Discouraged by Nyau, Encouraged by God

Today Grace and I found out that many youth in ‘our’ community and even some  boy’s of our Bible teaching program have been initiated and joined the Nyau (some probably forced). We cry. We are discouraged. We pray and read Gods Word.  Eph. 6 speaks of the struggle  against the rulers, authorities, powers and spiritual forces of this dark world. It commands us to be strong and stand firm, putting on the Armour of God. Also to pray on all occasions with all kinds of requests. Dear friends, please pray with us for the people of the community we reach out to. We feel so discouraged right now, but John 10:10 says: “The thief comes to steal and kill and destroy, I (Jesus) have come that they may have life”. We will continue teaching the Bible message: “Repent! Turn away from all your offenses. Get a new heart and a new spirit. I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. REPENT and LIVE!” Ez.18:30-32

The Nyau is a secret association of male dancers among the Chewa tribe. Membership is restricted to initiates. Their identity while dancing is concealed with masks of wood or cloth. Other parts of the body are painted with ashes or mud. When our boy’s Obed and Moses saw them they asked me: “Why do they want to look so scary? Are they people? Why do they want to scare others?” The devil recruits his servants by fear, the Lord calls His servants by love. Whenever you encounter  Nyau you have to show respect by bowing down or running away in fear. Gladly, Grace and I are excused by the headman!

Revelation of Nyau secrets is severy punished. The Nyau are considered wild animals (masks) re-incarnating the spirits of ancestors. Nyau dancers look frightening, they make animal like sounds. They might appear during the day to terrify women and children and to steal chickens. During this season we often get distracted by the Nyau, sometimes kids stay at home, hiding, being scared. Some of our youth’s are hiding because they are afraid to get caught and forced to become Nyau.

The Nyau like to dwell in graveyards where their secret gathering place usually is. Some boys want to be initiated into the Nyau, to know what real men know. Today, even Christian boy’s go the the Nyau to ‘buy their way” (apply and pay the fee to the chief) to ensure their safety. The Nyau gives men stronger sense of identity. While the Chewa have their strong morals reflected in behavior, the Nyau show the opposite behavior of what is valued in the community. They curse, fight, chase and assault women and children, they shout obscene language, steal chickens from the community and commit other offences. Because they are spirits, no juridical action can be taken because by definition spirits are outside the law. The Nyau is the embodiment of tradition & resistance and not open to change. That is why mission work among communities who preserve their traditional culture by means of Nyau sometimes feels like plowing on rocks.  

But we know Who won the victory already! “With God we shall gain the victory and He will trample down our enemies.” Psalm 60:12 “Thanks be to God, He gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, let nothing move you. Always give yourself fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” 1 Cor 15:57-58

Sledgehammer

Rather exhausted I sat down after the last of five two-hour sessions of teaching in two days. It had been rather warm, too. One of the pastors who had courageously attended all of it, stood up to give the customary public response. But when he used the words ‘axe’ and ‘blunt’ in one sentence, he somehow made me sit up a little straighter. I had made some strong statements, but did he really mean I had been using the sledgehammer at them?

The area

This was at the close of our last Logos seminar. We have had a group of 25-30 pastors come for training every other week at the Logos Resource Center in Lilongwe. To enjoy a time of concentrated learning and interaction, we invited them to a conference center out of town, beautifully situated at the foot of the mountains. I have learned that this location is key to the success of the conference: there is hardly any cell-phone network, which means that the pastors are honestly out of reach and free to study! 

Breakfast

Not only is the seminar conducive for study, but also for bonding - not in the last place between us who teach. One afternoon, my colleague at Logos, Rev. Chisauka, invited me to join him for a sundown walk across the fields. He is from the area, and could almost point at his home village where his mother still stays. The stories he shared really make us understand the entire context so much better. About his mother who hardly wants to look him in the eyes when she greets her son as a ‘Reverend’. Quite unlike what she told him when he expressed his desire for ministry. “Don’t you know that you will always be a beggar if you become a pastor!” By now, she has come to respect his dedication to the Lord and is more than happy to offer ‘the beggar’ a meal from her scarce resources. But also about the fields, and the pride a man takes in preparing the land for the sowing season. When the black soil is turned up and rows are straightened, one knows he is a man who is ready to do what he can to provide for his family. “Although with job at Logos I am able to buy corn, it still doesn’t feel right. For a big man like me to just collect it from the shop…” 

Rev. Chisauka teaching

Back at the conference we all enjoyed the meal together. Several participants shared with me the challenges they face in the ministry. For some it is the coming rain; the church’s grass roof had decayed from years of rain and hot sunshine. “Where do I shelter my people?” Some serve in congregations where no member holds a job that generates some cash income. “All I get in the offering is some food, even at special fundraising events, the most we collect is five dollars.” 

