The Tuesday Times

Well, we are here on Tuesday night and I am completely wiped out. These kids have so much energy and I wish I did too. We started off our day this morning at 7 am with a wonderful breakfast. Pancakes and eggs. I really wish that we could bring Lee Ann with us on the plane ride home. The food is AMAZING!!!!!! We have so much great food here. We had cheesy spaghetti with chicken last night. Tonight we just finished rice and beans with peach cobbler and chocolate cake to follow it up. So, we are definitely eating well.

On Monday we went to the villages. We broke the team up into two groups and went to two different villages. From there, we split up even further so that there were three little groups in each village. So, every group had an interpreter, with six total interpreters. We went from house to house and talked to everyone about the Vacation Bible School we are doing this week. John told us that we need to ignore our American instinct to go quickly and tell them and leave. The people of Malawi like to slow things down quite a bit. You must introduce yourself, first, before you are allowed to say anything. We always made sure to go talk to the chief first to make sure it was alright to come and talk to the people. I was in a group with Alexa and Checaesar (our interpreter).

I shared this on Monday night, but I figured I would tell you all, as well. Like I just mentioned, we went out to the village on Monday and talked to people. Well, I had prepared all of these things that I was going to say about Jesus Christ. I had passages of the Bible ready to go so that I could read them and explain everything really well. So, the first house we came to was full of Christians. They knew all about Jesus, already, and were close followers. So, Checaesar looked at me and said "so, do you have something to share?" Well, I had no idea what I wanted to share because that wasn't what I had planned for at all. So, I looked at Alexa and she had the same wide-eyed look on her face. Anyways, about this time, the wind had started to pick up and my Bible was starting to turn pages and stuff. At first, I was trying to force my way back to Luke, but then I just let it flip to Psalms. My own preparedness had gotten in the way of what God wanted to do there. I wasn't supposed to be preparing, I was supposed to be sharing. So, I ended up sharing some psalms of praise with them. During the rest of the visits during Monday morning, I just tried to get out of God's way and share whatever he wanted, not what I wanted.

So, on Monday at about 11:45, we made our way back to the orphanage to have lunch. Here at the rainbow center, we eat breakfast and dinner in the mission house with Lee Ann cooking. For lunch, we eat in the mess hall with the kids. Every day in Malawi, people eat sema. Sema is 100% corn starch. It looks quite a bit like mashed potatoes. I think it's pretty good and so do most of us, but there are a few that cannot eat it. They had some spices that you could put on it, but after the first day, I decided that the spices just make it taste terrible. It's pretty nice with greens. Today, we had it with peas. Although, I can't stand peas on their own, it was pretty nice with the sema. If you walk through the streets, you can see people on the side laying out sema so that it gets to the right consistency.

On Monday afternoon, we had our first VBS session. It was very uplifting. God was definitely glorified. We started off with a quick game of futbol. They thought it was hilarious that these crazy white people brought the soccer balls and played with them. It never ceases to amaze me how great they are at soccer. They have a bag wrapped in rubber bands to use when a regulation soccer ball isn’t available. Their joy was certainly noticeable when the soccer balls were brought out. So, we gathered them in with the futbol, then we sat them all down and divided them into three groups. One group was the scripture group led by Wayne and interpreted by Prince. Another group was the crafts group with Tammy and Christina. The other group included myself, Andrew, and Alexa. Once each group had rotated through every station, we had a time of testimony from Tammy followed by a closing message from Wayne. There were hundreds of children there.

The interesting thing about trying to count these kids is the density that they sit next to each other. In America, you have some space around you when you sit on the ground in a group. Here, in Malawi, the kids are packed in so tight. It seemed unnecessary because we held the VBS on the futbol field, so there was plenty of space. I guess that’s just what they are used to.

Today was a little bit different. We went to the school to minister instead of making rounds through the houses in the village. It was such a blessing because originally we thought that we wouldn’t be allowed to talk to the children because of schoolwork. However, it’s their last week of school here, so they were all outside playing futbol, anyways. We went to speak to the chief and he wasn’t home. So, we went to the headmaster of the school and he said that there was a meeting with a bunch of chiefs about a hundred yards away. Well, this turned out to be the biggest blessing so far. Wayne got to go talk to about 25 chiefs from around the area. We have been praying for the last few days that we would get to talk to more adults. So, there he was, talking about Jesus to 25 chiefs. We ended up getting to talk to all of the school, as well. They had a ridiculous amount of kids. Tammy, Andrew and I were trying to figure out how many there were and we thought it had to have been close to 400 or 500.

We walked all the way back to the orphanage after that. Along the way, many of the people asked if we could take their picture because they had seen us the last few days taking pictures and video of some of the other villagers.

Every night the girls have singing and praying and the guys have a Bible study. Well, Lucas, Andrew, Shane, and I have had the privilege of hanging out while they are doing their Bible study. We start off by reading a passage and then interpreting the deeper meaning. The best part of the whole thing is the end. After we finish talking about the passage, the boys ask questions. They ask the BEST questions ever. Some of them are completely off the wall and outrageous. For example, one of the questions was “When Satan was thrown out of heaven, where did his wings go? Why didn’t he just fly back up to heaven?” Tonight we talked about why Jesus was called the son of David. We explained that it is based on lineage and ancestry. So, one of them said “Well my parent’s sir name means the same as a pumpkin, so I’m the son of pumpkin.” Kids say the funniest things.

Tomorrow is going to be very different. Wayne is not going to be going with us to the village. He will be here at the orphanage talking to people who want to be baptized later in the week. So, our VBS will be a little different, but it won’t be our work anyways. We’ll just let God be God and try and keep our foot off the brake.

Well, I’m going to get off of here and read up on tomorrow’s lesson plan. We are going to cover Jesus feeding the five thousand, Jesus healing the blind and lame, and Jesus raising Jarius’ daughter from the dead. So, I’ll be in touch later.

Please keep the chiefs in your prayers. God is definitely doing work on the chiefs, here. He has been to both VBS sessions, so far. If there was a Godly influence at the head of the village, it would do wonders in helping out the people. We actually spoke to him on Monday and he said that the people are so uplifted every time someone comes to talk about Jesus and then it gets gradually worse and worse and then they are lifted up again when people come back again. It’s all about God, here. If God was being uplifted in the village on a regular basis, year round, the village would be a much better place.

Wow, I type a lot of stuff. Amy just said “Gosh, Troy, how long have you been on there?” I guess I should let someone else give this a shot. I will talk to you all later.

-Troy