Monts Malawi Mission

Deb and Chuck’s Year of Volunteer Service in Malawi in 2023

Chuck Monts

Bridging the Gap

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Just returned home last night, having spent two weeks visiting and presenting the stories and pictures of our service in Malawi to thirteen churches across Pennsylvania and one in Canton, Ohio.

What a joy and blessing it was to thank so many friends and members of various churches for their generous donations while also encouraging others to contribute, for the first time, to the ongoing needs of individuals and the Chisomo and Alinafe mission organizations in Nkhoma.

With deep gratitude, we just sent $8000 to extraordinarily deserving people in Nkhoma, and we will be sending our final donation in late December, so there is still time for first-time donor donations. (If you missed the news, the Malawian government just devalued the kwacha–their dollar– by 44% in one fell swoop, which is going to make daily survival even harder for the 70% who were barely making ends meet before this devastating devaluation.)

Throughout the rest of 2023, we will continue bridging the gap between our service in Malawi to the new thing God will have for us to do here at home in Pennsylvania in the year ahead. And may all of us continue praying for the faithful, needful, beloved children, women and men of Malawi.

The Kinzua Bridge (above), built in 1900 and destroyed by a tornado in 2003, within the State Park in North-Central Pa, that gave us a great excuse for sightseeing and hiking as we drove to our first church visits and prestations earlier this month.

Christ Presbyterian Church of Canton, Ohio (below), one of more than fifteen churches whose members donated so generously to our donations to the people and mission organizations of Nkhoma, Malawi, as well as hospitals in the Northern region and the victims of Cyclone Freddy in the Southern region of Malawi.

Where’s the Wrestling?

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I was expecting more wrestling when we got back.

Wrestling more with having more again; having more of just about everything: more reliable & accessible utilities; more ease in contacting and connecting to the internet, cable, HP Instant Ink; exponentially more products from which to choose on Amazon.com, supermarkets, hardware stores & every kind of specialty shop imaginable (teddy bears, cheesecake, slippers, not that I’m currently in the market for any of these things).

Of course, having much more stuff includes having many more expenses, as is only fair, right? Having a car means car inspections & repairs (had to replace the brake pads & rotors (ouch); having a home means replacing a broken floor lamp & a visit by Stanley Steemer due to the tenants who breeched the lease by welcoming a dog that generously left its odor in the carpets, upholstery & vacuum; being reconnected to the much larger grid required replacing Deb’s ailing, aging phone (she was able to download her 8000 pictures from Malawi before it died).

You see, I was fully expecting to and worrying about wrestling with having both more choices and more expenses. But, here we are, sitting pretty comfortably, seemingly back in the swing of things within less than 10 days of returning home. Maybe it will hit me later, after we return from presenting our stories of our time in Malawi to churches across PA or sometime in ’24 when I resume working part-time.

If I have wrestled with something since being home, it’s been Jesus’ parable, in Luke 12:16-21, about the farmer whose energy, talents, productivity, and enterprising vision led him to build upon his success by storing up more means and resources for his life and retirement years. Like the farmer, Deb and I have done pretty well over the years in terms of working hard and saving up for this stage of our lives. And, yet, paradoxically, we just learned in Malawi that we could live a full and rewarding life on half the income and twice the level of giving of 2022 (please know that you all made our giving possible with your gracious, generous donations!).

So, I guess, the real wrestling match is going to involve how we live and practice our faith with so much more at our disposal and so much more to give now that we are back in our comfortable cabin and routines. Will we have an open-door policy, as we did in Nkhoma, inviting people in for meals and fellowship to a far greater extent than we ever have throughout our married life? Will we seek out individuals and non-profit faith communities and service organizations who need more of our money than we would normally consider giving due to having so many more choices and expenses of our own? Will we humbly, honestly, fearlessly wrestle with what it means to be rich towards God?

O God, help us wrestle.

Celebration of Friends & Heroes of Malawi!

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On Sunday, October 8th, a day before beginning our trip home, we celebrated friendship and faith with our Malawian brothers and sisters. These (pictures and brief descriptions, below), are those who not only showed us the hospitality and graciousness of Christ, but who serve Christ in their Neighbor in Need on a daily basis. What a blessing to have been connected to them in Christ.

I Corinthians 12:12, 26: “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.”

Please click on the links below to see pictures and brief descriptions of our friends and heroes.