 

The group of Logos students with lecturers Rev. Chisauka and Rev. Cees

But across the field, all the pastors talk about one thing, whether they serve in remote villages or in Lilongwe town: “We are desperate for more training. In the city, most pastors have attended a hundred and one seminars and workshops, but that does not mold them for ministry.” More and more people in town hold degrees. They look down at the pastor who has nothing to show for any training. In the villages, men become elders simply because they can read the Bible and own one for themselves, and are respected in the community. “Why can’t you start to offer degrees, part-time programs, for us pastors from various churches.” Or: “Please come to our church and train our elders to preach.”

With those urgent pleas in mind I had entered the last day of the conference. I perceived them as positive indications that the training that was conducted by the colleagues and myself was well received. Therefore, the blunt axe took me my surprise. 

Taking a break!

But I shouldn’t have worried. As usual, the words were used quite differently. “You have given us an axe. When we buy a new axe, it is hard to use at first. It is still a little blunt. But this teaching provides us with a tool, and the tool will get even more useful as we set out to work. Often we see the job before us, but feel as those without the means to face it. But brothers, we shouldn’t excuse ourselves any longer. We’ve got this blunt axe – let’s go on and use it.”

And with that, I relaxed. Everyone felt like he had hit the nail right on the head. John Calvin asked for wood to carve more ‘arrows’ in the Lord’s army. Here we are asking for more axes – even if they are blunt! They will sharpen as they are put to work! And of work there is no shortage… 

These students come from the South, waiting for the bus

Sledgehammer

Back to School

Mission Friends, it has been a while for me to write a blog / update on our life and work here in Malawi. By the grace of God we are doing well in many ways. We visited our home country for some weeks in July/Aug.  It was good to see our relatives and friends and enjoy those things we miss when we are here. We stayed mostly in the province of Zeeland in Vlissingen, city at the sea.

We all always really enjoy the ‘bike-culture’ in The Netherlands; wherever you go (town, church, friends, office) you take the bike even if it’s cold or rainy, unless the distance is more than 10 miles… Our little boys covered many miles too…the special bike-paths are very smooth, straight and safe, unlike Malawi! And everywhere the grass is green, whatever season.

We had to say goodbye / farewell to our loved ones for two years. That was especially hard with regards to my grandparents, being 90 and 92. Our journey went well, we were impressed by the way we were received at Kenya airport in tents (one week ago the whole international terminal had burned down). During our flight to Lilongwe, the third leg of the journey, we all fell asleep…I always have mixed feelings during landing…sitting in my luxury airplane chair coming from ‘polished European civilization’ seeing the mud hut’s, donkey-carts and women carrying buckets of water on the head from the well, through my window. The transition in the 24 hour journey is almost too abrupt.

 

Right when we got back I was called to an emergency in the village Grace and I work. The 15 year old handicapped girl who was raped when she was 13 and has a 20 month old baby was caught in a fire. She suffered terrible wounds. We have been giving her antibiotics and bandaged her every day. The wounds could have easily killed her but the Lord has answered our prayers. Tiya is doing very well now. The wounds are almost closed and she is able to sit up and move somewhat. What a witness to the relatives in the community!

We started the children programs also, teaching the group little ones under the public tree and the older ones in our ‘classroom’. When I walked into the village the kids all came running up to me with very happy faces. They had really missed the programs. Last week I did a quiz with questions about all the stories we have taught so far. It was a lot of fun and excitement. The winning group received prices. We have been teaching the Beginning (Genesis), then jumped to the NT with Christmas, continued with the life of Christ and now reaching Jesus suffering and death. 

 As you might know this is the dry season (we don’t have the four seasons familiar to most of you). The rain ceased in April and will hopefully come back in December. That means it is very dry and dusty now. I always feel bad for the people walking and biking along the road when I pass with the car, leaving them in a cloud of dust. The house also gets much quicker dirty and the sky does not look so clear blue as it is during the rainy season.

 

Our kids started school 22 August; all four are in ABC Christian Academy. This school is a wonderful mix of local (Malawian) kids (70%) and kids from abroad (30%). For Joas and Rhoda already their third Malawian school year, for Obed the second and Moses the first! Every Friday morning the kids spend time in chapel where the Word of God is being shared, hymns are being taught and classes get turns performing a song, skit or memorize Bible verses. Here Moses first one at front row. (Reception, Kindergarten and 1^st grade).

