The wonderful widows

The widows we visited while at COTN were such a joy to see and be around. Their love and gratitude for the Lord showed in what they did. Children of the Nations(COTN) has a program that trains these widows on how to learn a skill and market that skill to provide an income for themselves. This way they don't have to rely on donations or handouts for survival. Most of them are doing sewing for their acquired skill. Luckily we brought 150 lbs. of fabric for them to use for their projects. This will give them a 100% profit. I pray that they are successful in all they do. Some of them care for 3 children and some as many as 6 children. You can see their lifes trials written all over their faces. The encouraging part is that they give all the glory to Jesus where it belongs. They know that if it was not for Jesus's love for them then they would not be where they are today. They have a fraction of what we have in a closet let alone our whole house. The widows take such pride in the little that they have. It definitely makes me think twice about what I just gotta have because it looks cool or "everyone has one". I think we have it all backwards at times.

The reason we went to Africa

I wanted to share the main reason we went to Africa. We went to serve the widows and most importantly the children of Malawi. Some of them were orphaned and some were just children looking for someone to care about them. My awesome team poured out enough love for those kids to hopefully fill them for a little while. The children there love to smile. They also love to have their picture taken. If they see you get your camera out they will watch your every move and try to work their way somehow into your picture. Then they want to see what it looks like. They never get a chance to see what they look so when they see themselves in a picture it brings them sheer delight. I also noticed that they love to strike poses for the camera. Of course the boys strike a superhero/warrior pose. Blake would get along great with these boys.


These boys got more used to me as the week went on. They are all students at the Acts III Montessori school. By the end of the week one of the boys would run up and give me a huge hug each day he saw me.





This is Mikey, Obusa Brown's son. He didn't like us at first, but even he warmed up to us by the end of the week. I got a real kick watching him cruise around the campus trying to play with the older kids.

God's Splendor

One of the many ways I like to enjoy what God has created for us is to look at sunsets. Everyday they are different and each one has its own unique beauty. Africa is no exception to beautiful sunsets. Each day they were so beautiful. I tried to capture some of their beauty so I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Safari Pictures Pt 2

I can only upload a certain number of pictures per post so here are a few more. The first one is a picture of a sausage tree. You can actually eat the "sausages" which is really a type of fruit. I took their word for it.

Safari Pictures

This is the chalet we slept in for the night. I was on the left side and Pam and Debbie were on the right. All the windows were only covered by thick screens so we could hear all the different sounds during the night including the hippos talking to each other. It was soooo cool!

Village life

Here is a typical looking village. They are mud huts with a straw type of roof. Some of the huts had a corrugated metal roof. The roofs are the most expensive part of the house so often times they will use whatever material they have on hand.
The villages have a common water source where everyone uses. They fill buckets to take back to their homes. Sometimes it is quite a long distance away. There are some villages that have a state approved water source which allows them to charge for water as a source of income.

This is Rebecca. She is one of the widows in the COTN widows program. She is the one Pegi and I visited her home. She loves to dance and sing praises to God. She knows everything she owns, which isn't a whole lot, is directly due to the grace of God. If only we could all be that grateful.

Oops! two pictures are switched.

Here are Pics of where I stayed at COTN

This is the gazebo at the center of the campus. This was the central gathering place and where we had morning bible studies.


This is where I slept the first week.


These are the chalets where the missionary teams stay. There are 8 of them surrounding the gazebo.

I made it home!

Hello all. I made it safely home after a long two days of travel. Praise Jesus!! Seeing my family waiting for me at the airport was such a beautiful sight to see. All the prayers for safe travel were answered, Thank you! I was not able to post along the way so this morning I posted everything I wrote. So start at the bottom and work your way up. Pictures are soon to come.

Morning Devotions

Every morning during the week Maribeth and her pastors have devotions at 5 am. I actually made it to 3 of the 5. Not exactly an easy task, but it was worth it. We would read sections of scripture and then prayed for whoever had prayer requests and then sang a worship song in Chichewa. I enjoyed experiencing devotions and worship in a different style and setting. It is also a good reminder for me that God loves all His people no matter where they are from or what language they speak. During our Sunday service Abusa Brown (abusa means pastor in Chichewa) talked about how it doesn’t matter the color of our skin, we all bleed the same. We need to love each other no matter what differences we may have. God has been so faithful during this trip. I have felt all your prayers while in Africa and I truly thank you. I want to give an extra special thank you to my wonderful wife who not only supported me on this trip 100%, but was a huge prayer warrior for me and my team. She is awesome! I Love You!!

