Livin

Lilyanna welcoming our Bishop

Sorry it has been so long since our last update. Seems like time passes by rather quickly here.  The weather here has been relatively cool (60’s at night, high 70’s low 80’s by mid-day). This has been nice before the real heat kicks in. Soon it will be blazin hot and even dustier than it is now as the rains won’t come until early December. April is the last time we saw a decent rain, it’s getting extremely dusty here! All in all we have been getting along well and all of us are doing very good.

Fr Somanje, Comboni General Superior Fr Enrique Sanchez,
Kleven family

July 20, we celebrated the 40th Anniversary of Comboni Missionaries being in Malawi & Zambia. Also, Brother Patrick was ordained Comboni Deacon! The weekend was full of activities including a soccer and netball tournament. We had the honor of meeting the Comboni General Superior, Fr Enrique Sanchez who traveled to Malawi to join our 40th anniversary celebration. He welcomed us to the Comboni Family and also encouraged us to stay active with the Comboni Missionaries for years to come!


Fr Sanchez truly is a man of God who we feel so blessed to spend a little time with! Deacon Patrick's ordination Mass celebration was long (over 5 hours) though it was an incredible Mass. Lilyanna danced with the dancing girls, she did a great job! 

Tonya has been meeting with the Catholic Women’s Organization (CWO) and the Legion of Mary groups regularly. This has been a real blessing for her as it has provided her a small group to connect with and share her faith in a very real and intimate way. Tonya has also been working very hard on materials for the Comboni nursery schools. As we had said in earlier blogs, the schools have very little educational materials on the walls (2 posters) or to work with. So, Tonya and the girls have been working hard tracing and coloring alphabet letters, numbers and such to be put in and around the schools as tools for the teachers and children. Thank you Mom (Grandma Meg) for funding this effort! With her donation, we were able to purchase a ream of paper, permanent marker and tape so we could create these visual aids for the classrooms. We may have enough funds left to laminate the sheets as well! Also, this past week Tonya was asked to share a reading in Chichewa during daily Mass. Having one day to prepare (I’m finding most Malawian’s aren’t planners like I am…I pray daily for patience and acceptance!), I actually did alright! We look forward to learning Chichewa better so that we can share the Word of God more often and more confidently!

This little girl always seeks out Lily at church

Besides that Jacob has been working on our fence for the dogs, and also planting more greens and landscaping around the yard. The dogs we have been a real challenge. First we had to secure the bottom of the fence for the little one and then add to the top for the big one. I have honestly worked on the fence every day for the past two months.  They add a lot of security but the amount of work to keep them in has made us all wonder if it is worth it.  I have also been working on a project for Lily’s school. More about that in later updates.

Lily's birthday celebration playdate

Lily's first day of 3rd grade at ABC Christian
Academy (Josie photo bombing the picture!)

We have both been attending many Mpagati Msikas very regularly. Most weeks one of us attend at least two to four of these beautiful celebrations. It gives us a time to meet more of the parish community and father always voluntells us to speak a bit in Chichewa to the gathering which can be a bit intimidating but good for us to practice our Chichewa in front of a larger crowd. They will come to end at next week and we are blessed to have taken part in them.

Lily has been a very busy girl. She celebrated her 8^th birthday a few weeks ago. First we had few of her new expatriate friends over for a play date. Then on the day of her birthday we invited all of the neighbor kids over for a dance party and cake (over 20 kids came).  Also, Lilyanna had a surprise visit by our Parish Priest, Deacon Patrick and a visiting Comboni Priest to sing happy birthday and offer her some yummy birthday gifts (Lays chips, candy and juice!)

Lily's birthday celebration with our neighbor kids

The next week she attended a camp at the Lilongwe Wildlife Center where she made even more new friends and had the chance to see some of the awesome wildlife here in Malawi. Now to top it off, this week she started school at ABC Christian Academy. She has a delightful teacher and the school offers a great Christian based education. Lilyanna has adjusted well through all of the changes and we are both very proud of the little lady she is becoming.

Fort Lily built at Wildlife Camp

Next week Josie will turn three! She continues to make us laugh each and everyday with her wonderful personality and is now talking pretty much non-stop about anything and everything. I’m pretty sure she has asked Tonya and I a thousand times “when we go back to the United States, can I get my piggy bank back”? I’m not sure where she got it but it is sweet either way.  She has a great time and has connected very well with our nanny Esther. This fact is very comforting since we have now asked Esther to come Mon-Fri. because either Tonya or I will take Lily to school each morning and the other will attend daily mass at 6am and both of us will start working in the community more regularly. All of this is another big change in our daily lives and we pray for God to guiding us through it all.

Beautiful Josie, playing on her scooter

Last week we “witnessed” something that was very alarming and challenging morally as Christian. We were about to drive out of the parish property when we noticed many of our neighbors and others running towards the entrance of the property. We knew not to get to close and stayed back a ways. A few of our friends confirmed that we should stay away and we pulled the car close to the church to wait out the events. We waited 10 min. or so and then we were told that it was OK to pass. We later learned that commotion had to do with a man at the market across the road, who had a gun on him.  The people of the market challenged him as to why he had a gun and almost stoned him to death there on the spot. It was certainly one of our more frightful experiences since we have been here. We pray that the man recovers and that Our Father will forgive all.

