duncan gave thanks for our relationship, which dates back to 2009 (we met in person for the first time during Mission: Kilimanjaro 2010) and all the help God has provided through Climbing For Christ to the people in this part of southern Malawi. We have seen the Lord move in incredible ways and expectantly wait on what He will do next through C4C and the new partnership between Duncan’s Share Hope Foundation and Hope Lutheran Church.

Our team began making its way back to North America. We will be arriving in different places at different times in the coming days. Each person will be unpacking what they have experienced and learned on this trip and discerning the roles they will play in the future of Mission: Malawi. God’s will be done here.

Saturday, July 1

We visited the (as it is now known) Share Hope Foundation’s children’s home to see our Project 1:27-sponsored orphans one last time during this particular mission. It was a short sleep night (having returned home at 3 a.m.) and we had a mini-bus full of grains from the orphans (along with a couple of stowaway chickens) from Friday night’s widows’ worship. Duncan estimates we delivered at least two weeks’ worth of food for the children.

Charles (left to right), Dayson, Dorphy and Chrissie carry food bags given to us by the widows of the villages into their compound in Kambona.

We spent time with them before giving them gifts, eating lunch together, and saying our good-byes for now. This was our last full day in Malawi.

Bill shared with Catherine James, the only unsponsored child coming into this trip, that he and his wife Beth would love to support her. Catherine was thrilled with the news. (Note: Duncan can and will add orphans to his care if more sponsors are willing to support Project 1:27. Surrounding villages have no shortage of orphaned or under-cared-for children.)

Willi, left, who serves the children for Share Hope, with Claver, holding a basketball sent by past Mission: Malawi team member Michele Annibal Hoffman, and the rest of the sponsored orphans. The kids received gifts such as a rain poncho, sunglasses, comb, toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, snacks, bracelets, and baseball caps.

While one mission trip winds down the next steps for the mission are beginning. Bill and I met with Duncan to discuss the future of the new relationship between Share Hope and Hope Lutheran Church in Rochester, NY, USA, and also the roles Climbing For Christ will continue to play. I also met with staff member Damson to review and plan work with the Mulanje Massif Chapter of guides and porters, the Project 1:27 widows, and the Ngoni people.

We know “the LORD makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him” (Psalm 37:23). We delight in what God has done, is doing, and will do in Malawi.

Friday, June 30

“Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” – 2 Corinthians 9:7 (ESV)

Elaine, above with Damson’s son Koinonia on her lap, is handed a live chicken during the widows worship. Below, Gary thanks the widows through Damson’s translation for the pile of gifts they gave our team.

The Scripture phrase “cheerful giver” has never meant more than late Friday night and early Saturday morning, when hundreds of widows danced in with gifts for us. We were repaid many times over for the help we have given Malawi-based staff member Damson Samson as he expanded Climbing For Christ’s orphan-focused Project 1:27 to include “widows in their distress” (James 1:27).

In the past 1½ years, we have empowered Damson to deliver blankets, sleeping mats, food, clothing and, ultimately, houses to many widows in a five village area. Damson also has taught them through God’s Word.

We were blessed and humbled to participate in the monthly widow’s worship, where teaching was put into practice. “When you love you are forced to give whatever you have,” Damson explained. “It’s not about what you have, but what kind of heart you have.”

The hearts of 300-400 widows and family members attending this special worship were huge. There is no such thing as a have-not in God’s economy. These widows, whom we sat with in March 2016, wrecked by their brokenness, are overflowing in the love and joy of God.

They danced into the auditorium we rented at the Phalombe Teacher Training College carrying bags of grain and livestock (more than a dozen chickens, a duck and a dove). They gave us handcrafted items and kwachas (Malawi’s currency). In turn, we’ll give the food to the Project 1:27 orphans and others in need.

I shared briefly about the love of Christ (“You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” Leviticus 19:18 and again in James 2:8) and what His body of believers is supposed to do with that love. We are called to take care of each other and love one another. We’re seeing this put into practice in Malawi.

