Check out some of the photos from our trip! They’re now online at www.iafr.org!

Mary, Marlys, Donna and I arrived safely back in Minnesota this morning. The return flights went without a glitch. Thanks to all who prayed!

Remember to come to 1st Covenant on November 6th for our trip report during the 9:00 – 10:00 AM 1st Hour and a repeat during the 11:30 – 12:30 PM 3rd Hour. Click here for directions.

All good things come to an end…

We set out for the Lilongwe airport at 3:30 AM today (MN time) and are scheduled to arrive back in MN at around 10:30 AM tomorrow.

We leave with grateful hearts. It’s going to take some time to decompress and process all we have seen and learned while here with our refugee brothers and sisters.

We’ll be reporting to 1st Covenant Church (www.1stcov.org) during 1st and 3rd Hour on November 6th. We hope to see you then!

A final meeting with refugee church leaders

Today we worshiped with our Kanisa Ndugu Swedish Pentecostal Church. We praised our Lord together and enjoyed many songs with their chiors. Pastor Tom preached on how God set aside His glory to come to be with us and opened wide the door to God.

They joyfully received the greetings from First Covenant and Pastor Nomani shared the photo book with them. They send their love and greetings to FCC.

It was a celebratory day yet we, Donna, Mary and I felt sad to leave them. We made many new friends and connections with the ladies and believe they did too.

Together with women from the conference

After the service the Women’s committe that helped plan the conference met with us briefly to thank us for our participation. It was great to get to know them a little more.

Finally, we ended our day with a Chinese supper with the There is Hope Team and Pastor and Mrs Phiri.

We will miss everyone!

Friday, Swedish Pentecostal and Emmanuel Full Gospel began their first combined women’s conference. We came home excited last night after a great time together. We could not blog, because we had no electricity and no Internet. Electrical outages are getting more frequent.

Speaking at the conference

Today we reassembled at Swedish Pentecostal at 9:00 with a full day together. Both days it was singing that welcomed us in the door,gaining in volume as more women came. Then a choir from each church sang. It is hard to describe how the room fills with music and joy. Today the women from the Swedish Pentecostal Church choir sang a song with drama. They told everyone it depicted the Israelite’s journey from Egypt to Canaan. One of the women was dramatizing hard labor for the first part of the song, pushing a broom. Suddenly the song erupted in loud praise and joyful dancing in a procession as the women carried things on theirs heads. Women from Emmanuel Full Gospel joined the procession. We all clapped. Our new friends even had us dancing today-although our sense of rhythm simply doesn’t measure up! We had a wonderful time.

Post conference hugs

There were three stories yesterday, two from the refugee churches, and then Marlys shared her personal story. Marlys also had a teaching time. Today there were four teaching times, two from the refugee churches- and Donna and I each had one. There was time for questions after each presentation-sometimes the questions were about the Bible passage,sometimes they were about personal stories. As the conference ended, we were asked to greet people outside the door as they left. This is when we presented each woman with the written greetings from First Covenant.

Safari is a Swahili word for journey. It seems to have a meaning similar to the Aussie idea of a walkabout. While the women were participating in the women’s conference, I took a safari by foot through the refugee camp today. It was good.

A well in Dzaleka refugee camp

I visited with young women working hard washing clothes by hand at one of the camp wells. I spoke with Ethiopian men who said they were en route to South Africa. A Burundian market woman laughed as she explained the heat associated with a tiny orange pepper she was selling. Little children were everywhere. I didn’t have enough fingers for them to hold onto as they safaried with me.

One dusty 2-3 year old girl ran out of a small mud brick home and gave my bowed legs a big hug. It was precious.

Warmth. Smiles. Welcome. Hospitality. Open hearts. Open hands. Winds kicking up the earth’s red dirt into eyes, ears, nose and mouth. Remarkable people in a very difficult place.

God, please bless the people of Dzaleka.

We’ve experienced near daily power outages while in Lilongwe, the capital city of Malawi. Most last for about 2 hours and follow a basic schedule. We had more than the usual evening blackout last night, making it impossible to update the blog as usual. Everyone just takes it in stride.

Mary bartering for cloth in the Market

We spent Thursday in the city. We enjoyed a walk through the market place along a small river flowing through town. We started with fruits and vegetables and then wandered through the clothing area before ending up in the fabric market. That’s where the ladies bartered away and finally spent their Kwatcha (Malawian currency). Our final stop before grabbing some pizza was in a parking lot filled with people selling wooden carvings, paintings and other local trinkets/souvenirs.

1 of the 2 mills purchased for a refugee church project

We did some bigger spending later in the day when we went back to town to purchase 2 flour mills, complete with diesel motors, for a church project in Dzaleka refugee camp. The church had a well put together proposal and the mills will soon be serving the refugee and local population as well as bringing in income to help finance many of their ministries. 1st Covenant Church considers it a privilege to be used of God as an answer to the church’s prayers to make this project a reality.

We spent the day with Emmanuel Full Gospel Church. They took us into the Malawian villages surrounding the refugee camp to a center that they’ve developed to care for orphans in the area. We were sad to see that the flour mill built to help sustain the orphanage had broken down. But the skill training programs (carpentry, tailoring, etc.) were still going. A large group of preschool orphans are also looked after there. Some weren’t too sure what to make of the white folks that came to visit.

Not far from the orphanage we visited a village with goats and pigs provided by the refugee church to help the people survive between their single annual harvests.

We visited the first Malawian church planted by Emmanuel Full Gospel back in 2003, located on the edge of the village (see photo above).

It’s common to think that refugees are in need of humanitarian help (which they are) – but today we saw how this refugee church is one of the more resourceful, creative and efficient “humanitarian agencies” serving the rural Malawian community.

We also took a long walk through the refugee camp, visiting with people from all sorts of suffering countries along the way. Many were working hard on building their mud brick houses. Indeed, refugees do a lot of heavy lifting (see photo).

Today we met the pastors of The Swedish Pentecostal Church at Dzaleka, beginning our day with them about 8:20. As we were getting acquainted we received word that a young girl from the church was sick and we would be going to pray. We were privileged to do this as she was tenderly cared for by her family. Later we took her to the Health Service, getting a glimpse of the demand for health care in the camp. Her father told us later she was taken to the hospital. Soon after, we set out with the pastors to visit four church plants. This required some serious driving by Tom around the countryside on unpaved roads. The churches were each constructed of the bricks that are made from the red earth of the area. In three of the four locations the evangelist, or evangelist-in-training received us. We also got to meet their wives. What an honor to fellowship with these young couples and others as we briefly shared prayer,singing and some conversation together. Tom had wanted to drive back in daylight, but a generous and tasty meal brought out as we were leaving changed the plan! A blessed day.

Many of us have had a nightmare along these lines at some point in our lives…

Donna was in the shower when she discovered she was being watched – by a big – tarantula sized – hairy spider on the bathroom floor. She somehow managed to keep her cool and finished her shower while keeping an eye on the arachnid.

“Tom, there’s a tarantula in the bathroom” was a pretty effective alarm. By the time I got up and reached the hallway, so had the really big spider.

He didn’t seem very threatening or even interested in us. He almost seemed friendly. He was looking for a way out.

I got my camera. Then I got one of Donna’s shoes (better soles than mine for the deed that had to be done). Could he jump? Could he run at light speed? Would he attack? I had no idea. So I came down on it as hard as I could with the heel of her shoe. The poor guy pretty near exploded. The shoe hit the floor so hard that it bounced out of my hand and flew at Donna. She screamed (not overly loud).

The spider is gone but not forgotten.