Josie was delighted to hold a 5mo old baby!

We have learned recently that a big portion of our ministry in the near future will be to assist at the preschools in a number of different ways, primarily the director position for the preschools. We look forward to this opportunity! We pray that God’s hand will help us to lead these beautiful children to live a life according to His word.

Lily & Obrey, sweet neighbor boy

Our family is adjusting to Missionary life in Malawi though we still have our moments of homesickness and culture shock. We are thankful we are able to (so far) afford internet access and that we were gifted an amazing computer by our family before we left. Can you believe it’s been a year since we left our professional careers? Tonya misses her Park Bank colleagues as well as the work, though she knows she’s where she is supposed to be. Jacob also misses his team back at Sodexo but he’s grateful for the internet to stay in touch! The companies we worked for were good to us in many ways!

We ask for prayers for health, calmness and patience as we continue in our mission here in Malawi. Especially for health for the girls as we are not currently on anti-malaria meds and the mosquitoes are back.  May Almighty God continue to bless each and every one of you. Thank you for your continued prayers and support!

Apologies for the spacing of text and pictures on this update, we are struggling a bit using blogger! We wanted to include a lot of pictures and when we do that, the spacing gets messed up! Thanks for being patient with us as we explore and learn about the world of blogging! Peace and love, Tonya, Jacob, Lilyanna and Josephine (Kleven Comboni Lay Missionaries)

Josie, Lily and a few neighbors at our Mphakati Masika

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

Road Trip

OK so I know that I said in the last post we would have another update in a few days…. That was only three weeks ago. Sorry about that. Time here really seems to go quickly. Part of the reason I think is because everything just simply takes longer. It seems weird but I’ll try to explain a bit. Getting to the car from our house takes at minimum 10 minutes as it is culturally proper to greet each person you know that you pass with at least a mwadzukha bwanji (how did you rise) or mwaswera bwanji (used after noon as kind of how is the day). Traffic in the city is always slow going as is most everything else. So a 2-mile run to the store that in the states would take 15 minutes, here takes at minimum an hour. This pace of life has been a huge adjustment for us. In the states it is run here, run there, and keep your head down and at the very least look like your busy J Although it has been a challenge to get used to, we welcome the extra time we have together as a family.

Since the last post we have seen and experienced many of God’s blessings and wonders. We received a call late on a Sunday night from Fr. Dario asking if we would like to take a trip to Blantyre/Lunzu with him the following afternoon. We were happy to accept and to see more of the beautiful Malawian countryside and meet more of the Comboni family.  The drive was long (4hrs) but with with Fr.’s stories and discussions it went by pretty fast. We stopped by two Comboni perishes on the way down. Both were very welcoming to the family and invited us

to come again soon to stay for a holiday. We arrived in Lunzu to the Comboni Technical School that evening and even though we were pretty road worn, stayed up late sharing in great conversations with the brothers and fathers. The next day we toured the technical school campus and took a quick run into Blantyre.  That afternoon we set out for Balaka where more than 20 young men are in formation with the Combonis. Pray that they will continue to grow in faith and keep answering God’s call. We spent the night in Balaka and the next afternoon set back out for home. It was a fast trip that we were extremely glad we took.

To celebrate Corpus Christi our parish again put on a magnificent display of worship. The day prior, different small Christian communities and groups created beautiful works of art honoring various saints. They were all created on the ground and out of natural ingredients like corn, flour, ashes, and crushed bricks. The mass was celebrated outside and followed by a processional, which lasted about 2 hours that was filled dancing and singing in between moments of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. The day was filled with joy and worship as we reflected on the body and blood of our Lord and Savior.

Next was our visit to the second of the three nursery schools that the Comboni Missionaries have built. This one, in area 24, was the first to be opened and has some great teachers and systems in place to provide the local children with a base foundation of education before they move to primary school. Along with building the school, the Combonis also had a bore hole dog and a well installed for the school and local community to have access to safe clean drinking water. It is wonderful to see what a difference our organization has made in the quality of life and sprit of so many people.  Although much has been accomplished there is still a long way to go. There is a great need for basic supplies. tables, chairs and many other things to allow the nurseries to operate efficiently.  Because of the lack of supplies, to practice the writing skills the children learn, the children have to go outside and draw the letters they have learned in the dirt and sand.  Still the children are happy and in a safe learning environment. We look forward to helping this and the other nurseries in many ways in the future.

The following week we were invited to our first mass and meeting of one of the 25 small Christian communities of S. Johns. Small Christian communities are basically sub-divisions of the parish members broken out by the geographical location of their homes. They work together on projects, pray together and numerous other things. The event is usually held on the feast of their named Saint and held at a chosen family’s kunyumba (home). We celebrated mass and dined as honored guests and tried to speak a little in Chichewa. The afternoon was amazing and we felt very honored and humbled to have been invited.