Safari Time

Wednesday morning half of the group went on a safari. A nicer mini bus picked us up and drove us two hours away to the wildlife reserve. It was a quiet drive the whole time. I think the three of us that went were happy to just sit and relax for a while. The safari camp was located on the reserve and it didn’t have any fences to keep the animals out of camp. The animals we saw roaming around camp were baboons and some smaller monkeys that were fast to jump and climb. The one night we were there Pam saw a hippo just outside our tent hut. I call it a tent hut because it was built like a hut with cement, fixed thatch roof, flushing toilet and shower. It was like a tent because all the windows were open. They had sturdy bug screens on them, but you could still hear all the noises outside. The loudest noise we heard was the hippos. You could hear them grunting and growling at each other all night. I even found a little froggy friend sitting in my sink that I wasn’t expecting to see. Gotta love nature. I think my favorite part was driving around on the reserve going all over in our 4X4 range rover. We went over and through many different things that I thought wasn’t possible. I think it’s a guy thing. We saw lots of impala, water bucks, baboons, and wart hogs roaming around. The coolest thing we saw was an elephant. It was neat to see it in its natural environment. He turned and looked at us giving us great photo opportunities, but he was considering whether or not if we were a threat. Thankfully he didn’t do anything but eat and walk away. We also took a boat safari. The boats they use look just like the ones on the jungle cruise at Disneyland. I thought that was pretty funny. On the boat cruise we saw crocodiles, lots of hippos, and even another elephant that had just finished getting some water. The safari was a nice little break away from our busy schedule.

Strange and Interesting things in Malawi

Here is the section where I have some strange and interesting things about Malawi. The town next to the Acts III campus is always very busy and surprisingly very loud during the day as well as at night. During the day it is the sound of things being built with a hammer. There is a constant ting, ting, ting. I think they are making metal pots commonly found at any open air market. During the day you can also hear children playing and screaming. At night you can hear music playing along with the sound of people doing normal nightly duties. The town is packed so closely together and the homes are so small that everything they do is pretty much outside. The other distinct thing is the smells of Malawi. Some are good and some are not so good. Malawi doesn’t have much of a sanitation system, which is a guarantee for unusual smells. One smell that always seemed to be in the air was the smell of burning stuff. I call it stuff because it consists of garbage as well as weeds, old corn husks, and whatever else will burn. There is that constant smell of smoke in the air. The city of Blantyre is more commercial and industrial so the smell of smog from typical city life also filled the air. Despite the unusual smells Blantyre is a very beautiful city. There is a small mountain range that surrounds the city. They are very good post card material. The Acts III orphanage sits on a hill that gives a great view of the mountains. There is a gazebo at one corner of the campus that overlooks the mountains. The breeze also blows through very nicely. We spent a lot of time in that gazebo. It was great because you could see the pretty views, hear the hustle of village life next door, and relax to read or journal. One great thing I cannot forget to tell is our mode of transportation while in Blantyre. The common mode of affordable transportation in Blantyre is called the “mini bus”. It is basically an old school Toyota van with four rows of benches in it. They pack it as full as they can because they charge per person. One of Maribeth’s teacher’s husband has an extra beat up mini bus, which we used during our stay. His name is Vincent and he is the nicest guy. What is great about his van is that he would have to park on a hill so he could pop the clutch to start it each time. He would even turn off the engine while going downhill so he could coast and conserve fuel. Needless to say we all had good stories to tell after each time he took us somewhere. No worries though, God protected us the whole time. And Lord knows we were praying each time we climbed in.

Hanging out with Maribeth

It has been neat to see the Acts III campus in person. I have seen many pictures from the website during its construction. It seems unreal to actually be standing on the site and sleeping here. It is not finished yet, but walking through it and seeing what it will be when it is finished has been real cool. This will be an amazing place when it is completed. It has been fun hanging out with Maribeth and seeing how she has been living for the past year. She is doing such amazing work here. Maribeth has such a huge heart for Jesus and it shows with everything she does. She has been training many different Malawians on how to teach according to the Montessori style of teaching. We were able to see how the kids are doing. The stuff they are learning is incredible. We also were able to take a tour of four different orphanages that are implementing the teaching style Maribeth has been training them on. She has established so many connections with local orphanages. Three of the orphanages we toured we were able to go back and paint the ABC’s on the walls with some pictures to go with it. It’s amazing how different it makes the classrooms look. The real story is walking through the local town to get to all the different orphanages. I often wondered what was going through their heads when they see seven white people walking through their village. Most of the people were nice. Everyone stared as we paraded by, which is to be expected. We do stand out pretty well. It was definitely worthy to be called an experience.

