Youth Camp

During the first week of June we were blessed to have 3 NMSI interns stay and help us put on a Youth Camp. The interns are spending 7 weeks in Malawi as part of the NMSI Internship program. They helped us for the first week and will be doing some special work with Rutherford and Tsahai Banda.

We were excited as all of the plans fell into place. On Wednesday, the youth in our orphan care program came together with excitement to meet the American visitors. Larry continued teaching the Foundations for Farming principles and everyone got some hands-on training working together to clear some overgrown grass and weeds. We even discovered a nice shady area for teaching. After the work and good food, the youth played soccer. They were amazed at intern, Catherine who played with bare feet (just like the kids). She did complain of sore feet afterward, but she stuck it out during the game.

On Thursday, we did more of the same, but the interns blessed our younger orphans with a special lesson, craft and games on loving one another. They enjoyed staying in the village and enjoying the difficult, but simple life of the people.

A special praise team from Lilongwe visited on Friday and blessed the villages with music and preaching. Many people, including the chief village headman gave their lives to Christ through it all. It was an awesome thing to witness. Catherine and Sarah danced with the girls and fit in beautifully. Sarah gave her testimony for the youth and Chipofya taught about HIV/AIDS. The Jesus Film was shown as well.

Saturday was the finale. Catherine and Drew gave their testimonies and the band played more praise and worship music. One of the praise team preached as a follow-up to the Jesus Film and many of the youth gave received Jesus as their Savior. We are looking forward to mentoring those kids and helping in their new walk with the Lord.

It was a very special time. We didn't think we could top last year's Youth Camp, but this one was definitely even better. The Lord truly did His might work in the villages through all of us.

Meeting the Betzer's

We received a special blessing this month when David and Janis Betzer visited. They are NMSI missionaries in South Africa. David has recently been named Africa Regional Director. It was so nice to host him and Janis for a few days and show them around central Malawi. It's always great to get to know other missionaries who have similar experiences and understand what it means to live and work in Africa. We enjoyed hearing about their work and ministries in South Africa as well.

We all enjoyed a visit to our orphan ministry and a trip to the Lake. We all learned how to quickly and efficiently remove kernels of maize from the cobs. Janis and David worked so hard at it that they actually received blisters on their hands from it.

Relaxing at the river

Bua River was the setting for a beautiful, relaxing mini vacation for us last weekend (May 28-29th). Bua River Lodge advertised "Bua River Full Moon Weekend" and promised the fishing was the BEST! So that enticed us to try it out. Larry has never been able to catch anything substantial in Lake Malawi, so we thought that the peak season for fishing on this river was sure to give him a good time.


Unfortunately, after fishing most of the late afternoon Friday and most of Saturday, we didn't get anything but too much sun and exhaustion from walking to find the "right" place! But the river was so beautiful and we enjoyed seeing fish jumping out of the water even though they didn't want us to catch them and tried to keep away from crocodiles.