And for those still waiting and wishing to make a first-time donation (we are continuing to receive and send along donations to Chisomo and Alinafe), please visit our website: montsmalawimission.org for ways to donate by check or credit card; the website will be closing down, once and for all, in December. Thank you for your thoughtful and generous consideration.

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Flying Last Thoughts as We Go

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These last days, we have still been striving to enjoy life and service to the fullest — our last hike up Nkhoma Mt to the Cross, meals shared with friends, shopping down in the market, my last week of work and even a wedding. I can say that we have fully embraced most of our days here. I actually have more friends here than in Bushkill, which makes this a true home.

One of the things we have learned or maybe embraced while here is to expect the unexpected. It made sense because we are in a new country, new culture, new roads without road signs, new jobs, new apartment, new foods, new everything! This new mantra (embraced by an extremely aggravated Chuck during a wrong turn that took us 30 minutes in the opposite direction of our destination), helped us (Chuck would say has helped him most) to be more patient in challenging situations.

When we left our cabin in Pa in January, I was challenged by I Thessalonians 4:10, “to love more.” The church in Thessalonica was well known for its love in the town and the whole region! Yet, Paul in this verse encourages them to love even more. What a challenging call to Christ-like discipleship!

I just read Following Jesus Through the Eye of the Needle, by Kent Annan, who asks tough questions after living and serving in Haiti: “What are you willing to give up so that you gain everything?” “How does sacrificial giving translate in real life?” “What is my way of loving more?” “What am I going to do to starve this desire for more and more and to hunger for things much deeper and more fulfilling?” Personally and spiritually, such questions of faith have never been harder nor more necessary.

Annan pointedly suggests: live for Love! — Love of God, neighbor, and of those most often rejected and desperately in need; let Love guide our choices. I left with this challenge in my heart and mind, and I am returning with this challenge in my heart and mind …to LOVE MORE.

Thank you for your love and sacrificial support; measureless thanks to God.

Love, Deb

The Incredible Edible Revenuable Egg

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What a weekend celebration down at the just-born Chicken Ranch!

Deb and I celebrate and have just invested $3,500US of your eggstravagantly generous donations, in the industrious vision of Director Chifundo Chinsampha and his Coordinating Team of Alinafe Communities of Hope (ACOH), in initiating an EGG business for the benefits of nutrition and funding support for their elderly and disabled clients in villages surrounding Nkhoma.

As donors to us who have donated to ACOH, you are now the proud owners of 250 chickens that will begin producing eggs, for food and revenue, in just a week or two; your donations are also providing funds for three months for two security guards, two chicken handlers, painting of the building, protective fencing around the building, chickenfeed, water and feed dispensers, and a couple of inches of rice chaff on the floor for the chickens’ comfort and safe-egg-laying. (That’s a lot of chicken scratch for $3,500!)

US dollars are worth twice as much if they are brought into Malawi verses being sent electronically. Just so happens the gracious Moderator of the CCAP Synods of Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe just got back from visiting Boston with a Malawian delegation. Your donations were collected, sent by check to a former member of the Hollidaysburg, PA, Church, who cashed the check and gave fifty $100 bills to Rev. Nkhoma who, in turn, brought them back to Malawi and handed them to me last Sunday. Ten minutes later, a friend of ours, a seminary student, put me in touch with someone who exchanged them for nearly 10 Million kwacha.

How grateful we are for your donations! How grateful we are for the vision and compassion of the leadership team of ACOH. How grateful we are for the simple egg that will be doing so much to provide nutrition and resources of support for the clients of ACOH.

Go chickens, go!

Samaritan’s Purse Pours Out!

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We have experienced this faithful truth throughout our lives, but, in especially fresh and surprising ways during these nine months in Malawi — “with God all things are possible” Matthew 19:26.

While Deb readily admits that she is not a good writer, as nurses’ notes in patients’ charts do not require correct grammar or punctuation, Deb wrote and submitted a Grant Proposal to Samaritan’s Purse three months ago for the Palliative Care Department of Nkhoma Mission Hospital. This just in: $11,000 from Samaritan’s Purse was deposited into the Hospital’s Palliative Care Department this afternoon!

Wheelchairs are worth their weight in gold in Malawi, but this money will provide money for their backlog of wheelchairs necessary for clients in remote villages, which is where the Palliative Care Interdisciplinary teams travel to each Tuesday and Thursday. In addition, the Palliative Care team take with them emergency food and tarps for terribly leaky roofs made of tin or thatch.

