Busy in Malawi

The past few weeks have been very busy for us.  The Lord continues to bless us with good health and happiness during our many activities. We thank Him daily for bringing us to Malawi and allowing us to share His love to those we meet.

It is towards the end of the harvest season, so during this time the mphakatis (small Christian communities) all have their offertory masika (mass). We have had the pleasure of being invited to and attending all of these beautiful celebrations. Most weeks there are three to four of these masses. These give us the opportunity to see more of the surrounding villages, meet more of the wonderfully gracious people of Malawi and also practice more of our Chichewa.  We are very thankful for these opportunities.

Tonya started an awesome project in conjunction with Spencer McSorley, the previous lay missionary that was in Lunzu, Malawi. Tonya met with some of the children that are in the catechism classes here at St. Johns and had them write letters to the children in Spencer’s VBS class in the US. The children in the states will then write back and hopefully continue to keep in contact and share in each other’s lives and faith. It is a beautiful project that we will continue to update you on over time.

 

We continue to work on our neighborhood cleanup project. We have now dug two of the four rubbish pits (mkuti) for our neighbor’s buildings, there are four families per building. There will be much more works to be done after the pits are dug though. Just a week after the fist was built, I noticed that the neighbors were still burning wherever and just throwing rubbish around. With the help of our friend and neighbor, Patrick, we explained again to them why the pits are dug and that we want to keep the earth that God has given us as beautiful as possible. The change in the way of thinking will take a long time but I am confident with love and patience it will slowly come around.

Last weekend was Fr. Somanje’s birthday. We celebrated it on Saturday night by going to the provincial house for dinner and a dance party. The Sisters of St. John the Baptist joined us. So the family, the sisters, the fathers and all danced the night away (ok it was until about 9:30) and truly enjoyed each other’s company and had a great time.

Lily has been practicing hard on her dancing girl steps. On July 20^th there will be a huge celebration for the 40^th anniversary of the Combonis working in Malawi and Zambia and “Brother Patrick” will also be ordained Deacon before being ordained a Comboni priest in November. During the celebration, Lily will dance along with the other girls during many points of the celebration. We are very proud of her and can’t wait to watch her.

Josie is becoming more of a Malawian child everyday. She loves playing in the dirt, can now greet men, women and children properly in Chichewa and never wants to wear shoes. She has also come to like nsima very much, probably mostly because she gets to use her hands, as there isn’t much taste to it.  She is really blossoming into a beautiful little child full of spirit.

We continue to pray for patience and good health. We miss all of you will continue to pray for your health and happiness. Jacob