Damson, above with the help of local pastors, prays over those Ngoni people (hands raised) asking for Jesus. Below left, the chief from the Masitimale village group leads a traditional Ngoni dance.

Urging the church to be the church was something Damson and I had done earlier in the day on a survey of the Ngoni people in the country’s Central Region. We drove about three hours to visit a people group that is considered, by some, to be “engaged but unreached.” Damson arranged a worship that attracted more than 150 people from five village groups. We learned there are dozens of churches among these people, but after Damson’s teaching and invitation to follow Jesus, about 60 people came to the Lord.

I followed with the salvation message, making sure those who accepted Christ knew what that meant. We then heard feedback from some in attendance: two women who hope what we started will continue (“there are many in the villages who are dying who have not heard the Word”) and two pastors who thanked us for waking them up.

We had much to give thanks for this day, including another medical clinic that treated more than 150 patients. Dr. Steve and the rest of the team (Elaine, Bill, Dave and Mark) – again with the help of government clinician Mr. Baluti – worked tirelessly through the day in Singano before Damson and I rejoined them in time for dinner at Damson’s home and a sweet time of worship with the loved widows.

Thursday, June 29

Timothy, who is nearly blind, sits outside his new house waiting for our team’s arrival.

It was difficult for some to speak. They were choked with emotion or words could not express their gratitude. Others literally danced for joy. But for each of the 18 widows we visited, whose houses we had helped build or restore, there were never-ending smiles and repeated “Zikomo, zikomo, zikomo” (“thank you” over and over and over in Chichewa).

Climbing For Christ worked with 35 widows last year to provide better housing in five remote villages. God provided support for 25 of the 35 through giving by people at Hope Lutheran Church in Rochester, NY, USA.

“In my life I never ever expected people like you to visit my home. You have come a long way from America to be here,” said Estele, who confessed to once having a house that was like a bar to villagers seeking a kind of home-brewed beer. That’s no longer the case.

Benedicto.

Benedicto, who is 76 and on crutches with two useless feet, said: “I never expected to receive such a gift. First, blankets, a torch (flashlight); you can see how I am dressed (with clothing given to him by brother Damson as part of our widows Project 1:27). I was a drunkard. When I heard the Word say drunkards would not inherit the kingdom of heaven, I stopped immediately.”

Damson uses him as an example to others to show how anyone can change. Benedicto was once falling off his bike, stinking drunk. Now he doesn’t drink and sings praise to the Lord.

Each and every widow is quick to exclaim, “Hallelujah.”

Ajessey Mawaza, a grandmother caring for eight orphaned children, used to sleep on the step outside her house because there was no room inside. She is the grandmother of two of the children, Dixon and Dafter, sponsored by Project 1:27 orphan support. “We’re very thankful that God guided you so we can have this house,” she said, sitting outside her new, larger house.

Lungton, standing between his old house and his new home.

Lungton Kapito, another old widower, said: “We have received a very big project, which is helping us. People who are crippled, who no one wants to touch. You have embraced us and made us feel welcome. You have given us blanket, (sleeping mats), and food and houses.”

Then he reminded us, “Do not forsake us. Keep us in your hearts.”

Project 1:27 for both orphans and widows will continue. It is based on James 1:27, which instructs us “to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

After completing our tour of homes, we returned to the children’s home where the Project 1:27 orphans live. Today, Elaine split the group in half. She took the girls to teach them about Psalm 23 and the men on the team stayed with the boys, who are mostly older, to discuss what it means to be a Christian man. Mark pointed them to 1 Corinthians 16:13, which says: “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.”

In other words, do not be polluted by the world.

Wednesday, June 28

Esther, one of the Project 1:27 widows in the loving care of Damson, left, gives Dr. Steve and Elaine a thumb’s-up thank you after receiving a gift Steve brought from Colorado.

Babies and children with malaria, and mothers and widows with many aches and pains. That was the theme of our first day of medical clinics at the Mothers & Babies Center, which was funded by Climbing For Christ and dedicated by us to the Lord in March 2016.