The remainder of the time we have been establishing a daily routine, meeting with Fr. Somanje, and continuing to strengthen relationships. Everyone has been healthy and we are grateful to God for His many blessings. Thank you all for your love and support! God Bless.

Building

We apologize for the delay in our update. The Kleven fam has been busy building many aspects of our life here in Malawi. We will use this entry to get all of you, our friends, family and supporters, up to date with what we have been doing and where we are at in this new life.

First we have been building our language skills. This week we actually finished our formal training with our instructor Abambo Austin .  We are thankful to him as we can now greet our neighbors and have minimal conversation with the people we encounter with some comfort. We will now continue to practice as much as possible and study our materials on our own. It is definitely harder to learn a new language when you are older and have a little tribe to take care of.

 We have built our confidence in moving in and around the city of Lilongwe. A few weeks ago on a Sunday we were on our way to the grocery store and noticed a lot of people wearing red and white. It reminded us of a Badger home game day back in Madison. When we arrived at the grocery store and asked one of the friendly guys we see every week there “what is going on?” He told us that there was a big football (soccer) game between arch rivals Lilongwe and Blantyre. We decided to finish shopping and head to the stadium.

We arrived to a stadium that was screaming with energy and packed with people. We stepped into a stadium that is all cement seating surrounding the field. There were vendors everywhere making this “hissing” sound trying to get the attention of potential customers. As we walked around the filed we heard the familiar call of “azungu” as we passed all the spectators. Out of tens of thousands of people I am confidant we were the only people with white skin in the entire stadium. Most everyone was very welcoming to the family and we enjoyed the first half very much. After about the first half we were getting pretty hot and the girls were ready to go. As we were leaving there was a bad call by the ref and chaos broke out. As we were walking by a rowdy section, the crowd started throwing bottles onto the field and just as we passed, they rushed the field and tore down part of the fence. Phew!!! We were so thankful that we left when we did. All together, we had a great time and were glad we decided to go.

Most of our time now is spent building relationships. We have been getting to know our neighbor’s a bit better and are now much more comfortable stopping by while they are out washing clothes, cooking or working outside.  They are all very happy to listen to us try to say a few things or ask questions in Chichewa. It is awesome to see the smiles on their faces when we make the effort to hang out and communicate with them in their daily life’s.

We have also been singing and dancing even more with the children of the parish and also visited one of the two nurseries that the parish operates. There we saw a nicely run childcare facility with about 40 children and two teachers. Yes, only two teachers. We have learned that it is pretty common to have high child to teacher ratios here and honestly the kids were very well behaved and the teachers seemed to have great control of what was going on. It was a shorter visit but we sang some songs, danced and laughed with them all and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.  We will visit the second nursery this coming week and really look forward to the opportunity.  

A couple weeks ago I finished a project building a shed for Sister Anastasia, one of the Teresian sisters. The building is made completely out of scrap pieces of metal that were in their rubbish pit, old speaker wire and strips of old tires. She wanted to build the shed for a manure project she is working on. The goal of the project is to create manure fertilizer (compost) out of all natural and locally available sources. Then to take it to the villages to help those that can not afford fertilizer for their crops and teach them how to make it on their own using their own resources. The dependency on chemical fertilizer for maize crops is a major challenge here in Malawi and it is something I hope to help on again in the near future. It was a fun project and I am grateful Sister asked me to help.

Lily has been practicing each week with the parish dancing girls and this past weekend danced for the first time during mass. She did an unbelievable job, and both Tonya and I couldn’t have been more proud of her. You can see a clip of the performance here. Her participation with the girls has built some beautiful friendships. They not only practice and perform together but also play and get silly, as girls will.

We recently finished building a grass fence around the property. We needed to put the fence up for the dog we will get in a few short weeks. The fence will also offer a bit of privacy when we need it. We love to play and be with our neighbors but sometimes a little space is nice. A couple of the employees of the parish and I constructed the fence. It is made of bamboo, grass and those strips of old tire. The only milled timber in the whole thing is what I used for the walk and car gates at he front. It was a great learning experience for me and I am also very glad to have it completed.

Last Friday, Fr. Somanje invited us to come to the Comboni house for the day and just hang out for the day. Fr. Somanje as really made us feel welcomed at the parish, at the house and just in general. We had a great day resting, the girls got to watch some TV and I didn’t have to cook breakfast or lunch. Josie and Lily played for a while with Fr. and he was a great sport in entertaining them dressing babies, putting clothes on the dolls and all. It was a welcomed day retreat and we are very thankful to Fr. for inviting us.

We actually have this whole last week to write about but I figured we’d put that together by the end of the weekend and get us all up to date. We thank God for bring us to the beautiful place and thank all of you for keeping up and supporting us. Please don’t be shy in emailing or writing to us. It is really nice to hear from our family and friends back in the states. Much Love from all the Klevens. Jacob