Outreach Trip to Local Hospital

Today we went to a local hospital to do some outreach for the people who are there. This included the patients as well as the family members who were visiting them. This hospital is very different than the hospitals we have in the states. The patients are together in one large room. There are a couple of half walls that divide the room into smaller sections. The beds are right next to each other. There is basically no privacy from anyone else while you are staying there. What we did was walk into the middle of the room and sang some worship songs in Chichewa and one of the pastors gave a short sermon. After that we prayed for them and handed out a paper with some verses on them that they can read if they want to know more about Jesus. We did that in three different areas of the hospital. There was about 12 of us in our group. At first it was kind of uncomfortable, especially being a group of white people in a hospital filled with no white people. We were already getting a ton of looks and stares as we were walking in. What is cool is that after we started singing and preaching the Holy Spirit totally came in and gave a feeling of peace in the hospital. That place was covered in so much prayer it was awesome. The Lord totally gives you strength to do things that make you uncomfortable. It is a good reminder to rely on His strength not our own. Through Christ all things are possible.

Off to Blantyre

We are now in Blantyre. It was a long four hour drive from where we were in Lilongwe. Malawi has some beautiful mountain ranges as well as flat plains. The countryside itself is breathtaking. There are many things that intrigue me about the Malawian culture. One is that there are houses or actually huts all over the place. When you think you are in the middle of nowhere you see a little cluster of brick huts with a thatch straw like roof. Another thing is it does not matter how remote an area you are in, there are always and I mean always people walking along the road. The roads are not very wide either. There is barely room for two cars to pass each other. The cars drive fast too. If one person walking along the road slips or trips then they are a goner. The only thing the drivers do to warn the pedestrians are honk their horn repeatedly. There have been a couple of times where I had to close my eyes. Another thing is how many fields of corn there are. I know corn is the main source of food for Malawi, but I honestly think half of Malawi is fields of corn. There really are that many. There are also many piles of shucked corn laid out everywhere. They lay the corn out in the sun on huge tarps to dry it out. Once it is dry they pop every little kernel of corn off of the cob. After that they grind the kernels into a very fine powder called maize which they use for cooking different things such as nsima. The closest thing I compare nsima to is mashed potatoes. It has the same type of consistency but tastes more bland. Nsima is a staple here because it fills you up and is relatively cheap to make. I’m sure as I go along I will have more interesting things to add to the list.

Week one in Lilongwe

The internet is not always readily available to me here in Malawi so I will be writing blog posts along the way and post them when I get the chance.

We are now at Chiwengo village. Chiwengo village is an area where a past president of Malawi purchased tons of acreage and built around 20 or so different homes. COTN was able to rent 6 or 7 of those homes to house orphans. Each house has a “Mom and Dad” and 3 to 4 “Aunties” that help out. Each house holds anywhere from 10 to 15 children ages from baby up to 17 years old. When they are older they go away to secondary school, which is high school for us. We were able to tour five of the homes and pray for them. There is also an elementary school in the village compound that all the children living in Chiwengo attend.
While we were there we replaced the screens on three of the houses. Malawi has a huge problem with mosquitos spreading malaria. All their homes have mosquito nets that cover their beds at night so they have protection while they sleep. Some of the homes have screens on their windows as well. Trust me, it gets pretty warm during the day so having the windows open to ventilate is a must. Some of the homes at Chiwengo village had screens that were in bad shape. They were torn and had holes all over. Not very effective in keeping out bugs. We were able to replace the screens in three of the homes during our short stay there. For them that was a huge blessing. They have had a rise in the number of malaria cases there. While we were working on the screens we were able to play with the younger kids that were not in school yet. They would play outside right where we were so they could watch these weird white people fixing their windows.

The first night we were there my team gathered in the front room of the home we were staying at. COTN has one house reserved for interns and missionaries to stay at while they are there. While we were gathered we all got to give our testimonies about our walk with Christ. It was nice to get more background info on my group. One thing I really enjoyed at Chiwengo village was the clear skies at night. I love looking up at the stars and seeing God’s splendor. It is truly amazing.