We weren’t quite sure what to expect with ministry this month. To be honest, we weren’t really sure of anything about this month, except that we wouldn’t have electricity. We left Cape Maclear with a few garbled directions and lots of anticipation.
We arrived in Dzoole (“Zol-lay”) Village to a swarm of smiling faces and cheering children. On our first night in the village, we went for a walk as a team just to get a lay of the land, and we were joined by nearly 200 kids. It was quite a sight. They would run up to us and grab our hands while walking; some would fight each other for our hands, but others were content to hold the other hand of the children holding ours. At one point, I was the middle link in a human chain of eight. It was an experience I’ll never forget.
The next morning we met with the village leaders, and they assured us that we were most welcome and protected in their village. They asked us to be in prayer for their village, specifically that God would bring much-needed rain for the crops and animals, that God would provide food for those suffering from the effects of starvation caused by the drought, and that God’s hand would be in the process of bringing electricity to the village. These three items and that God’s presence would be known throughout the village became the focus of our frequent prayer walks.
During our three weeks in the village, we would see each of these prayer requests answered!
It rained nearly every day – about 80% of the time we were there – sometimes it was just a light shower, and other times thunder storms caused us to stay inside for hours. We would play card games, color, or read in silence during these hours because we couldn’t hear each other speak over the roar of rain on the tin roof.
One afternoon our host had us stay home from ministering in the schools because he wanted us to help with a food distribution project. We didn’t know what to expect, but when we rounded the corner, we saw that quite a few members of the village had gathered in front of a huge truck. Inside this truck were 150 bags of maize that had been purchased with a donation from someone in the Netherlands. The village leaders and the pastor of the church we were with orchestrated the distribution, and we witnessed 300 families being fed!
We went into the nearby town of Ntcheu (“Chay-oo”) one day for supplies, and on the way back to the village we saw men up on utility poles. They were installing a transformer and a few new poles! This was the last major piece needed before electricity could be run into the village.
Our main ministry focused on children and education this month. For the first three days we all served as teaching assistants at the primary school. The primary school went from Standard (grade) 1 to 8 and has 1,000 learners (students) enrolled this year. I was assigned to a Standard 5 class, and as a “teaching assistant,” I mostly sat in the back of the room, observing the day’s lessons, and ignoring continuous stares from the students. However, I was given a few opportunities to interact with students as I graded some of their classwork and reviewed the answers at the chalkboard. During breaks in the lessons, I was able to talk with the teachers, Earnest and Raymond, about the education system in Malawi and how they became teachers. Both Earnest and Raymond had been teaching for four years, and while Earnest made learning fun and interactive, I could tell that Raymond needed encouragement to avoid burnout. The following week, we all served in the daycare/preschool, which is comprised of 70 children under the age of 5. The “teachers” at the daycare were untrained volunteer women from the village, and because they’re volunteers, not everyone shows up every day. Some days, the only one (out of four) to show up was an elderly grandmother who had been volunteering there for the past twelve years. When we showed up to the daycare the first day, we were introduced to the teachers and children, the teachers did like one song-based lesson and then looked at us and waited. Our translator informed us that it was our turn to teach, so we came up with some stuff on the fly. It was chaotic. That evening we gathered as a team and did some lesson planning for the rest of the week. We decided to read them some Bible stories (complete with pictures we drew/colored) and teach them “Jesus Loves Me” with the motions. In our third and final week of ministry, we split into two teams to serve at both locations. I returned to the primary school because I felt better suited to encourage the teachers there.
