Mission Moments: Malawi
Making His creations feel like humans
By Gary Fallesen, founding president, Climbing For Christ
Once upon a time, there were many widows living in an impoverished land with little to eat and no roofs over their heads. So begins our story, which has developed into a real-life fairy tale of a sort for the participants.
“The story is shocking and people in the villages are not understanding, even the widows themselves have run short of words,” says Damson Samson, Climbing For Christ’s Malawi-based missionary to East Africa.
Damson is speaking about Project 1:27, our orphan program that began in southern Malawi in 2010 and has been expanded in recent months to include the many forgotten widows in that desperately poor part of the country. Damson has fed them, encouraged them, taught them from the Bible, and now is repairing their homes with funding provided by God through Climbing For Christ.
“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” – James 1:27 (NIV)
Aggese Botoman, above with Damson, laughed so hard that she could not speak when she heard about the plan to fix her house. The finished house, below, left her speechless “for this miraculous gift,” Damson said.
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Aggese Botoman is a 70-year-old woman who is HIV-positive, living in Msema, where Damson is from originally. Climbing For Christ, she told him, “has made me a human.”
“I have personally seen God at work,” Damson says. “I have been with this group of people for so long and I know how much pain they bear. Nobody is wanting them. I made a choice of being with them and consider them important and wealthy humans.”
He saw them as God sees them. “For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7, ESV).
God saw His creation suffering and He provided for their needs.
Elizabeth, 76, was widowed eight years ago and left homeless in Singano village. Only her 19-year-old granddaughter cared about her.
“She wondered how this could have happened if not for C4C,” Damson said about the rebuilding of Elizabeth’s house. “She was always in waters during rain. Sometimes she could only stand (in her house) when it was raining.
“Nobody was there to see these challenges until our group visited her and brought the report of how life is to her.”
Elizabeth told him: “A poor woman like me, who could want me and remember me in such a way?”
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Men at work, above, replace the grass roof on Elizabeth’s house, below.
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Climbing For Christ and C4C Canada sent US$2,200 this month for this project. Six houses have been repaired so far. Another $1,600 is needed to work on four houses. Those are the original 10 houses that Damson identified as most in need of repair.
Even the widows are contributing “their strength by helping in transferring bricks and drawing water,” Damson reports.
“We have more widows who are homeless and really need our hand to show them that God can care even for those who are not cared for,” Damson says, pointing to another 12 houses that could be fixed for an estimated $4,000.
“We can work in His place to show the world how much we are His disciples. As it says, ‘By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another’ (John 13:35). Our faith in God is shown by our works; if it does not have works, (faith by itself) is dead (James 2:17).”
Can you help?
Please contribute to the care of the least of these by sending a donation to Climbing For Christ c/o Widows Project 1:27 at P.O. Box 16290, Rochester, NY 14616-0290 USA. Or CLICK HERE to give via PayPal and email info@ClimbingForChrist.org to alert us to your donation.
In Canada, make checks payable to The Great Commission Foundation, and on the memo line add Climbing For Christ CANADA c/o Widows Project 1:27. Mail your support to: The Great Commission Foundation, #3 – 1335 Trans Canada Way SE, Medicine Hat, AB T1B 1J1. Or give online at http://tgcfcanada.org/donate. Mark your contribution: “Climbing For Christ CANADA c/o Widows Project 1:27.”
The Word
“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” – Ephesians 2:10 (NIV)
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