The Lord's "Gift"

One of the hightlights of our time with our team of five, was the baptism that we witnessed. Gift John is a 20-year-old orphan who has attached himself to us. He's been a part of our orphan program since the beginning (2006) and Larry's mentoring him more closely over the past six months or so. His English skills have been improving and he speaks to us in English and has a hunger to learn from us - he's always helping our workers whenever we arrive to visit the project.

(Picture to the left: Larry taking Gift's confession of faith in Jesus Christ)

When we spent the night in the village this past week, he was around and stayed with the guys in the storage room. He witnessed our worship and communion time there. As we spoke with him more intimately about being born again, he expressed a desire to be baptized.

Larry asked among the team who had an extra change of clothes. Andy Brandt had extra clothes and he has also developed a bit of a relationship with Gift, so Andy got the priviledge of baptizing Gift. It is a day we will never forget. Jon Williams left his English Bible with Gift and he will be provided with a Chichewa Bible as well.

We are praying and looking for ways for God to use us in Gift's life. Things are not going well in his family and he asked if he can live on the grounds of our program and work for us. We investigated and decided it is right for us to allow it. Gift will start school on Monday and if he has passed his Form 2 exams, will be in Form 3 (3rd level of Secondary/High School). Please pray for Gift and for us as we mentor him and follow God's direction.

Christmas in July!!??

It felt a little like Christmas when the police called and asked us to come pick up our belongings at the station. However when we arrived they said the supervisor had decided that the things needed to be kept for evidence. It's been such a roller-coaster ride with this ordeal. Larry has been spending entire days at a time trying to find the criminals involved with the break-in. The money still has not been found, but most of our things were. The police finally agreed to let us have our laptops and some of our small electronics today. So it was especially nice to get our main laptop which has all of our files that we've been needed to continue work. Of course, we have learned a valuable lesson on backing up our files.

One day in the village, Larry was explaining what had happened to us and one of the youth boys said to Larry in English, "I want to encourage you with a verse. Exodus 14:14." It had been a verse that we asked the kids to memorize a few years ago when we were teaching them. Now it has returned to us with power. We were encouraged and have prayed that verse many days after that. The verse says, "The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still." We have testimony after testimony that He has done that.

The Break-In

The 4th of July has a new rememberance for us....and sadly not a good one. In fact, it was a disasterous day that holds the most devastating event since our arrival in Malawi 5 1/2 years ago.

It started out being a day of anticipated new beginnings as we went to the village that day excited to open our new orphan feeding program on the following morning. Monday (the 5th) was the first day of the program and it was supposed to begin at 5 a.m. We wanted to be the first ones up to make sure everything ran according to schedule. The first day, only 12 kids came, but we were encouraged because we were told that villagers are apprehensive of people coming in to promise things and not carry through. So we were able to keep our promise and each day the attendance increased. By the end of the week, about 20 kids were coming to the before-school breakfast program. The kids receive a nutritious porridge before school. Their height and weight is measured and monitored.

The porridge is a special mixture and it is provided to us by Feed the Children and Participatory Rural Development Organization. We are so excited about these partnerships and are praying for this successful venture.

Now, to explain the disaster. We returned home after the children had gone off to school and the cooks had finished the clean up late morning. Our dog met us at the front gate along with one of our workers. Everything seemed fine until I (Mandy) went in our bedroom and found things scattered all over the room. I immediately thought, "I didn't leave this room this messy." Then I went in the hallway to the office and found the doors open. (We always lock all the inside doors when we leave.) Then I saw the wall had been torn up and the door handles and locks were taken apart and damaged. There was cement and plaster all over the floor. Our office was a mess and there were papers all over the desk. Under the piles of papers scattered all over the desk we discovered the laptops were missing. Money was missing as well.

Back in the bedroom, we found the small lock box on the bed that had contained over $6000 in US bills. Larry eventually discovered all of his cargo pants and shorts and 3 pairs of shoes missing.

The police came right away and took our one worker who has been found innocent. They are working on many other leads, but each day our chances of recovering our stolen property diminishes. Money is immediately exchanged on the black market and computers are sold pretty fast as well. Of course, it will be difficult for them to pass off a laptop that has no charger and the battery is dead. The thieves had disconnected the two laptops and left the charger/adaptors on the desk.

We searched all over to discover how they got into the house and found that they had sawed through the burgler bars on our kitchen window and entered there. One of our new workers had stolen a key and gotten in the compound, but didn't have a key to the house. The dog knew him so he was able to hold her back so his "helpers" could get in.

