Darkness and Light

A note on my calendar says: “You’ve got to go in the darkness in order to bring the Light.”

That’s exactly what we are doing in a village nearby. In my latest newsletter I wrote about the women and children’s ministry Grace and I do in her area. The more we get involved in the lives of the people of that community, the more we discover the darkness.

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Yesterday I came home, very downcast. The total poverty struck me. Poverty in many different ways. Spiritually, emotionally, physically.

The purpose of this blog is not to pull you into my sense of being overwhelmed by the needs here, but to encourage you to pray for some specific issues we are facing.

1.       Every week we teach more than 200 children the Word of God in the shade of the big tree at the Bwalo (village meeting place). Since the rainy season has started we are looking for roofed accommodation/ shelter. We were building a relationship with the church in that area and asked if we could work together, also using their church building during the rainy season. After much very formal communication we received a final letter that we cannot use their building. What must we do now? Pray! Maybe God can keep the rain every Thursday from falling in on the kids so that the teaching of His Word will not be hindered. Pray also that over time the relationship with the church may improve.

2.       Yesterday I taught the story of Gabriel’s visit to Mary. One of the applications was Mary’s example of purity. Fact is, in many African communities, youth has ‘tried’ sex before marriage. It’s customary that every girl who had her first period gets a week of ‘teaching’ in a special hut about how to ‘perform’ for a man. Boys are being taught how to be a man. This encourages them to practice what they have learned. 

After the Bible lesson, Grace and I were discussing the facility issue, then a desperate woman came in. With her fourteen year old daughter and one year old grandson. The girl was handicapped, no muscle coordination, no ability to talk, drooling, making strange noises. The baby was very cute and lively. He is born from the handicapped girl. She was raped by a boy who wanted to prove his manhood. Horrible! It was heartbreaking to see how the grandmother had to make the handicapped girl nurse her baby who  had no clue what she was doing. The girl was very thin and looked unhealthy. They had no money to buy milk. The grandmother who had been listening to the Bible lesson said that the message had touched her and she was asking advise. She struggles so much with this daughter (there are no places for those special children here), taking care of that baby and her other seven kids! There is not enough food and clothes. I asked her if she is a church member. She confirmed she is a member of the local church. This church requires tithes from all its members, otherwise they are being erased from the membership list, but this women is not being helped by the church at all. Officially, there are no funds. Yet, they are about to replace a decent church building by a bigger one. We normally encourage people to seek and to help through the local church, but this seems impossible.

I have prepared a bag with clothes for the girl and the baby, soap, sugar and a very nutritious porridge. If anyone feels inclined to ‘adopt’ these kids let me know. I will make sure they get these items every month. I need to think of something the grandmother can do to have a little income to make her less dependent. It must be something she can combine with the heavy burden she already has.

3.       Grace lives right there, surrounded by so many needs. She is such a godly woman, all she does is reaching out to her neighbors. Every literacy lesson begins with a devotion and a prayer. The headman of the village is very happy with the ministries we do. Not that he is a Christian but he hopes this will help his people to develop and achieve a better living standard. He has come to us if we can also start to teach the men. We have to pray about it.

Tuesday, however, Grace is being threatened by the main chief (every village has its own headman who reports to the big chief). It seems he is starting to worry about the effects of God’s Word being taught. What if people start to turn to the God of the Bible and turn their back to traditional religion? Please, pray for Grace. She is being threatened that they will demolish her house and that she has to move. She has called the police (after she was beaten) but they say they cannot do anything. It is common that police and justice has a hard time interfering with traditional authorities and religious practices. Grace says “But with God I can do anything. I will stay, God brought me here for a purpose.”

Only three of the many issues we are involved in. Thank you for your prayers for the work of the Holy Spirit to break the chains of sin and darkness and bring Light!!

Yours,

Mirjam

Home

One of the advantages of moving many times is the growth of your spiritual family. We are thankful for all the friends, brothers and sisters in the Lord we got to know in the past 15 months here in Malawi. People from different parts of the world, with different traditions, yet united by the same faith in Jesus Christ, who is he Way, the Truth, and the Life.  What a blessing to experience that Fellowship with these new spiritual relatives in this part of the world.

