After many hours of travel, Christina and I were welcomed to "The Warm Heart of Africa" with "open hands" on Thursday, June 6th.We are living in the Nancholi area of Blantyre, Malawi. We are six hours ahead of EST. So it's about 6:30pm here. We live on a compound which includes Galilea United Methodist Church, the pastor's house, a health clinic, our guest house, Malawi UMC conference offices, 3 other living quarters and a nursery school.
Once a week we will work in the health clinic, teach at the nursery school, and attend home visits. We will each preach 3 times and lead Sunday school lessons and nightly prayer groups. We will individual host dance and prayer workshops.
In Malawi they speak Chichewa (the vowels sound like Spanish vowels, n at the beginning is silent, k's and t's are usually followed by h- but it's silent) and English- along with other languages. Abusa Collings (Pastor Collings) and his wife Esther (maiabusa) are very hospitable. Esther cooks for up to 10 people a night because so many people come to visit the pastor. And people often drop by the guest house to speak with us. We have learned to have a flask (thermos) of hot tea and some biscuits (cookies) available at all times.
The food is kinda like southern comfort food. Most meals people eat nsima with ndiwo (relish). Nsima remember, the "n" is silent) is basically thick grits. The relishes can made from spiced beef, fish, MUSTARD greens =) , "pigeon" peas, CABBAGE etc.
We quickly learned that black outs and water outages are common. We have a garbage bin filled with water to use to cook or bathe with when water stops running. And we have to manually fill the toilet at those times...Cold showers and boiled water bucket baths are our current MO. We have head lamps and flashlights and book lights to use power outages. We are learning to cook on a mbaula aka chacoburna aka charcoal burner aka mini grill during power outages. Maibusa showed us how to light it twice, but we've only boiled water so far.
The internet at the church is fickle. We are using a dongle that provides 3G internet, but my Ipad doesn't have a USB connection so I will have to use the internet when our supervisor lets us borrow her laptop- like she did tonight. If anyone has suggestions on how to link a USB to an Ipad, please let me know.
Continue to keep our summer in your prayers. God is doing mighty things here in Malawi.
Zabwino zonse (all the best)
K
6 comments:
Hi Kennetra! I'm so happy to read about what and how you're doing. Apple makes a hook-up for ipad that has a USB port. It plugs into the place where you'd normally put the charger. I don't have access to an apple store, but maybe some one can send you one.
PS - That was me, Swilcox :)
This is awesome Kennetra! Thanks so much for sharing your adventures through this blog. I look forward to reading your updates throughout the summer! We're keeping you in our prayers. Love you and God bless.
May you and Christina be blessed and be a blessing. We pray you bear much fruit to God's glory. By the way water and power situation sound like Mississippi a few years ago. Lol.
Mary Jane
Mmm..that relish sounds interesting. Hope it's tastsy. Great to read up in your journey so far. Despite some of the physical challenges like outages, it sounds like a very hospitable place where God can use you to His glory. Press forward purposefully and enjoy the trip. Love you
-Channing
So proud of you and excited to see what God is going to do through your ministry this summer! Abracos!
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