Updates

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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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!

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!

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!

Today was one of the best days. Deb and I passed on some of the greatest gifts to some of the most gifted people, thanks to the donations we’ve received from others in the United States and around the world — 13 manual sewing machines to 13 women and men of an organization that trains disabled people to make a basic living sewing merchandise from purses and backpacks to items of clothing and table napkins.

In short, these 13 people barely make enough to survive on what they make from week to week at the Mission organization. They can’t get ahead or save beyond just keeping up with monthly rent, food and other basics, and school fees for their children. So, they will now have machines in their small homes with which to work extra hours and make extra money sewing on their own time on weekends. These machines will change these people’s lives and futures!

And in my brief words to the group, I shared how Deb and I have been so grateful to be able to give to them the sewing machines because of what we’ve received from the gracious, generous donations of others; and that our hopes and prayers are that they will now pass on a portion of what they have received (e.g. teaching someone else to sew, buying a chicken or a goat for a neighbor).

So friends and followers of our adventure in service in Malawi, this is the last chance you have to donate to what we will be donating to deserving individuals and service organizations these final six weeks of our stay in Malawi. (We will be flying out towards home on October 9th.) I can tell you that upcoming donations we will be making from donations we are receiving will go to Cyclone Freddy relief aid in Southern Blantyre, medicine for hospitals in the Northern region of Livingstonia, the Seminary hostel building here in Nkhoma, and to Alinafe Communities of Hope that serves over 1700 elderly and disabled people in remote villages surrounding Nkhoma.

So, this is the last word about donating to these major causes and organizations. For more information about donating by check or by Credit Card, please visit our website: MontsMalawiMission.org.

Thank you for giving us the joy of giving while here in Malawi. By the time we leave, you all will have helped us donate over $25,000 to deserving and needy individuals and service organizations.

“Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; to be worshiped above all lesser gods, for all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before the Lord; strength and joy in the Lord’s dwelling place” — I Chronicles 16:25-27

Simply, sincerely, we are grateful to God, being renewed each day by God’s grace and purpose for us up to now and until we leave.

The Bike Malawi Five met with our spouses for an American-style breakfast of apple pancakes and scrambled eggs a couple of Saturdays ago, celebrating the effort that went into the trip, the support of our families, and giving thanks for the opportunity to tell our story in the months ahead, praying that our bicycling efforts will move Malawians to donate to the causes for which we rode.

The next gathering of the Bike Malawi Five was at Bella’s this past Friday evening, an excellent restaurant that recently opened just up the hill from us here in Nkhoma. Betty wanted to hear all about the efforts of the project, and, in the process, honored us with one of the most generous acts of kindness and generosity we’ve received here in Nkhoma. The meal and dessert were exceptional; an outpouring of joyfulness, thoughtfulness, and charitableness.

Then, this past Sunday, the General Moderator of all the CCAP churches of the five Synods in Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, invited me to preach and for us all to speak and be present in the Kaning’a CCAP church in Lilongwe, of which he is the Pastor. Got up at 3:45am, left at 4:30am, for the 1st service at 5:30am, the 2nd service at 7am, and the 3rd service at 9:30am. Rev. Nkhoma and his elders extended the most gracious welcome, and thanksgiving, and hospitality imaginable. The Rev. inquired of the congregation if they were “moved” by our 1100km bicycling effort and told them the account information of each mission-cause will be available on the church’s social media. We were then treated to an opportunity to engage in extended fellowship with the Rev. and elders over an extravagant, delicious lunch.

An off Sunday, August 27th, before three more speaking engagements in September. We are blessed. We are grateful. We are prayerful that Bike Malawi will “move” Malawians to donate to love and serve Christ in their Neighbors in need.

Thursday, July 20

By the grace of God, we have reached Day 5 (out of 11) of biking and Day 7 (out of a total of 14 for the whole trip, including driving. We have biked 528km with about that many before we hit the Southern border with Mozambique. Tomorrow, Friday, is our one day off of the trip. So far, very good.

Progressions:

Yesterday morning, the Northern Synod, of Livingstonia, headquartered in Mzuzu (right next to where I spent a month “shadowing” Rev. Henry Mvula in 2000), gathered Synod leaders, pastors, business owners and hospital personal (part of our Bike fundraiser is to be a catalyst for people within the Northern Synod to donate on behalf of medications that the hospitals in that region can not afford to have available for their patients) for a prayerful, encouraging Meet & Greet, during which they passed the bucket on the spot for donations.

Then it was off, and back down toward, Lake Malawi, again, as we had to come inland due to the lack of tarmac along the Lake for approximately 150km that includes small fishing villages and streams that have no bridges.

Today was a beautiful sunny-hot day biking and being baked on a road that was well-surfaced except for the many sections that weren’t, (e.g. threatening potholes or sections under repair with hard-packed dirt and rocks). Got off early as we had to pedal 112kms to reach tonight’s destination in the Central region that is Nkhoma Synod where Deb and I have been serving on the Mission Campus outside of the Capitol city of Lilongwe.

There have been so many pastors and their families and church leaders who have provided meals and overnight accommodations for us; we are so grateful to them.

Impressions:

What does one think about while biking kilometer after kilometer?

• There are different types of road surfaces — the inch-high rumble strips that warn of upcoming Trading Centers along the road or of one-lane bridges that have dislodged several of my fillings. Then, there are the small bumps and potholes that are bothersome but not dangerous. Finally, there are the crater-sized potholes that can do major damage to bikes, bikers, and car suspensions.
• When I was a kid, we used to pump our arms up and down so truck drivers would pull their air-horns. Here, I am like a big truck — young children playing outside yell and scream for my attention in village after village. In return, I usually wave; or give them a Homer Simpson, “Woo hoo,” or, if they are walking on my side of the road, I will hold out my hand for a little side-five with those brave enough to slap five with a strange old white guy on a bike.
• When teens or young men pass me on their bikes, pedaling their hearts out, I take their exuberance as an opportunity. Since they decided to pass me, they basically offered to be my wind-breaker, allowing me to tuck in behind them and be pulled along in their airstream. More often than not, they deplete their energy leading the way, and motion for me to go on ahead.
• Expect the unexpected — drives meant to take 2 hours guaranteed to take 3; a 5-hour drive that took 8 hours. Unexpected connections being made, like between Mr. Chifundo, the Director of a Mission in Nkhoma, that serves 1700 elderly and disabled, working with Deb as our support team and connecting so brotherly with second-year pastoral student, My Hamilton, who is my biking partner — they are the same age with small kids the same age and wives back in Nkhoma who are becoming friends.
• We do feel God’s empowerment, protection, and grace. Thank you for your prayer support, following our stories and donations.