First update 2015

As a result of torrential rains and strong winds at the beginning of 2015, 700.000 Malawians have lost their homes, crops, belongings, relatives and more. Many organisations have started offering help. ABC also took initiative and send some teams down to the disaster area's. You can find more information on how to help. and watch a video made by one of our colleagues.
Thank to God, we are all well here in Lilongwe and feel it as our responsibility to help the flood victims in what ever way we can. Our kids happily donated many bags of good clothes to give away to the kids who lost everything except what they were wearing during the storm. It will take Malawi more then a year at least to recover from the devastation.

Cees taking a tea break with the Masters students....Malawian Mandasi (donut) is a very favorite snack!

 Life is very busy. Cees is fulltime working as the Director of the Masters Program of ABC. It involves a lot of administration as well as lesson preparation and teaching. Especially the accreditation is a humongous job and very time consuming. He gets the National Councel of Higher Education to review our application for accreditation, to visit his program next week and so he is working many extra hours on preparing the Manuals for quality, staff, students etc etc.

Some of my 5th graders posing with the rock I brought in my class to teach them on how the Lord is our rock; strong, reliable, unchanging, firm, giving protection and security.

I enjoy teaching my 5th graders but at the end of each day I don't have much energy left. I have to remind myself that this is what God wants me to do right now and pray He uses me in the lives of these precious students. The kids love the Bible teaching and ask me repeatedly if we can do Bible the whole day (and take all the other work home). Well, I wish we could, but we need to know how to multiply decimal numbers, how to find the adjectives in a sentence, how Germany got divided in two after WWII, how to spell alphanumerical etc etc etc....I taught them  Psalm 18:2-3 as a song this week and they couldn't stop singing!

Our little boys are growing up too fast! Both are in a 'swim-team' and do very well. Obed is going after his big brother who won so much gold in the Nationals last year. They also enjoy building with Lego and having friends over to play. Rhoda misses her older brother as much as we all do and is counting the weeks for him to come back for his 4 weeks Easter break. We receive great reports from RVA in Kenya. Joas is doing well and thankful for a great room mate.

Womens class. In one of our classrooms. I am praying and looking for sponsors to enable us to buy paint and brighten up these classrooms, so if you have any ideas, please let me know!!!!!!

My mom and I, singing along in church (Cees preaches regularly in the church plant in Chinsapo where we have our Nyenyezi Ministry.

Nyenyezi Ministry continues to be a blessing in the community. Little Grace, whose mom was a literacy student but died, is being taken care of by my friend Neema Grace and we are praying for her future. We really think it would be best for her to have a family to belong to. We are using our new building all the time. In the mornings for literacy programs, afternoons for outreach and for occasional meetings as well. The weekly Children Bible Club is being attended by 700 kids, split up in 4 groups now. Some ABC students come along and help teaching, they do a fantastic job!!!!
My parents visited over the Christmas break and we had such a great time. We hope to go on Furlough in June after a term of two years in the field. Our Furlough will only be 8 weeks, so we are already arranging things like doctors appointments etc etc. It has been 10 years that I was diagnosed Celiac but over the last year discomfort and pain has increased so I want my health to be re-diagnosed.
Our 16th anniversary was last Tuesday. Thanks for the good wishes. We will go out for dinner tomorrow while dear Barb will babysit our kids.

Moses LOVES to invite friends over.

Thank you for your prayers. We feel privileged to have brothers and sisters in Christ who faithfully pray for our family and the work we do on behalf of the Church in obedience to Christ.