Last Thursday we dropped off our little boys at the house of friends (what a blessing to have people willing to take care of your kids for a while) and drove with our older kids to Zambia. I was thinking about how it was going to be to arrive at Covenant College, the place where we lived and worked for more than 5 years. A place we poured our heart and energy in and where we had so many wonderful relationships. “Is it actually going to be nice to return to a place which you left 16 months ago?”

We arrived Friday morning, 10 am. The car had not come to a full stop yet but all of a sudden we were surrounded by many very familiar happy faces with warm, big smiles. We got out of the car and were greeted with hugs and double handshakes. It felt like coming home, seeing your relatives after a long time. Wow, what a blessing!!

We witnessed the graduation of 10 Covenant College students. What a joy to see them receive their reward for three years of faithful studies. More equipped now for the work they are called to, in the ministry of the Word. The event was an exhibition of God’s faithfulness most of all.

Joash and Rhoda enjoyed spending time with their Zambian friends and were disappointed when we announced our departure. 6 Students climbed aboard, the luggage was tied securely on the roof rack – the Landcruiser proved its value once more! We had to make several stops, climb the roof, loosen and tie again as we passed their houses on our way back to Malawi.

Late that night, after a long, tiring drive and border crossing we arrived back in Lilongwe (after we picked up our little boys from our friends house). Happy to get home again.

We feel at home in many places. The Netherlands – where our relatives live. America – where our sending church is. South Africa – where good friends live. Papua – where I grew up and still have relatives. Yet, when three year old Moses asked me “Mommy, where is our home village?” I could only think of heaven (John 14) and of the passage in Hebrews 11:

“…aliens and strangers on earth, longing for a better country, a heavenly one. God is preparing a city…”  But also this: “…Abraham obeyed and went…by faith he made his home…like a stranger in a foreign country…looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”

“How is your vacation so far?”

…a blog about missionary furlough’s

If you are a (retired) missionary, this blog will sound familiar to you. If you are a missionary-supporter (member of a missionary sending church), this blog might be helpful for you.

One of the misunderstandings some ‘people back home’ have about the life of their missionaries is with regards to furloughs. We – our missionary siblings and friends, colleagues in the field – all recognize the ‘sweet&sourness’ of the question “How is your vacation so far?” Without doubt, the intention of the question is very sweet! The sourness is on our side, wishing it would be a little more restful.

Just look at it this way: How much would you be looking forward to your annual family summer vacation if that would consist of the following activities:

24.504 Kilometers traveling (including 15 hours of standing in queue’s and 22 hours entertaining your kids in waiting area’s)  -18 speaking arrangements  - culture shock and jet leg (your head spins from overwhelming gigantic shops, not knowing what to choose, bad sleeping because of all the impressions etc.)  - Visit all your relatives and if possible friends (and meeting their expectations)  -have everyone’s dental problems fixed  - Doctors’  appointments and necessary immunizations for living in the tropics -Doing all the non-food shopping (clothes, shoes, resources etc.) for the next term for every member of the family  -Having meetings with various committees

Somehow the word FURLOUGH has a connotation of vacation but I think when you think the list above really through with your family in mind you wouldn’t think this would be the coolest vacation for next summer. Actually, missionaries need a vacation after their furlough, many do when coming back home from furlough!

Another purpose for a missionary furlough is taking time to rest and recuperate. Beyond the initial culture shock of being in a foreign country, there is a certain level of culture stress that never goes away. Living day in and day out in a culture with different values, beliefs, and language than your own can create a certain amount of stress. You can never fully identify or understand the people around you, nor they you. This ‘culture stress’ is hard to understand for people back home but I think it’s good to share this. When I shared these kind of things with a dear supporting friend she said she was so thankful I shared it because she just never ever thought of it. Now, she is able to pray more specific for us serving in the field.