Dr. Steve saw and helped scores of people, who also were prayed for by locally based C4C staff member Damson Samson. Steve shared with two dozen widows gift bags that his daughter had prepared for him back home. The bags included a toothbrush, toothpaste, combination brush and mirror, Band-Aids, and a wash cloth and towel.

Steve was assisted by Elaine, who also gave out a half-dozen Mother’s Blessings gift bags to new mothers. The Mother’s Blessings idea began on Mother’s Day, when C4C member Joye Cantrell of California donated to the ministry both the idea and some financial support. Elaine and the team prepared bags with a toothbrush, toothpaste, body wash, baby shampoo, ointments, and a hand-made baby blanket and clothes from ladies at Steve’s church in Canon City, CO.

A mom with a sick 2-month-old baby was the first to receive a Mother’s Blessing gift from Elaine. The woman returned later to thank us with five eggs.

Steve also was aided by Mr. Baluti, a clinician with the government, who has been visiting the Mothers & Babies Center every two weeks to provide immunizations and care for the many children in seven villages surrounding Singano. The Center is the only health care within walking distance for thousands of people.

Steve examines a mother with a baby that Mr. Baluti tested (positively) for malaria.

When we opened the building 15 months ago, Mr. Baluti talked about the importance of catching illnesses in the villages’ babies and children before it turns severe or fatal. Now that’s becoming a reality.

While the doctor was seeing patient after patient, the rest of the team – Bill, Mark and Dave from Hope Lutheran Church – were helping Pastor Duncan with two worship services in Kambona. The services were for both the church at Kambona and Msema. Bill, Hope’s missions’ director, spoke about the outreach ministry our home church does in Rochester, NY. Dave and Mark then taught about Psalm 121 and the Fruit of the Spirit.

The church after the second worship in Kambona. (Photo by Dave Smith)

After clinics and church, the team still wasn’t done. We met up again in Singano, where the women who meet regularly at the Mothers & Babies Center performed a welcome ceremony in our honor. We thanked them and, for the third straight year (thanks to two-time Mission: Malawi veteran Michele Annibal Hoffman), delivered a basketball so they can play the locally favorite sport of netball.

We then spent more time with our Project 1:27 orphans. Elaine taught the children about the Easter story – just as she had the orphans in Nepal last month. She handed out wristbands with symbols to remember how God sent His Son down to die on a cross for our sins, defeated death, ascended to heaven to make a place for believers, and promises to return again for us.

While we are awaiting His return, we have been blessed to put our hands, feet and hearts to use for His glory.

Tuesday, June 27

Dr. Steve and Elaine setting up for this week’s clinic.

The plan was for a medical survey and the start of a multiple-day clinic, headed by Climbing For Christ Board member Dr. Steve Quakenbush. But the president of Malawi showed up in our neighborhood – literally right next door to Pastor Duncan’s Share Hope Foundation headquarters – so plans had to change.

President Mutharika came to the area to dedicate the Phalombe Teacher Training College and lay a foundation stone for the Phalombe District Hospital, which is being built on land formerly owned by Duncan and others in his church. The president also used this occasion to hold a political rally in his campaign for re-election in 2019.

All of that, drawing people on foot and bike from miles around (and closing the only road in and out for a short time), caused us to push back the start of the clinic one day. We used the time this morning to set up for the clinic at the Mother’s & Babies Center in Singano that C4C helped to build and dedicated last year.

The children – with Pastor Duncan, left – watch the Project 1:27 Video (2016), which features kids in Malawi and Nepal singing Leeland’s The Great Awakening.

After preparing the clinic, we met with the children sponsored by Project 1:27 and Elaine delivered cards made by the C4C-supported orphans in Nepal. It was her third stop in a precious triangle meant to teach kids that young people their age are praying for them in other parts of the world. (She wrote about this in “Connecting kids from U.S. to Nepal to Malawi” in the new issue of The Climbing Way, Volume 39, June 2017.)