Two Canadian volunteers came to stay with us and did a great job computerizing 4400 books of Logos Resource centre and putting them in a system so that the pastors being trained there can start using them now. Besides the training days at Logos Cees also started teaching three times a week a class of Systematic Theology at ABC. A great opportunity to teach 60 third year students and give them a firm foundation before they become leaders wherever God puts them.

 Being 13, Joas has become very independent now. He decided to bike to and from school so that we don’t need to provide transport anymore. The roads here are not that safe so we pray the Lord will give His protection.

Rhoda is really enjoying school now. Even though she misses her friend who left to Germany in June, she is happy with new friends that we prayed for. She participates in many activities, mostly related to music.

  I am happy that school is only in the morning so that we still have time for all kinds of other activities (homeschool…) at home in the afternoon. Visiting the village, having ox-cart rides, baking cookies, painting, biking in the neighborhood, reading books, building huts, picking papaya’s in the garden and handing them out on the street…

This morning I had a meeting with some women of the literacy class at Grace. I brought tea (and lots of sugar), bread and papaya and we had our own ‘Papaya-High-Tea’, while we shared Gods Word and also taught them a first lesson on the benefits of Papaya (there are many).

 

Last but not least I have to make a need known to you and I ask if you will pray for this need. So far I have been able to fund the programs we do in the community with donations from a few groups in North America and The Netherlands. The funds are drying up and I fear, if we don’t get any donations soon, we won’t be able to continue doing what we do now (and then I have dreams far beyond that…the Lord knows). To put it into facts, this is what we use per month:

-1000 Coloring pictures with Bible verse = 10.000 Kwacha  ($30)

-Porridge to help malnourished baby and mother = 3000 Kwacha ($9)

-Bread or fritters for 250 kids once a month  = 6000 Kwacha ($18)

-Prices for memorizing Scripture and catechism = 4000 Kwacha ($12)

-Medicines for burns, worms, malaria etc = 5000 Kwacha  ($15)

-Transport to community  = 10.000 kwacha ($30)

-Chichewa Bible stories and pictures for literacy = 8000 Kwacha ($24)

-Exercise books and pencils = 4000 Kwacha ($12)

-Go-to-school program = 6000 Kwacha ($18)

-Volunteer support Grace = 9000 Kwacha ($27)

-Pastors wives meetings = 15.000 quarterly ($45)

If you feel inclined to support this ministry we would really appreciate, mostly the people we serve. There are different possibilities of raising funds.  Maybe a bake-sale, a marathon walk, a fund-raise-dinner, a collection….you name it. I now bring this matter into the hands of our Heavenly Father.

'Feed my Lambs'

Does God have a plan with every person here on earth? When we move through Africa - seeing crowds of people everywhere (especially here in Malawi), on the roadside, marketplaces, communities and even churches – I sometimes struggle. What about the millions of children whose lives seem to ‘just pass by’, with ongoing struggles due to great poverty, who never see the Light?

Going every week to one of those communities, having a crowd of kids in front of me, eager to look en listen, I know one thing for sure. God says: “It is not the will of our Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish!” and “The Son of man came to save that which was lost” (Matt.18)

Friends, thank you for taking a few minutes to lay these little lost lambs into His hands. May today’s lesson, The Parable of the Lost Sheep, remain in their hearts. Christ’s love for little ones is wider then the whole wide world, deeper that the deepest ocean and higher than the sky...

You should have seen our ‘play’! I walked through the village dressed up like a shepherd, 99+ bleating sheep following me, one little lamb getting lost. Parents were coming out of their houses to see what all the noise was about. When I discovered that little lamb Innocent was missing I started searching… (There were lots of real animals to be found, donkeys, pigs, goats and even a few dirty sheep looking compassionately at me). When I found my lamb I made a joyous dance and all the kids in the ‘sheep pen’ laughed and clapped their hands!

I pray for more laborers in the world’s ‘children’s vineyard’. How can they believe if no one teaches them? We pray for churches to teach parents, parents to teach their kids, Sunday school teachers to be diligent in the ministry, and for you to reach out to ‘your own’ little ones. 

I don’t know God’s plan with all the people. I do know that we are called to reach out, teach and preach and do well to those around us in Jesus name. Until He Comes!

“Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.” (Matt. 28)

To see the pictures in a larger format, click here 

My parents' visit

We praise the Lord for the wonderful visit of my (Mirjam's) parents the last 10 days! It was short but intense. We were privileged to show them some characteristics of Malawi and of our ministry here. Please, join me on our ‘tour’.

At my parents’ day of arrival, after a cup of coffee, we took them on a little tour, showing the area where we live and work. We ended up stuck in the mud… Thanks to some helpful Malawians, a tree and our winch, we pulled ourselves out of the black, stinky mud, leaving deep holes behind. A real Africa rainy season experience. Good thing this was their third visit to Africa! My dad, a pastor, made some notes – a real life example…

The next day we went to Lake Malawi. It was the kids’ Easter holiday. We stayed at our favorite, cheap cottage with the luxury of looking out over the deep blue waters with here and there a local fishing boat and some mountains in the background. My mom lost her glasses in the lake…Rhoda found them after a one hour search!

Malawi’s shire river is home to a huge population of hippos. We took a boat ride to see them up close; all they revealed was their ears, eyes and nostrils…While driving through the bush we came across a heard of elephants with babies. Even all the antelopes had little ones. Very cute! It’s always exiting to be guests in the African wilderness; fortunately, I was the only one awake when an enormous hippo had his midnight snack right next to the hut where we were all sleeping. He left clear proof behind which our kids ‘admired’ the next morning.

Zomba is a plateau at 2000 meter above sea level. There’s a church cottage right at the edge, providing a beautiful early morning view. Here we celebrated the birthdays of my dad, Rhoda and Joas. There was no stove so we cooked all our food on a charcoal fire. It was cool on the mountain, nice for a change!

We took the Dedza pass route back home, crossing the Great Rift Valley mountain range, back to the flat area of Lilongwe. Malawi is relatively small but highly populated. The main road crosses many many villages, which slows down travels quite a bit. Cars share the highway with many: dangerously loaded trucks, bikes without brakes, cow herds crossing to greener grass, wobbly donkey carts full of maize, pedestrians carrying heavy loads on their heads, kids playing around, and incidental drunkards sleeping it off... It makes us aware of the constant need for God’s protection.

Back home meant back to work. The kids proudly showed their school. My parents enjoyed their time, sitting in Cees’ classroom, listening to a lecture on the Covenant. They were very convinced about the need for pastors training after watching these men drink in the lecture and asking such fundamental questions, sharing their experiences from their own ministries.

On their day of departure they were able to come along with me and join our Women ministry celebration. 25 Women had completed their first literacy program. Grace and I bought food to prepare a meal together with these women. The headman was also invited; he brought along seven other headmen to show the success of our program. On our way to the community we were held up by a group of Nyau dancers, wearing masks, completely covered with mud, leaves and painting. I did not dare to take a picture, looking at their big, swinging knives. Amazingly enough they let us through, knowing we have approval from the village headman to do this work.

We had a great program. The women did some drama about how eager they are to learn how to read and write. The headman made a speech, saying how thankful he is for the work among ‘his’ women and children. “Since they are learning they have less time for gossiping, this makes my work as headman much easier.” Even though he is not a Christian, he asked us to continue “Because I see a change for good in our community.” I did a devotion on the Tree of life, from Genesis to Revelation. I spoke on the Creation, the Fall, Salvation though Christ and the Future for those who believe in Him.

We gave everyone a Moringa tree. This tree is amazing, it contains much more vitamins, calcium, iron, protein, and minerals then any other food. We hope this community is going to profit from this tree, boosting the immunity of malnourished women and children.

Women who managed to reach a good reading level received a Bible, others were given clothes and soap. Grace encouraged them to continue to learn. We minister to these women and the many children in this community with the prayer in our heart that God will use it to really transform their lives and free them from the powers of darkness which are literally surrounding them.

Rains started to pour down when we had our celebration meal; Grace’s house was packed, our ‘classroom’ even more, others tried to stay dry under trees and against the walls of different huts… thankful for good food to fill the empty stomach.

Since my parents still had to reach the airport to not miss their flight we started off after the meal, trusting the 4x4 vehicle when we were crossing the bridge (which had more holes again, people using the wood to make fire to cook food), slipping somewhat through the streams caused by the sudden heavy rains. Praying for the people we left behind and for their crops on the fields (the maize is almost ready to be harvested but if the rain continues, fungi will destroy it).

We thank the Lord for a wonderful visit. My parents will bring experiences from this mission field home and share with their church so that more people pray for the building of Gods Kingdom also in Malawi!

(Click here for more pictures...)