Hello! Ben here - long time, no blog. We've kept meaning to write one,
but with this hokey kokey of lockdown and coronavirus we keep waiting for
things to be more known or certain before we do! But of course, things keep
being unknown and now unfortunately we may only have a couple of weeks left in
beautiful Malawi!
Some big things have happened in Malawi since we last posted. Mainly, there's a new president! There's generally a really great buzz around him and what he could do for the country. If you're interested this BBC article gives a pretty good overview of Mr Lazarus Chakwera. He seems to be genuinely not corrupt and over the past few weeks we have been seeing arrest after arrest of corrupt officials who had been getting away with murder (sometimes literally). So that's exciting, it's really cool to see action being taken and there being a new hope for the future of Malawi!
Over the past couple of months we've had some very wonderful opportunities to see lots more of this beautiful country! When Bekah last posted a blog we both thought that coronavirus would stop us from fulfilling some of our hopes for the year, or from visiting some of the places we wanted to go to. But actually, God has been very gracious, and partly through doing things remotely, and partly from coronavirus actually spreading relatively slowly, we have been able to achieve our hopes for our final few months here and have been even able to go on holiday and then visit the North of the country.
Our holiday was originally cancelled, but after a month or so it became clear that coronavirus was not moving in Malawi/Southern Africa in the same way as in other countries, so places started to open up again. This includes our church meeting again (with social distanced chairs + face masks), but also meant that in early June we were able to take a trip up to Liwonde Safari Park for 2 nights and then up to Lake Malawi for a week! We were literally the only people staying at both places and we felt very blessed to be able to go, especially at a time when everyone in the UK was stuck at home…pepani (sorry)!
Mzimba and Lilongwe
As well as going on a holiday, we had the opportunity to visit the North (a town called Mzimba) and the captial, Lilongwe, with Scrivin and Annie Kamanga (pastor and wife) along with their daughter Deborah (who is very fun and kind, especially when I accidentally fell asleep on her shoulder in the car!). This visit was partly to visit a couple of churches that had requested training from Scrivin, but also to visit Scrivin's home, village and family in the North. We felt very privileged to spend time in Mzimba and in the village. There was such a strong sense of family there and we felt so encouraged and enriched by spending some time with them. The training we did was mostly lead by Scrivin to help the churches with vision and strategy planning for their future. This is very much Scrivin's area of expertise (Master's degree in strategic planning), so we just supported little bits where we could, especially because of the language barrier (apparently at one point the person interpreting for me couldn't understand my accent so just totally made up what I was saying!!).
However, I was asked to preach in Mzimba on the Sunday, which I think went pretty well going from the response of the majority of the congregation. Although the pastor was definitely resting his eyes for a good 15 minutes in the middle, so maybe I need to work on how engaging I am! (In his defence he had only had 3 hours sleep the night before)
In Lilongwe there was a little mix up of communication that lead to Bekah and I leading a day on trauma healing with 30 minutes notice! We had gone through the course back in February with the guy who wasn't able to join us in Lilongwe, so we knew the material already. We did an introductory session to help the members/leaders attending to appreciate the importance of acknowledging the pain we have experienced in life, to talk about it, to bring it to Jesus and to find healing. We compared culture's view of God with what the Bible says, to shows God not as vengeful, but one who cares about our pain and wants to see us healed (Luke 4:18 - 'The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has annointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to heal the broken-hearted').
I think it was a really valuable time as we were able to encourage the members/leaders and gave them opportunities to be open with another, to share their pain and to begin to see Jesus bring some healing in their hearts. This stuff is quite counter-cultural here, especially within churches and for men, as people often give the image of staying strong, not feeling pain and saying "God is good!" no matter what. So we're very grateful to have had an opportunity to show that Jesus' way is for us to show our weakness, to accept the pain and to bring it to him knowing that through His goodness He wants to bring healing to our hearts.
We're also just very grateful to have been able to travel around the length of the country! The journeys were very very very long (hence me falling asleep on Debo's shoulder). But it was probably some of the most beautiful driving I have ever done as we got to drive along the border of Mozambique, through forests of rubber trees, up and down stunning windy mountainous roads, through a lakeside town in a bay that felt like Cornwall and alongside the length of Lake Malawi for 3 hours where we could get out and paddle on the beach. Less enjoyable was the dumb goats and chickens that loved to race across the road ('why did the chicken/goat cross the road?' was a genuine question asked multiple times) and a long stretch of road with traffic going in both directions at 100km/h that would regularly meander from two lanes down to a single lane…
The Future
We're spending our last bit of time here looking forward to the future of the church here and our relationship with it in the future. There's lots of exciting things ahead for Water of Life church as they look to buy land and build in the future, start new house churches to reach out to local communities such as Lunzu and continue to grow under the wise leadership of Scrivin and Annie Kamanga. We've also been handing over some of the finance stuff we've been doing to help things be more accurate and accountable. As well as finishing up on some simple but effective resources to support the kids work going forwards.
