Why Malawi?

Update #4

• It is an English speaking nation; we are very poor at learning new languages.
• Chuck spent a month in Malawi in 2000, shadowing the ministry of Rev. Henry Mvula in Mzuzu and witnessing the poorest of Christians express the deepest gratitude for God’s grace and goodness and gifts; it is a nation in which to learn weightier humility and more mature faith; and due to this prior connection, there were church-leaders who made it easier for doors of volunteer service to be opened.
• Malawi is a relatively stable democracy with less risk of physical violence. It is simultaneously an uncommonly peaceful and crushingly poor nation.
• Current Crises that have wreaked havoc upon a generations’ long anemic economy: Covid-19, Hurricane Ana that wiped out meager crops as well as already faulty hydropower stations, the war in Ukraine that has led to increased prices for fertilizer and fuel, two of Malawi’s biggest imports, both of which are running out.
• As one of the poorest nations in the world; 70% of Malawians earn less than $2 a day. Only 34% have bank accounts. Tobacco accounts for 70% of exports at a time when demand has declining for decades. Most Malawians survive on just the food they grow near their homes.
• According to a colleague who has devoted the last 10 years to serving the people of Malawi, being a patient in hospitals in Malawi is like being in hospitals caring for soldiers during the Civil War in the United States. (Food is not provided to patients by hospitals; food must be brought in from family or friends; the same is true for those in prisons.)
• We believe God has opened this exceedingly promising door for us to volunteer our services in one of the poorest nations in the world; we expect to learn incalculable lessons through our experiences in and relationships with the people of Malawi regarding our inherent craving for more than we already have (i.e. my greed, idolatry, ingratitude, self-centeredness) and our hunger and thirst for the deeper things of God that nourish faith, relationships, souls and discipleship–namely, God’s life-giving loving-grace in Jesus Christ through the work and counsel of the Holy Spirit. May it be so!