We are very thankful for the blessing of furlough. Thanks to the furlough our kids do know their relatives and their supporting church. Thanks to our furlough we do get the right medicines; messed up teeth can be fixed up and vaccines against nasty diseases be received. Thanks to hospitable supporters we did have a good time getting to know them around the dinner table, in the boat, on the tube… Thanks to the furlough we do get relieved from culture stress a while and are able to re-equip ourselves for the ministry (I wish however I had time to read but really, there wasn’t). The Lord is good and He is able to provide in everything we need to run the race He has set before us. The race of furlough and the race in the field. And we go for GOLD!

“And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men, knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance, for ye serve the Lord Christ.” Col 3:23-24

“…and the street of the city was pure gold…and they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it.” Rev 21:21,26

Mirjam

Burgers and Pools

"Listen kids, today we will go to New York!". "O", says Moses, "Can you eat that?" We are in the US now! What an blessing for kids to speak more languages. Moses feels free to talk to anyone. We had dinner at a restaurant and he started talking with the customers in the boot behind us. "Hi, what's your name? Mine is Moses. How old are you? I am two. I was in new York. I was on a ferry and saw lots of helicopters!" The kids have the time of their life! We get invited to church families and most of them have pools. So, after swimming (the most favorite activity for our water-loving kids) we get to eat hamburgers! This causes the little boys ask one of the two questions when we tell them what's next: "Can you eat it?' or 'Can we swim there?'

What a world! Not just the kids are rolling their eyes out these days. The trip to the Shoprite here was an event, a sight, an adventure..."mom, look at this, mom, look at that!" Fruit covered with chocolate, veggies in chips appearance, a whole isle with cereals only... we didn't know how to make choices. What kind of bread do you take? We are happy as long as their is bread at all. This country seems to have no limits of anything. We shouldn't stay longer than a month and come too often...it would make going back to Malawi harder. We have talks about this with our older kids, they observe things and it is easy to let envious thoughts enter your young hearts.

We are making quite some bloopers... simply because we are not from here! I'll share just one... The last night of our camping trip with some church families we all went to an Italian restaurant for dinner. First problem: what do you order? There is so much choice and the names on the menu don't make sense to us. Finally I made our order, a pizza each, as Malawian portions are small. Wow, we could feed an orphanage from the pizza's we ordered! The size of the drinks and meals are at least three times bigger then we expect! There we sat, as if we were starved...some people kindly helped us eat the food and some of us had pizza for breakfast and lunch the next day!

"Mom, the people here are so nice! So kind and friendly!" We are being blessed with so much kindness and love. It's wonderful to see our kids make connections with church family. Joash and Rhode didn't remember anything anymore from the time we were sent, eight years ago! The purpose for our trip to the US and Canada is mostly to reconnect with the church and share what we do, in His name on behalf of the church. We hope to meet many more of our church family members. We have one 'problem', receiving so much care and not being able to return much makes me feel uneasy. I think proverbs says there is a time to receive and a time to give. I hope our 'batteries' are being charged in these seven weeks gone from the field to be able to share from that again back home in Malawi.

Ba sobo!

Since a lot of our English friends come from Dutch heritage you will understand the warning ‘Pas op!’ To our great surprise, this phrase has even entered the Chichewa language which we are learning. ‘Ba sobo!’, also meaning ‘watch out or be careful’, Cees and I had a big laugh. With regards to language learning, we have covered a lot of theory and we are now learning how to make nouns from verbs.

Last week we had a funeral of the 84 year old neighbor next door. He was a Seventh-day Adventist and church members came to sing from 6 am to 1 am, 2 days in a row! Beautiful singing, many songs familiar to us since we used similar hymns in Zambia. I am sure the singing is very comforting to the mourning relatives. Interesting how people, who now live in town, still use the traditional customs when it comes to a funeral. All furniture is taken out of the house and the floor is covered by the traditional mats. Everyone sits on the floor, women with the legs stretched out. Also all women must wear a traditional wrap on top of their skirts to show respect. We went and did the same. Everyone brings something to contribute to the funeral. All the women have the duty to wail, all the young men from the neighborhood have the duty to dig the grave. A truck is hired to transport the coffin and all the people to the graveyard. This man reached a high age; in sense old people have escaped the recent epidemic. People between 40 and 60 are much fewer. Often it’s the (great) grand parents who take care of children.