Even though it was the worse day we've had here, God is blessing us. Some friends immediately loaned us a desk top computer and another friend loaned us a hard drive for it. Within a few days we were back up and running with our communications, etc.

We are working to get the proper security. One company who is insured internationally and will replace anything that is stolen while they are on duty did an assessment and listed many security risks with our property (that we are renting). We told them that we couldn't address some of the issues because it's not our property. They turned us down and won't take us as a client.

Bottom line....the security system that we need will cost $1400 to install and $125 per month to monitor. We will hire a guard from another company for night-time security and that will be another $160 per month.

We do take comfort knowing that when God is about to do something great, Satan is ready to destroy those who are involved in it. There have been many depressing days, but we have realized the tremendous spiritual battle in which we are involved and how even more important is the mighty working of prayer. The Lord is using this event to draw us closer to Him and to strengthen our faith which is more important to Him than anything we have lost.

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.

Introducing.....Mandy Watson!

One day after we'd just returned from the US, we were meeting with Mr. Watson who is a pastor-in-training for the Mphanda Church. He informed us that his wife had delivered a child on March 19. Larry immediately said, "That's my wife's birthday." Mr. Watson said they should give his daughter the name Mandy. So we finally got to meet the baby. She is beautiful and such a happy and content baby.



About a year and a half ago, Mr. and Mrs. Watson lost their first baby daughter to an illness that she wasn't able to recover from. She died before she reached the age of 2. So, Mrs. Watson has been praying hard for another daughter and the Lord granted her request. She was so happy to show off that new blessing from the Lord.



We were amazed at the hospitality we were shown when we visited these friends. Watson's mother gathered all the neighborhood children (about 10-12) and they pulled ground nuts (peanuts) off the roots to give us as a gift. It was a sweet scene to see them all working together to give us a blessing.

Doing some dirty work.....

Last week, Larry enjoyed a day of getting down and getting dirty. During the dry season Larry had helped Mose build a dam so Mose could irrigate vegetables for the orphan feeding program. It was made of rocks, cement and the nice hard Malawian dirt. But during this rainy season, erosion caused lots of dirt and sand to fill up the dam.





After many weeks of frustration as to what to do, Larry talked to the chief and he agreed that something needed to be done and agreed to help dig out the dirt by sending some workers to help. By working together just getting down in the mud they were able to make a lot or progress in cleaning out the dam. Usually the villagers don't allow us to work, but this time Larry insisted on working along side them. It was an enjoyable time to work together, speak Chichewa, and show that the white guy really does like to work. Some ladies brought him food so he would be sure to have enough energy and not get hungry.

That day they dug down so far that the top of the wall was chest high which encouraged Mose so much and inspired him to work harder to provide vegetables for the orphans. It also encouraged our village friends that hard work can be fun and a community project such as this one can do so much for the development of the village. The water will hopefully be enough to also help a future youth income-generating project.

An Easter to Remember

Back in December, our friend Pat Ouverson asked if there is a project her church ladies' group could do for our orphans. We brainstormed and thought of zip lock bags full of personal necessities would be a great idea. So her group did about 100 bags and several other groups did some bags and we had more than enough for our orphans. These ladies' groups sent them to us in Malawi and we got them in time to distribute them. April 1st was the day of our Easter party. The kids made so much noise when they saw the gift bags that they were sure to have been heard for miles around.


The special meal was goat and rice with vegetables. Goat intestine wrapped around a piece of another organ is the favorite meat. Fortunately, they fed us the regular meat from the legs or back. Oh, and they enjoyed the cupcakes that we love to share with them whenever we have special parties.

Mandy explained why Good Friday is good and how great is the salvation that God has made available to us. The kids enjoyed a special drama and sang songs about Easter.


It was a joy to share this very special celebration and it was definitely an Easter to remember. We are so thankful to the people who gave to make this so special for the children we serve.

Saying Goodbye to Gilberta

Gilberta was a sweet vibrant 5 year old. Whenever she would see Mandy in the village she would run for lots of hugs. Being small for her age, it was easy to pick her up and cuddle her for a while. Sometimes it was difficult for Mandy to teach when Gilberta would tug at her skirt and asked to be held. We both loved this little girl so much and she was a real source of encouragement for us. On December 30, 2009, Gilberta went to be with Jesus in heaven. She died of complications of an illness because she had AIDS. We were heart-broken to learn of her death, but at the same time, we were comforted to know she would not have any more pain in her life and is enjoying Jesus, maybe sitting on His lap. She was spared the hunger and suffering that many people in her village experience and the awful effects of AIDS. During her short life she shared more love with others than some Malawians share in a lifetime. We are so thankful the Lord shared her with us for that short amount of time.