Malawi Sept 2023 Blog 6

Yesterday will be hard to describe in a blog.  In a blog you don’t experience the sounds of the voices singing and praising God.  You don’t smell the open cook fires or the gardens fertilized with animal manure.  And, you don’t hear the children laughing and calling out to the visitors.

We visited three different locations and where we first saw hopelessness, we then saw hope.  At the CNCC (community based children care) program in Chikawawe we were greeted by hundreds of singing children and parents.  It was overwhelming.

There are 700 families in this community and they have benefited from our support in child care, bore holes, solar installations and permaculture plots.  Our tailoring students came with us on this visit and sewed uniforms for the pre- school children who modeled them for us.

We visited the Zoe Project at the Mandala village and we were also greeted by just under 100 students and parents singing praises to God with amazing voices and dance.  It is hard to describe the success stories we heard and got to experience through the Zoe project.

Our last visit was to the refugee camp in Dzalea.  There are just under 60,000 refugees in this camp who have been there for many years.  Again, we saw hopelessness and then we saw hope.   We attended a worship service at the Methodist Church there and we listened to the songs of praise in the midst of so much hopelessness.

The entire mission team was exhausted after a day of emotional highs and lows.  This is a day we will never be able to forget.  It will be etched in our memory forever.