The last 4 days have been spent out in a very rural village near a small town called Phlombe. The place has no electricity, one tap serving perhaps 100 people and... well, not really much else.
We went for a mixture of reasons. An orphanage was being build there - it was started 7 years ago - but because it has never been finished the orphans have been taken care of in the village. Some people in the US gave some money to Dan towards the project and he has used this to dig a back up well and the rest will be to put in a water tank, build some toilets and showers, and finish the building work off so the place can become a school for the children.
We stayed there three nights. I was sleeping (or trying to sleep) in a roof tent. It was so hot and it gets light at about 4:30am that I found I couldn't sleep much!
Aside from the building work, we went to join in with the church service that meets in the small hall there. The service lasted maybe 2-and-a-half hours with lots of different things going on. We sang songs (well, I clapped my hands and wondered what the Chichewa words meant). The music is so beautiful. Just drums and voices, with everyone singing so passionately. Some songs were led by people from the congregation, some by the DTS students. I have a great video of this, which I'll show at our service on the 13th November.
The DTS students performed a drama (I missed this as I'd popped off to try and use the single, cockroach infested toilet - but no matter how much my guts wanted to go, my mind would not allow me to relax sufficiently in there!), a couple of students shared a brief message from their experiences to encouraged the congregation and I preached a sermon. Afterwards we prayed for people and there were quite a few people healed of illness and pain.
Sunday evening half the DTS students stayed to do children's activities in the village, while the rest of us went out to a village about 1-hour's drive from the orphanage/school. We arrived just as a storm hit. The wind whipped clouds of dust to sting our faces and rain fell heavily. We were there to show The Jesus Movie - a movie based on the Gospel of Luke, which has been dubbed into Chichewa (in actual fact this movie holds the world record for being watched by the most number of people and being translated into the most languages and dialects).
The storm threw our plans out, but we prayed and felt we should wait. After an hour the storm cleared and we were able to set the equipment up. First we showed a few music videos to gather a crowd, and the we showed a slightly shorter version of the movie meant for children. A crowd of about 250 gathered in the pitch darkness to watch.
The movie was paused on the crucifixion scene. I said a 5-minute talk about what the story meant to us and why it's good news. We asked if anyone wanted to become a Christian. Hundreds of hands went up. One of the Malawian guys led the prayer and then they asked for anyone who had said the prayer for the very first time to come and give their name. This was because a local pastor was starting a church in the village. Over the next few weeks he will go around and call on all the people - this is a very natural way of doing stuff in such a relational culture like Malawi. By the end of the evening there were about 110 names of adults and children!
The film finished and then anyone who was unwell was asked to come if they'd like prayer for healing. Hospitals are far and few between in Malawi and the cost of treatment is prohibitive, so there were lots of people who came forward. It was chaos! I was paired with Patrick, a Malawian pastor who is on the DTS. We prayed for a number of people with painful stomachs, bad legs, some who had blood at the end of their urine (I found out later this is a sign of bilharzia) and some people with HIV. Of course with some conditions we simply couldn't know whether there was any difference, but for those with pains we asked them to test whether anything had changed. They pressed their stomachs, moved their legs, bent their knees, pressed their temples... whatever. All were better - some we had to pray for a couple of times - but God was doing amazing things!
It was an exhausting but exhilarating evening!
The next day I did training for local pastors in the morning, we rested in the afternoon while another Malawian pastor continued the local pastors' training and then we repeated the previous night - half stayed to do children's work, while I went with the other half back to the village to show the film.
This time I didn't preach, instead I led the call to come up for healing. Again hundreds responded to give their lives to Jesus. Again loads wanted healing. Again it was crazy and chaotic and messy and amazing! Again God did amazing things for people who really have nothing else to fall back on. It is wonderful to think about these people who are so insignificant in the world's eyes and who have so little, but who God is crazy in love with them and will work so amazingly on their behalf!
The only other "fun" thing we did was move around 1,000 bricks from one side of the building to the other!
Anyway, we're back now. I have to teach on the DTS until the end of the week and I leave for the UK on Saturday.
P.S. For a little while this goat was owned by Exeter Vineyard. Then it was used to feed orphans and local pastors. But for a little while there was the Exeter Vineyard goat!
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