WEATHER ALERT:

Due to weather conditions, all in-person daytime and evening programs have been canceled across the church’s locations for Wednesday, except for the Recovery programs and Food Pantry at Overland Park. Decisions for Thursday daytime programs will correspond with local school district decisions and will be posted on the church’s website.

IMPORTANT:

Scheduled programming has resumed for Thursday, February 13 at all Resurrection locations.

Blog 5

11/13/24

Malawi III: November 7-19, 2024

We had a very fun and rewarding day working at the newly constructed Community Library today. We started by lugging in all 480 pounds of childrens’ booked brought and unloading them into the kids’ library. Part of the group organized and shelved those books while the rest of us helped the Opulence staff unbox, organize and shelve several hundred academic books, forms manuals and syllabi for many different primary school classes, such as mathematics, English, Chichewa, religious studies and more. This portion of the library will be used by the teachers of the surrounding primary schools to study and obtain the books they will need for their own classes.

During and after the work with the books, we helped set up tables, clean book shelves and sweep the library floor, using small hand brushes. Bill and Eric were blessed to remember they are no longer youngsters, after having swept the main library floor while bent over at the waist, and that youth is wasted on the young.

Bill, Jeremy and Russ helped Mike, Hastings and Ryford (Opulence staff) set up the computer lab in a building that is about 150 yards from the library. The group set up 16 computers and a projector in the lab, which will be used by teachers of many schools (some from as far away as Lilongwe) to learn how to use the computers and other lessons, so that they may take that knowledge back to their students. Stephanie, Russ, Jeremy and Bill helped instruct many of the Community Based Trainers (CBT) we met yesterday on starting the operation of the laptops and then Hastings, Russ and Jeremy provided further instruction to the group on the functionality of the computers while Ryford translated. The final word was Russ did a very fine job in his instruction, and it was universally accepted that he may have found a new calling in life. Three classes rotated through the lab and, in all, the team provided instruction to over 100 participants.

During this time Monica, Lori, Sara, Nancy, Gail, Natalie and Eric worked with Twambie, Getrude and Brenda (Opulence) in reading, coloring and playing games with a small group of students at the library. Monica and Sara really knocked it out of the park while reading to the kids (with translation assistance from two of the teachers that brought the kids over). The students were nothing if not completely enthralled with the books and the strange but kind ladies reading to them.

Natalie, Nancy and Lori had a great time passing out crayons, paper, stickers and colored pipe cleaners to the children, who immediately put their new bounty to good use and expressed their creativity in drawings and an assortment of pipe cleaner necklaces, eyeglasses, animals and more.

Eric and Gail had a blast with some of the kids playing balloon toss, which devolved into hilarious mayhem when the kids figured out they were able to use heads, hands, knees, feet and any other parts they chose to keep the balloons off the ground while their strange, chunky playmate with a big mustache was huffing and puffing just trying to keep up. Lori and Twambie thought it would be a great idea to add many balloons to the melee, which the kids thoroughly enjoyed and Eric viewed as a new form of laugh out loud torture. When the school bell rang the end of the class day, the kids got juice boxes and biscuits (cookies) for their walk home.

The computer classes continued at the lab and Bill and Eric took the opportunity to rile the next session of students up while they were on a break. Chanting, clapping and singing turned into the kids taking the opportunity to feel the skin and hair of the two newcomers, who soon found themselves mobbed by at least a couple hundred kids. Natalie, Gail and Monica joined the fray as we slowly walked the students from the computer lab (where and amused but intent Stephanie had chastised the groups to move so the CBT’s could hear Russ) to the library. During the walk, the students asked astute questions of the group members such as our names, why we were in Malawi and who we root for in the English Premier League. All four of us had full hearts and empty batteries when we left the library at around 3:30pm

Shortly before we left, we were joined by Moty Mhone, who has been to Resurrection with her husband Daniel Mhone (the District Superintendent for the United Methodist Church of Malawi) on two occasions. Moty also joined us for dinner at the hotel and discussed the partnership Resurrection has with Opulence and how important that relationship has been to the communities Opulence serves. After good conversation and a delicious dinner, we turned in to prepare for the next day and get a good night’s sleep.