One more more quick word about Samaritan’s Purse. We have seen S’s Purse provide generous funding for doctors and nurses to fly in from around the world during the COVID and Cholera epidemics. They have also provided funding for nurses and doctors from the United States, Netherlands, Germany and other nations from around the world. I just got off the phone with Samaritan’s Purse, headquartered in North Carolina, thanking them for the extraordinary mission giving and support they have provided to Nkhoma Mission that we have witnessed with our own eyes and ears. With no doubt in my mind, I can say they extend the extravagant healing mercies and loving grace of Jesus Christ in their service to God’s Beloved here in Malawi.

Thanks be to God!

Now Look What You’ve Gone and Made Us Do!!

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After 8+ months in Nkhoma Mission, these are some of the largest donations YOU have made through-us to-others:

  • $4,000 to Alinafe (“God-with-us”) Communities of Hope that serves the spiritual, physical and communal needs of 1700 elderly and disabled in and around Nkhoma (emergency food and start-up money for 250 egg-laying chickens that will produce both eggs to give clients and formerly non-existent revenue that will support the ministries of Alinafe for years to come
  • $3,000 to Chisomo (“Grace”), a mission org that trains and supports 13 disabled individuals to sew various merchandise; last month, we donated 13 new manual (most of their homes do not have electric) for them to increase their income by sewing and selling additional merchandise from their homes on weekends
  • $2,600 towards the costs of the Bike Malawi bicycle trip in support of the missional needs of the Northern Livingstonia Church Synod (hospitals), the Central Nkhoma Church Synod (Seminary Hostel Building that will provide a direly necessary revenue source), and the Southern Blantyre Church Synod (Cyclone Freddy Relief)
  • $1,750 to deserving University and Seminary students in support of tuition and nutrition
  • $1,750 to the Seminary at which I was a guest lecturer (books for the library, underwriting the Food Bank for students and their families without adequate nutritional resources, staff support
  • $1,500 to the Ministry & Mission of Nkhoma Synod, renovating an apartment in the Guest House that will produce revenue for the Synod of years to come
  • $1,500 Giving to the needs of Malawians whose stories of suffering you have helped us give food and home assistance
  • $,1,000 Blantyre Synod Cyclone Freddy Relief
  • $1,000 Livingstonia Synod Hospital Rite Aid
  • $1,000 Church donations
  • $800 to Frank’s Carpentry that trains and provides a future trade, building furniture, to young adult village men
  • $650 to a general gardener making a subsistence living, purchasing for him a used motorcycle with which he can have his own business (transportation of products and people) and increase his opportunities to earn and provide more for his family
  • We will be giving additional donations to people and service organizations before we depart Malawi on Oct. 9

LAST CALL: Friends and Followers of our Journey of Volunteer Service in Malawi who may not yet have donated, we will be continuing to tell the story of the People of Malawi, and their need for aid, after we return to PA later in October, hoping to raise additional funds for mission organizations here in Malawi. For those who have not yet donated but have been moved by the needs of, and inspired by the donations that have enabled us to give at least $20,000 to, people and service organizations within Malawi, it is not too late! Please go to montsmalawimission.org to donate by check or credit card.

THANK YOU FOR WHAT YOUR PRAYER AND FINANCIAL SUPPORT ALLOWED US TO DO!

Sing, Sing a Song

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Video One (less than a minute): Prayer is a Battle (repeated) then “spiritual battle”

The message being that the world makes praying difficult and tries to distract us and deter us from praying.

Video Two (less than a minute): We Love, Because God First Loved us

A song I learned as a Volunteer in Mission in Southeastern, Alaska, the summer after college, in ’82, that I have been teaching kids and congregations ever since (including the AoG church a couple of Sundays ago). Here we are with the Pastor of the Assemblies of God church here in Nkhoma, who has been so welcoming and gracious, and who invited me to preach on Sept. 3. They’ve had us to dinner, and last week, they came to a Pancake Supper at our place.

    Picture: Sing to the Lord, all the earth…Declare God’s glory among the nations, God’s marvelous deeds among all peoples” I Chronicles 16:23-24.

    Yesterday, at a church in Lilongwe, at which I preached, the congregation sang and danced and praised God for the better part of 2 1/2 hours before the sermon (15 minutes in English with an extra 15 minutes for translation into Chichewa).