The thought of leaving the people that we’ve grown to love so dearly over the past year is really sad. As Bekah and I have begun processing that it's likely that we'll be leaving around mid-August (maybe as soon as two weeks!) there have been lots of tears. Naturally we are excited to see all you friends and family back home, and we're looking forward to not being stared at whenever we go somewhere new. But we are bitterly sad to not be seeing our family here week in, week out anymore. We will really miss them, and are already starting to grieve that loss.
I think all of this has been made particularly difficult to process because of two things. Firstly, we still have no idea when or how we're going to travel home. We hope to travel on around the 10th August, buuuuuut there are currently no commercial flights running in Malawi (rumours of restart on 1st August are as yet unconfirmed). Charter flights currently running are stupid expensive (a new company starting next month are cheaper but still out of our price range) and we could drive to Dar es Salaam but that would apparently be a pretty horrendous journey and also cost a fair amount in petrol, lodging and emotional turmoil…So hoping that becomes clearer in the next week!!
Secondly, we don't actually know what we're coming back to in the UK yet. We'll definitely be returning to Nottingham, but as yet I have had no luck with job hunting (two interviews, one outright rejection and one said they wanted me but needed someone guaranteed to start sooner) and Bekah's pre-school can only offer part time due to lack of kids signed up for September. To be honest, I often feel a sense of purposelessness, lack of hope and get quite sad when thinking about it. This definitely doesn't help with processing leaving when everything is quite nice here! Although I think it is helping me to learn what it means to trust in God more, to trust that He cares for me, to trust that He won't just leave me to rust, to trust that He will give me a purpose and a hope despite my circumstances, and to trust that He can do things totally outside my comprehension or current understanding. So if you pray, please pray that we continue to learn to trust in God, that He will open doors at the right time, that we are able to process this transitional period and that we will be able to return!
Lots of love and maybe see you soon?!
Lazarus Chakwera
Some big things have happened in Malawi since we last posted. Mainly, there's a new president! There's generally a really great buzz around him and what he could do for the country. If you're interested this BBC article gives a pretty good overview of Mr Lazarus Chakwera. He seems to be genuinely not corrupt and over the past few weeks we have been seeing arrest after arrest of corrupt officials who had been getting away with murder (sometimes literally). So that's exciting, it's really cool to see action being taken and there being a new hope for the future of Malawi!
Holidayyyyy
Over the past couple of months we've had some very wonderful opportunities to see lots more of this beautiful country! When Bekah last posted a blog we both thought that coronavirus would stop us from fulfilling some of our hopes for the year, or from visiting some of the places we wanted to go to. But actually, God has been very gracious, and partly through doing things remotely, and partly from coronavirus actually spreading relatively slowly, we have been able to achieve our hopes for our final few months here and have been even able to go on holiday and then visit the North of the country.
Our holiday was originally cancelled, but after a month or so it became clear that coronavirus was not moving in Malawi/Southern Africa in the same way as in other countries, so places started to open up again. This includes our church meeting again (with social distanced chairs + face masks), but also meant that in early June we were able to take a trip up to Liwonde Safari Park for 2 nights and then up to Lake Malawi for a week! We were literally the only people staying at both places and we felt very blessed to be able to go, especially at a time when everyone in the UK was stuck at home…pepani (sorry)!
The lake was super super beautiful and very relaxing. Safari
was pretty amazing too and it was so cool to be sleeping in a chalet right near
the animals, but also slightly concerning when you heard hippos snorting
outside the bedroom's super strong protection of… a curtain. As well as seeing fun
animals like elephants, crocs, monkeys and warthogs, we also some less fun
animals like a frog that loved to hide in our towels and jump out at me; bats
that flew into our room and around our bed at night and schools of little fish
that freaked me out when we went swimming! (yes, I am a wuss about fish)
 |
| A lookout hide on the camp that we watched sunrise/sunset from each day |
Mzimba and Lilongwe
As well as going on a holiday, we had the opportunity to visit the North (a town called Mzimba) and the captial, Lilongwe, with Scrivin and Annie Kamanga (pastor and wife) along with their daughter Deborah (who is very fun and kind, especially when I accidentally fell asleep on her shoulder in the car!). This visit was partly to visit a couple of churches that had requested training from Scrivin, but also to visit Scrivin's home, village and family in the North. We felt very privileged to spend time in Mzimba and in the village. There was such a strong sense of family there and we felt so encouraged and enriched by spending some time with them. The training we did was mostly lead by Scrivin to help the churches with vision and strategy planning for their future. This is very much Scrivin's area of expertise (Master's degree in strategic planning), so we just supported little bits where we could, especially because of the language barrier (apparently at one point the person interpreting for me couldn't understand my accent so just totally made up what I was saying!!).