Hard to imagine that we will be in North America within four weeks, Lord willing! June 19 is the last school day for Joash and Rhoda. Then they will have finished their first full school year in one place (Malawi). Previous years the home school year was always broken up with a few weeks of school in the Netherlands in December. We will pick the kids up from school, exchange the uniforms for travel clothes and go to the airport, traveling from Lilongwe to Kenya to Amsterdam. From there we continue to New York and arrive there June 22, all Lord willing!

We hope to spend three Sundays in our sending church, the HRC New Jersey to re-connect and fellowship and present the ministry in Malawi. From there we drive to Michigan, where we lived from 2002-2004. Cees will be speaking at the HRC youth camp and we will do presentations as well. From Michigan we drive to Canada, Ontario and visit Burgessville and Jordan. We are looking forward to meet all our church friends, and share with you the work of the Lord. We will come with all six of us…Ba sobo! The kids are very excited! I have to tell myself not to worry too much when I start to feel tired when I think about all the details (Few days airplane ride with a 2 and a 3 year old…).

After our presentation tour through NA we hope to spend 3 weeks with our relatives in the Netherlands on our way back to Africa. My shopping list is growing…home school stuff for the little boy’s, shoes and clothes that can last a year, gluten free flour, birthday gifts, etc, etc.

Did you know missionaries lose at least a couple teeth while at the field? I lost one just two days ago when we were eating rice…ping…I hadn’t seen the white rock in it. But what a relief, there is an Indian dentist in town. Amazing how she could help me with so little equipment!

Wishing you a Good Sunday!

Malawi today

Six weeks ago I offered Mirjam to write the next blog – hence the long silence! That silence does not characterize our home normally, with the six of us there never seems to be a dull moment. And even in the country, things are happening.

Ten days ago, Malawi’s president suddenly passed away at the age of 78. This happened in a time the once celebrated leader received a lot of criticism for his domestic and foreign politics. His first term did the country a lot of good, creating the much needed economic growth. The second term saw a change of approach. In July 2011, the unrest escalated in protests, which were rigorously dispelled, leaving 21 civilians dead. After that, talks were started between the government and civil organizations, but without result. Foreign exchange became very scarce, fuel was hard to get by – people spending up to 48 hours in a fuel queue – and relations with other countries became very sour. Donor nations such as the UK and USA froze their support, and the economic growth lapsed back.

So far, power was peacefully handed over to the Vice-President, who had fallen out with the President two years ago, when the President appointed his brother (and cabinet minister) to succeed him after his second and last term would be completed. We pray she will be able to restore relationships with other nations and also bring an end to the rather unchecked reign of the previous cabinet. For most people, the urgent needs are to have sugar back on the shelves – lately one could see a hundred yard line of people outside of the one store that sells sugar! Prices have gone up, the money has artificially retained its value, while on the black market the kwacha has half the worth it had a year ago.

At home, other dynamics are at play. Joash and Rhoda both celebrated their birthday in the Eastern break. In fact, we went on a Church Camp the day Rhoda turned 10, and left Camp at Joash 12^th. With some families from our international church we camped out and enjoyed a number of preaching sessions while the kids had their own programs. Zebras wandered freely around the tents. The kids will return to their last quarter of school. We can’t believe this school year has gone by so fast. They have both adjusted well and we feel blessed that they made a good transition into international school. Obed and Moses go three mornings to a Pre-school and proudly practice their English at home. During those mornings we try to keep up with our language lessons.

Mirjam and I were encouraged by this morning’s sermon from Acts 27. The theme was God’s sovereignty in a startling storm. God wants Paul to witness before Caesar, and rules over all the events of his journey. As we journey this first year in Malawi, there are times it seems we are sailing without wind. Or you reach a port that you think is good and promising, a ministry that appears to be a good match, and you need to leave it again to travel on. These are challenges that test our faith and confidence in God’s planning. Yet we are encouraged to place our trust in His leading; He knows the road ahead and has a plan for us here. One aspect that is increasingly pressing upon our hearts is the tremendous want of training among the churches. We speak with ministry leaders, representatives of organizations, local pastors and church members – all echoing the same desire that more be done to equip the churches and their leaders. These signals clearly confirm our calling for Malawi.