The Malawi children received about 50 cards from the orphans at Pastor Tej Rokka’s SARA Children’s Home outside Kathmandu. Elaine then let the children here make cards that will be taken back to Kathmandu on Mission: Nepal 2017, Part 2 in September.

Gift, Chrissie and Dorphy (left to right) read cards sent from Nepal, above, and Patrick makes a card to send to one of the Project 1:27-sponsored Nepali kids in photos on the wall.

Monday, June 26

It was a great day for a walk: one of the Mulanje Massif Chapter’s leaders hiking toward our destination on Mount Mulanje.

I climbed from the Fort Lister trailhead to Sombani Hut with Damson and 28 guides and porters in Climbing For Christ’s Mulanje Massif Chapter on a dayhike that was blessed beyond measure. First, we were on Mount Mulanje, a hiking paradise that contains 20 peaks above 2,500 meters (8,200 feet), including Malawi’s highpoint at 3,002 meters (9,849 feet). Second, we were climbing with our brothers to teach on the mountain.

At Damson’s suggestion, I took them through the Sermon on the Mount verse by verse while at Sombani Hut (around 6,800 feet/2,080 meters). What an amazing experience: God-honoring fellowship, prayer, and worship in a crowded hut on a beautiful mountainside.

Members from this chapter of C4C, which Damson formed 15 months ago, have told us they have learned more spiritually from Climbing For Christ than from any church or in any other way. They are thankful to God for the way He has used this ministry to reach them and teach them so they may in turn reach and teach others both on and off the mountain.

Our Mulanje chapter meeting on the mountain.

While I was on an eight-mile hike, ascending and then descending more than 3,000 steep vertical feet, the rest of the team was with Duncan completing our second survey (agriculture) and working with the children supported by Project 1:27.

Three types of farms were visited and observed: the first, subsistence farming, where most of the produce (in this case maize) is consumed by the farmer and his family, leaving little or nothing to be marketed; the second, irrigation farming, where the benefits of a source of water and commercial fertilizer yields more productive and better quality crops; and, finally, a fish farm, a rarity in this land-locked country and from which has produced three harvests in two years.

A farmer’s wife demonstrates irrigation farming. (Photo by Dave Smith)

The team’s final stop off of the day was with the orphans, who completed a special writing assignment and re-enacted last year’s production and mass consumption of marshmallow-and-pretzel-crafted sheep.

Sunday, June 25

Time for church in rural Malawi.

I challenged the church at Msema with a message about loving our friends as Jesus loved us (based on John 15:13) and Bill preached to the church at Kambona about praising the Lord through troubled times (Psalm 124). Many on the team also were introduced to worship, Africa style with music, dancing and joy overflowing from the hundreds at Pastor Duncan’s two rural churches.

Damson and Gary preaching at Msema, above, and Duncan and Bill sharing the message at Kambona, below. The Kambona church was held outdoors on a make-shift site because the classrooms used for worship are prepared for national exams and cannot be touched.

After the message at Kambona, Elaine was asked to teach the children attending worship. She shared a Psalm 23 storybook with more than 100 kids. Later in the day we met with the Project 1:27-sponsored children and delivered notes and photos from supporters in North America. Dr. Steve (Junio) and Dave (Jacquiline) had the opportunity to read their own notes to two of the children they (and their wives) sponsor through Project 1:27.

Elaine with Dr. Steve and translator Isaac, above, teaches about Psalm 23, and with Damson, below, read a letter from Canadian sponsor AustriAlpin to Dayson, Patrick and Catherine.

Saturday, June 24

Brick making from mud in the remote village of Singano.

A survey of construction methods was the team’s assignment on our first full day on the job. We learned how the poorest of the poor turn mud into bricks and build houses that will last one year, and how others with more means are able to use bricks produced in a kiln to build structures that will be inhabitable for much longer (in some cases 7-to-10 years and in others for generations).

We toured the villages from Blantyre to Kambona to Singano – the area that Pastor Duncan’s ministry spans – looking at housing and other brick buildings. After all of this, Duncan took us to the land he purchased behind his ministry headquarters in Kambona where he proposes to build a large church for the growing congregation here. About 500 people worship in classrooms in Kambona, while another 300 attend the original church in Msema, and 25-30 are part of a brand-new church plant in Blantyre.

