Malawi:
Here is just a recap on the past month in Malawi! My team and I were in a town called Zomba. The town was beautiful with mountains all around it and a river flowing through the middle. Malawi has for sure been the most beautiful country I have visited in Arica. Our hosts, Pastor Isaac and his wife Ruth, were such sweet people who welcomed us right into their family! We stayed in a guesthouse that is behind their house which they use for mission teams and other guests. The guesthouse was so cute and we loved staying there!
Our hosts were awesome! Pastor Isaac and Ruth have 6 kids, the older two both live at boarding school but we got to meet both of them and they were so sweet! Then they have Israel (11), Victor (7), Helena (7), and Rejoice (2). They were all precious and some of my favorite moments of this month were just spending time with them and all of the kids who lived near us. One night after ministry, we got the speaker out, played some music, and danced and played with them for a few hours. I loved all the kids so much, it was extremely sad leaving them! Isaac always drove (or walked) with us to our ministry and would make up raps and sing with us. He is always laughing and is so much fun to be around. Ruth cooked all of our meals and they were delicious! Her dream is to open her own restaurant/bakery which she would be awesome at. Ruth also taught us how to make mandas which are basically just fried dough… which is amazing. I am excited to make them for my family when I get home!
For ministry, we would go to a different cell group every day where two of us would preach. Cell groups are really similar to small groups back home except they are a little bigger. Sometimes we would be preaching outside to a group of people or preaching to an entire congregation that had gathered at their church. I never thought I would be the type of person who enjoyed preaching, I usually hate public speaking. But I learned that I actually love preaching so much! The last Sunday in Zomba I got to preach the sermon at church. I spoke about the boldness of the church in Acts and how the Holy Spirit was no different then, as it is now. I felt like the Lord was really speaking through me during that sermon because there is just no way that I could have done that on my own. I never in a million years would have thought I would preach a sermon, but here I am having preached about 10 times. It is amazing what God will do in our lives if we just allow him in.
Malawi was such an awesome month for my team and I am so thankful it was our final month together as a team!
Vietnam:
This month started with a debrief in Vung Tau. At debrief we were told our new teams and I got put on a team with 5 other amazing girls! This month we were in Da Nang, which is a pretty big city in the middle of Vietnam, right on the beach! It is a really cute town that is very family oriented, which was cool to see. Vietnam is closed to Christianity, so ministry looked a little different this month. Our host was a missionary from South Korea and owns coffee shop where they teach English 6 nights a week. We would go to English club every night and help teach English. We couldn’t evangelize or talk about Jesus during the English classes but we were able to hang out with the students outside of class. They would take us to eat or to different markets around Da Nang. It was so much fun getting to know them and to hang out with them. We only got to spend 2 weeks in Da Nang so we honestly weren’t able to make super deep relationships where we could begin to tell people about Jesus. We wanted to have relationships with these people before we started evangelizing so it didn’t feel like they were just a project, but that just wasn’t possible with the amount of time we spent there.
I really wish we could have spent more time in Vietnam but the time we did get to spend was amazing. Our host was so awesome and we made a bunch of friends in our short time there that I know we will stay in touch with! Vietnam has been one of my favorite countries on the race so far!