I hope for you Mirjam will be writing next…

We will be adding more pictures soon!

Strange is normal, normal is strange…

One would expect that the local people (Malawians) would mostly be surprised by seeing us (foreigners) do things differently from them. Like eating with utensils (instead of hands), pushing a stroller (instead of carrying the baby in a sling on the back) etc, etc. There are of course so many things we do differently from the people here. But my experience is the opposite: people get surprised, give comments, laugh at us, when we do things in the same way as they do!

When we were visiting a local church nearby, where people don’t know English, the  congregation had a good laugh at us. Why? Because we talked this strange English and Dutch? No, because we spoke the language of their tribe! Years ago we would have been very discouraged, thinking we were saying it the wrong way, making mistakes etc. By now we know that we should only be encouraged when they laugh at us. Since preaching in the tribal language is still too difficult, Cees uses translators. The one who was chosen did a very poor job. We don’t blame him at all. We do understand enough of the language to know if the translation is doing justice to what Cees preached. When it missed the meaning completely, Cees just said it straight in Chechewa himself, that’s when the big laugh came!

When I carry a child in a sling on my back, people turn their head. Why would a white mother do this? Actually, for the same reason as black mothers do… I must say that Moses is getting very heavy and fortunately prefers walking, but it’s still a nice and handy way whenever he is very tired.

In this (fuel)crisis the use of bike taxi’s is increasing. Drivers make sure their bike is in good shape, there is a seat on the back and they have lots of energy. For a little money you can get on the back of such a taxi and go to your destination. You can find many here in Lilongwe! Passengers don’t get off when the road goes up, they let the driver struggle, since they pay for their job. When you are dressed nice it’s difficult to stay nice though…specially in the rain season when mud is everywhere. I think these bike taxi’s would be a good alternative when our fuel  runs out. I am sure our neighbors will roll their eyes out when we would go and visit friends, just as they do, using these local taxi’s… imagine, 6 bikes in a row, black drivers with each one of our family on the back... Maybe it will happen soon.

I don’t know what people think we eat but they are always surprised when we buy our corn-flour. “So, do you eat Nsima?!” “Of course!!” In fact, it is our kids favorite food. When we eat Nsima with the locals they love to see us eat their food. It’s our food too! Sometimes they would prepare ‘European’ food, like potatoes, (to please us), thinking we won’t eat the local food. Then our kids are disappointed. Women are even more surprised when they learn I make our own Nsima…”So, you can even cook Nsima?!” Yes I can and I do, (it’s not very difficult…our recipes are often much more complicated!)

My first words (in the tribal language) were “I can do it myself” and when our language teacher heard that she laughed hard! (I guess those were my first words of any language I have learned (Indonesian, Dutch and English)… I go to the market myself and buy our food myself. Most expat women just send their worker to do it. I want to see the veggies before I buy it, even if that takes an hour of sweating on the hot and crowdie market where is smells bad because of so much garbage and walking is difficult because of the mud. Once a vendor put potatoes and tomatoes in my basket and made me pay, when I came home the bottom ones where all rotten! That’s one reason for me to tell them “I can do it myself”, another one is, I like to get out and be among the people!

My battery is getting low. Power supply is very very poor, most days I cook by candle light, bath the kids by candle light, kids do homework by candle light etc. During the day power is also off so washing clothes, making coffee, ironing, mixing dough, baking bread, using computer and internet…all needs to be postponed for the hour we will have power, and we never know when that will be (usually the odd hours between 23.00-5.00). The luxury of a generator is of passed time. If we would have one it wouldn’t even help because of fuel shortage. Solar would be great…but not affordable for us to buy, jammer! I just bought the whole stock of candles from the local shop…4 x 6 candles. There will be a time that we won’t need power (or candles) anymore to have light because there won’t be any night!