|
|
I looked over my letters home to my wife and kids during my time in Malawi to pull my thoughts together, so that when you come to this website, you'll have some sense of why we go to Malawi (and why you might want to consider serving), and what we saw and did. At work or with friends, I might not have a lot of time to discuss my experience, and might encapsulate those three weeks as "I helped Malawians install and dedicate water wells in rural villages". But it was three weeks of hard work, challenges, discouragement and exhilaration, and a flood of new experiences. In my letters, I gave my family a "top 20" of things I hoped to never forget about my time in Malawi - here are a few of my impressions:
|
|
 | There aren't very many cars on the rural
roads, so people walk on the road, making night-time driving a hazard to be avoided if
possible. I got a lot more familiar with my car's horn. |
| When traveling to the rural wellsites, you can pay as little as
around 90 cents for a bed at a guest house (candle included!) |
| In rural Malawi's restaurants and guest houses, you might see menus but they serve no purpose; you'll be served whatever is ready when you order; you can expect to order chicken and rice, but be served nsima and "tin fish" (sardines)! |
These differences can have an exotic excitement at first for the traveler, but "travelers" can maintain a distance...a separate identity. We came - on behalf of Marion Medical Mission - to roll our sleeves up and stand alongside our Malawian brothers and sisters, and there could be no distance.
| But there was a bridge for us - in Christ. "In Christ there is no east or west..." the hymn goes, and through the power of Christ's love for all of us, regardless of where we come from, I felt a bond for my Malawian hosts and friends that surpasses my cultural bond with many of my American neighbors. My neighbor and I might share a fence line, send our kids to the same school, chat about sports or cars, and be there for each other in a pinch, but with my Malawian sisters and brothers, in spite of our many differences in culture and habit, we can share all that Family offers. I felt it in my first stay in Malawi in 1986, as a college-age Youth in Mission to a remote mission station in the care of Dr. and Mrs. Overtoun Mazunda and their family, and have carried that bond with me ever since. I felt it on every one of my days on my return in 2003 with Marion Medical Mission - at a church service, while the style of worship may not be what I am used to, we worshiped gratefully together, both blessed by the pastor's spiritual gifts; while the food was different, we could fellowship together and be the recipients of hospitality that spoke clearly to the One who would have us show kindness to a stranger; while we sometimes could not understand each others' speech and had to rely on interpreters, the messages of love and hopeful obedience to God needed no translation. |
|
Paul's letter to the Colossians instructs us to
| "...let the peace of Christ keep you in the tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the word of Christ - the Message - have the run of the house. Let every detail in your lives - words, actions, whatever - be done in the name of the Master Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way (Colossians 3:15-17, "The Message" translation) |
That's why we reach out, whether to a next door neighbor or a new friend from the other side of the world. That's why I went to Malawi. I don't know there's anything we did for folks in Malawi that they couldn't have done for themselves - in fact, there's a lot I did I could have done better (I didn't have much prior experience driving a stick shift, my grasp of the Timbuka language was spotty, I missed my family to the point of distraction for the first half of the trip) - but that wasn't my calling. God wanted to put me "in step with" the people of Malawi. I could be there, encourage them, but more importantly, I needed their guidance and encouragement.
Given the tough challenges that a typical Malawian family must have to confront, their faithfulness in living out the gospel is staggering. AIDS is systematically devastating families throughout the country - so many families had lost one, two or more of their number to the disease; often, a mother and father of young children both died, leaving their remaining families to take in the orphaned children. The food, clothing and school fees place a crippling burden on the families' finances. In a land without "safety nets", and in many places, no functioning cash economy, choices often need to be made. Several of our field officers and maintenance men support not only their children but their brothers' and sisters' kids - one young man lost his brother to AIDS during our trip, and was confronting the prospect of caring for his brother's 2 children on top of his 3 children. It is a difficult, wrenching prospect, and our Malawian friends were handling it with faith, hope and love.
I also learned from my team-mates, most of whom had traveled to Malawi previously for Marion Medical Mission, and who've made a life-time commitment to being "in step with" the people of Malawi. Marion Medical Mission is the kind of grass-roots organization that demonstrates the impact a small, non-"professional", but thoroughly dedicated group can have with the Lord's help. These folks all take time from their regular jobs not just to be here, but throughout the year to plan projects, make improvements to the well designs, raise money and publicize the needs of Malawi's people. They've brought an enthusiasm, a dedication and innovative problem-solving approach to bear on all the thorny issues of Malawian life - health care, education and agriculture. It was a pleasure and an honor to come along with them.
Marion Medical Mission Home