Our final update from Malawi!

We both still can’t quite believe it is real that next week (12^th) we get on 3 planes and make our way back to a new season of England being our home and our base.

 

We are looking forward to re-connecting with our friends and family. For the first 2 months we will be using Milton Keynes as our base. We would love to catch up with you so drop us a message to get something in the diary. Here are our dates as they currently stand:

 

13^th July – 25^th July – Milton Keynes

Sunday 21^st July @ 4pm – You are invited to join us to hear testimonies and stories from Malawi.  Location Milton Keynes; please let us know if you would like to join us.

29^th July – 2^nd August – Lincoln

3^rd August – 15^th August Milton Keynes

23^rd August – 26^th August – David’s Tent

27^th August – 15^th September – Milton Keynes 
 

A common question we are asked is ‘What’s Next?’……..As the last 3.5 years have been an adventure of trusting in Father, He is again using this transition as a lesson in trusting in Him and He’s not yet given us all of the answers. What He has made very clear is that the foundation of our future ministry for the both of us is going to be centred on the Father Heart message, our identity as children of God, inner healing and living in the freedom that Christ won for us. We are excited about this as we are both very passionate about this message as we have seen it transform our and others lives. As we shared in our last update we know Father has a new location for us in England, we would appreciate your prayers as we seek confirmation of this upon our return.  
 

As this Blog is focused upon our time here in Malawi, we will not be updating it in the future. If you would still like to pray for us and keep up to date with our adventures with God we intend to send out 2-3 email updates a year. If you would like to receive these please ensure we have your current email address.

 

And finally we thought we would end this update with a reflection over our time living in Malawi.  
 

Whilst we have had the privilege of ministering here and have been blown away by what Father has done and the fruit we have seen, the most important thing we are both taking away from this season is what He has done in our lives and how much we have grown in Him.  
 

One of our biggest and most challenging lessons has been letting go and trusting Father more. In England if you are sick we have the NHS, if your car breaks down we call the recovery company, we had jobs bringing in our income, in an emergency you can call 999. None of these things exist in Malawi and when faced with that reality in your life the only remaining option is to trust in Father in a way that we personally never did before moving here. If we are sick, we pray (the closest decent healthcare is South Africa), if our car breaks down we pray, if we have an emergency we pray, we don’t have salaries, we pray! And as we look back, as challenging as this lesson has been as Father has removed our independence to depending on Him and allowing Him to fully be our Father, we can honestly say He has never ever let us down, every need has always been met (maybe not always in our preferred timing!)

 

Another valuable lesson we have learnt in our time here is that Father isn’t looking first and foremost at what we can do for Him, but rather our relationship with Him and resting in that. There are so so many needs in Malawi it is easy to become overwhelmed with ‘what can I do?’ But Father asks us to do what we see Him doing. We have learnt when opportunities came our way not to immediately say Yes but to stop and take time to ask Him, Father is this opportunity from you? We have been presented with numerous opportunities which on paper looked a perfect fit for us, but Father said no, they were not from Him. It’s been a valuable lesson and one we intend to carry on with.

 

That’s just a few snippets of lessons we have learnt, there are many more!  
 

We would value your prayers in this time of transition, as we say our Goodbyes here, are busy tying loose ends up here and doing the organising that comes with moving to another country. We would also value your prayers for our journey; due to our local airport’s main runway being closed our travel time is now 24 hours with 3 flights, we would love to make each flight along with all of our suitcases!

Thank you to all of you who have prayed, invested financially, stayed in touch, visited, supported us during our visits to England in many different ways, we appreciate you all so much.

 

With all of our love

Mark and Laura

The hand over begins........

 

Time is flying; we can’t believe we have only 6 weeks left living in Malawi. A regular question is ‘how does it feel?’……….if we’re honest it still feels surreal, we’re not sure it’s fully sinking in yet, but maybe as we move out of our house and fully hand things over the reality of the transition will fully settle in!

 

We’re busy handing things over and we will focus this blog on transitioning the Pastors Training and Encounter Evenings.

Encounter Evenings

 

We’ve had the pleasure of loving our varying ministry activities here, but we both feel we come alive when we lead Encounter Evenings, we feel like this is the kind of thing we were created to do.

As we obeyed Father in opening up our home once a month to gather those who are hungry, Father has astounded us with what He’s done in those times! Every month without fail has been very powerful and we have had the privilege of seeing people physically, spiritually and emotionally encounter God in life changing ways. We knew that this was not for a season whilst we were here but rather it was something for us to pioneer and hand over.

Father spoke clearly as to who the new leaders are, so we’re introducing the amazing Gareth and Edna as the new leaders!

 

 

Gareth has been with us from the beginning, we didn’t know him but he turned up early for the very first Evening and has never stopped coming. He is so hungry for God, a quiet but strong leader and an amazing gatherer. We regularly have new people come; it’s always because Gareth invited them. He’s always powerfully impacted by the Spirit and moves easily in the prophetic.