 |
| The Kamangas at Gogo's (Grandad's) home - fun story, when I was bathing in the little roofless brick structure (top right) the fabric door blew away and I had to hide in the corner to protect my decency... |
However, I was asked to preach in Mzimba on the Sunday, which I think went pretty well going from the response of the majority of the congregation. Although the pastor was definitely resting his eyes for a good 15 minutes in the middle, so maybe I need to work on how engaging I am! (In his defence he had only had 3 hours sleep the night before)
In Lilongwe there was a little mix up of communication that lead to Bekah and I leading a day on trauma healing with 30 minutes notice! We had gone through the course back in February with the guy who wasn't able to join us in Lilongwe, so we knew the material already. We did an introductory session to help the members/leaders attending to appreciate the importance of acknowledging the pain we have experienced in life, to talk about it, to bring it to Jesus and to find healing. We compared culture's view of God with what the Bible says, to shows God not as vengeful, but one who cares about our pain and wants to see us healed (Luke 4:18 - 'The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has annointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to heal the broken-hearted').
I think it was a really valuable time as we were able to encourage the members/leaders and gave them opportunities to be open with another, to share their pain and to begin to see Jesus bring some healing in their hearts. This stuff is quite counter-cultural here, especially within churches and for men, as people often give the image of staying strong, not feeling pain and saying "God is good!" no matter what. So we're very grateful to have had an opportunity to show that Jesus' way is for us to show our weakness, to accept the pain and to bring it to him knowing that through His goodness He wants to bring healing to our hearts.
 |
| Road trip break in Nkhata Bay! |
We're also just very grateful to have been able to travel around the length of the country! The journeys were very very very long (hence me falling asleep on Debo's shoulder). But it was probably some of the most beautiful driving I have ever done as we got to drive along the border of Mozambique, through forests of rubber trees, up and down stunning windy mountainous roads, through a lakeside town in a bay that felt like Cornwall and alongside the length of Lake Malawi for 3 hours where we could get out and paddle on the beach. Less enjoyable was the dumb goats and chickens that loved to race across the road ('why did the chicken/goat cross the road?' was a genuine question asked multiple times) and a long stretch of road with traffic going in both directions at 100km/h that would regularly meander from two lanes down to a single lane…
The Future
We're spending our last bit of time here looking forward to the future of the church here and our relationship with it in the future. There's lots of exciting things ahead for Water of Life church as they look to buy land and build in the future, start new house churches to reach out to local communities such as Lunzu and continue to grow under the wise leadership of Scrivin and Annie Kamanga. We've also been handing over some of the finance stuff we've been doing to help things be more accurate and accountable. As well as finishing up on some simple but effective resources to support the kids work going forwards.
The thought of leaving the people that we’ve grown to love so dearly over the past year is really sad. As Bekah and I have begun processing that it's likely that we'll be leaving around mid-August (maybe as soon as two weeks!) there have been lots of tears. Naturally we are excited to see all you friends and family back home, and we're looking forward to not being stared at whenever we go somewhere new. But we are bitterly sad to not be seeing our family here week in, week out anymore. We will really miss them, and are already starting to grieve that loss.
 |
| Me looking into the future/watching the sun set on our time in Malawi |
I think all of this has been made particularly difficult to process because of two things. Firstly, we still have no idea when or how we're going to travel home. We hope to travel on around the 10th August, buuuuuut there are currently no commercial flights running in Malawi (rumours of restart on 1st August are as yet unconfirmed). Charter flights currently running are stupid expensive (a new company starting next month are cheaper but still out of our price range) and we could drive to Dar es Salaam but that would apparently be a pretty horrendous journey and also cost a fair amount in petrol, lodging and emotional turmoil…So hoping that becomes clearer in the next week!!
Secondly, we don't actually know what we're coming back to in the UK yet. We'll definitely be returning to Nottingham, but as yet I have had no luck with job hunting (two interviews, one outright rejection and one said they wanted me but needed someone guaranteed to start sooner) and Bekah's pre-school can only offer part time due to lack of kids signed up for September. To be honest, I often feel a sense of purposelessness, lack of hope and get quite sad when thinking about it. This definitely doesn't help with processing leaving when everything is quite nice here! Although I think it is helping me to learn what it means to trust in God more, to trust that He cares for me, to trust that He won't just leave me to rust, to trust that He will give me a purpose and a hope despite my circumstances, and to trust that He can do things totally outside my comprehension or current understanding. So if you pray, please pray that we continue to learn to trust in God, that He will open doors at the right time, that we are able to process this transitional period and that we will be able to return!
Lots of love and maybe see you soon?!
B&B x
P.S. We did a video a couple of months ago for Grace Church kids. We had a lot of fun making it and there are some good slapstick moments in there if you want a laugh.
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