A large field with one big tree in the middle is where Duncan envisions a new church.

Duncan’s youngest of five children is a 2-year-old named Hope. He said when he named his baby he could not have imagined that God would birth a partnership between his ministry and Hope Lutheran Church in Rochester, NY, USA. “Maybe it was prophesy,” he said.

He has been moved so strongly by this new relationship that he changed the name of Searchlight Ministries to the Share Hope Foundation and adopted Hope church’s motto: “Hope changes everything.”

Dave and Mark walking past the Share Hope Foundation sign in Kambona.

Duncan’s team unveiled a 10-pillar initiative that covers everything from the spiritual and health, hygiene and sanitation (“someone said, ‘cleanliness is next to godliness,’” project coordinator Rabson said) to sports development, economic empowerment (“give a man a fish or teach a man to fish”) and construction projects. There is already a great deal for our team members from Hope to prayerfully consider, and it’s only Day 1.

The first full day in Malawi also meant being reunited with our Project 1:27 children. Elaine greeted 14 of the children, who were happy to see her back for the fourth time in seven years. It was a blessed first full day walking in the work the Lord prepared for us here in Malawi.

Friday, June 23

We arrived safely and uneventfully in Blantyre, Malawi, about 29 hours after leaving Rochester, NY, USA. Pastor Duncan and two members of his Searchlight Ministries team greeted us at the airport. All of our bags made it, including four duffels of medicine for clinics Dr. Steve will be doing.

We spent some time in fellowship with Duncan and started our team daily devotionals. The men from Hope have begun asking the many questions they brought with them. It likely will be an eye-opening, sensory-overloading experience for them.

Thursday, June 22

The team came together for the first time this morning at the Toronto airport for our overseas flight. One border (Canada) crossed and more to come. We spend the rest of today and half of tomorrow flying to Ethiopia and on to Malawi.

Wednesday, June 21

Dr. Steve, a Climbing For Christ member since 2008 and a Board member since 2014, landed in Rochester, NY this afternoon. He flew from Cañon City, CO to connect with the rest of the team GO-ing from North America to Malawi. The team is driving to Toronto early Thursday morning to fly to Africa.

Introduction

The road to southern Malawi.

We had no idea where the door that God opened to Climbing For Christ in Malawi in 2009 would lead. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD” (Isaiah 55:8, ESV).

God introduced us to the needs in Malawi when C4C member Duncan Nyozani, a pastor overseeing churches, schools and an orphanage, contacted us to say thieves had stolen a month’s supply of food for the children in his care. Since that time, Climbing For Christ initiated Project 1:27 to sponsor those children, assisted Duncan’s Searchlight ministries through drought and near-famine, sent Damson Samson to college and then called him to serve as our missionary to East Africa, and now is introducing Hope Lutheran Church in Rochester, NY, and Searchlight in Kambona, Malawi to each other. Three Hope members (Bill Marsaw, Dave Smith and Mark Erbelding) are joining our Mission: Malawi 2017 team (Dr. Steve Quakenbush, Elaine Fallesen and me) to survey the community and begin to learn about the culture and the people who are brothers and sisters in Christ halfway around the world.

“We pray that God will strengthen our relationship and bring good results in the future,” Duncan said. “We pray that Hope will be a blessing not only to Searchlight but also to other communities in Malawi and that Searchlight will be a blessing to Hope in New York.”

In addition to this introduction of two parts of the body of Christ separated by the Atlantic Ocean and great swaths of land, Climbing For Christ will continue to do what God is leading us to do: love the orphaned children, encourage the church, teach guides and porters in our Mulanje Massif Chapter, and seek a people group (the Ngoni) considered engaged but as yet unreached (see “Reaching an unreached people group: ‘Yes, we can’”).

And so we will see what God’s next plan is for Mission: Malawi.

“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” – Isaiah 55:9 (ESV)