Edna is a strong powerhouse woman of God, a prophet in the making! Edna just dives in every time and it’s been a pleasure to see her grow.

As we have been meeting with them planning the handover it’s so exciting to hear their dreams for it. Going forward we have an amazing new venue, a church building right in the city centre are generously letting Encounter Evening use one of their meeting rooms. The room is a lot bigger than our lounge with so much for room for growth. They also feel the new location is significant, moving from our lounge to a city centre venue, they see it as a place where revival will be birthed in this city! We are so excited about this next season for Encounter Evenings.   

Encounter Evening Lilongwe is birthed!

If we are honest we never thought beyond Blantyre with Encounter Evening. But when a regular relocated to the capital city and recently revisited us, God birthed in her a desire to plant one there! So introducing Theo, the pioneer of Encounter Evening Lilongwe!

 



Theo is an amazing strong woman of God who is a natural leader. Currently she is just gathering a small group of hungry friends whilst praying and asking Father for a venue for Encounter Evenings. So please pray for Theo that Father will reveal the right venue and then they will be able to openly invite others going forward.   

 

Pastor’s Training

We’ve had the pleasure of sowing into the lives of 2 different groups of rural pastors and see them slowly grow in maturity over our time with them.

We are extremely thankful to our friends at Dalitso Trust ministry in Lilongwe who have given us copies of their pastor’s training to be used going forward once we leave.

The pastors were very keen to keep meeting and learning together and we are very happy to be handing over the facilitating and teaching going forward to two wonderful Malawian men of God, Victor, who is the Director of the ministry we have been partnering with, and Jonah, our dear friend who we have mentored who is part of the leadership team from our church.

Victor

 

Last 6 weeks…..

We’re still busy and in June we are very excited to be travelling to Lilongwe to spend some time with our friends at the Dalitso Trust to do some teaching on the Father Heart of God and the principals of a Sozo before returning to Blantyre for our last few weeks.  

We would really appreciate your prayers in this season of transition and for what Father has for us next!

Some important news to share.......

 

Hi everyone we hope you are all well!

 

We will be focusing this blog update on some important & exciting news we want to share with you.

 

Last year, to our surprise, God spoke very clearly to us saying that our time living in Malawi was going to be shorter than we had previously thought. This then led us into a season of listening to God & journeying with a few trusted friends both in the UK & Malawi about what Father was saying about returning to the UK. 

 

 

In a nutshell we feel we have heard clearly from Father and will be transitioning back to the UK in July 2019. God has been clear that our relationship with Malawi is not over, and this brings us comfort as we begin our preparations for leaving here knowing our goodbyes will not be forever.

 

 

We have already begun the process of putting things in place to hand over the work that we have been doing here with the pastors training, serving as leaders in our church, Sozos and Encounter Evenings. We will share in more detail about this hand over process in our next blog.

 

 

During this Malawi adventure we have learnt and experienced more of who Father is and also who we are. We are keen to take this learning and momentum in our ministry into our next step. This is a little daunting as we are not quite sure what it will look like.   

 

 

On our return we will be based primarily in Milton Keynes for a few months as we transition back to the UK and start to explore our next steps. We look forward to seeing you and catching up on all your news.

 

 

We feel that Father has something new for us upon our return to England. As much as we love Milton Keynes and it will always be a special place to us, we feel that Father has a new base for us in England. We continue to spend time with Father over the coming months seeking His exciting next steps He has in store for us in our next season of adventures with Him!

 

 

We would really value your prayers as we seek to leave Malawi well as we hand over to the people we have been training and preparing, and also for ourselves as we reconnect with friends and family and explore our future with Father.

 

If you have any questions do not hesitate to get in touch.

 

Much from the both of us

Enjoying a walk around a local tea estate after church on Sunday

 



Beginning our 4th year in Malawi!

 

Time flies, we can’t quite believe we entering our 4^th year of living in Malawi!

 

We wanted to start this update with a focus on the wider community in the southern part of Malawi where we live. Unfortunately last week, we had 4 days of a cyclone that had come through Mozambique. This severe weather has caused flooding & has tragically led to at least 30 deaths, 100’s of injuries and tens of thousands of people having their homes collapse. On a personal note we are absolutely fine, we have a solid house on a hill but a colleague of ours lost her home on Friday and a close friend’s nephew was one who lost his life. Thankfully the sun has returned but the recovery will take a long time so your prayers for Southern Malawi are appreciated in this time.

 

 

We recently held a Father Heart day at our home, inviting the young Malawians who attend our Encounter Evenings. We had a wonderful day covering the Father Heart of God, forgiveness, Identity as children of God and Sonship. Each teaching slot was followed by a time of ministry. 

 

Here’s a quick testimony from  Maureen Kailedzi who joined us:  

 

"I really enjoyed the times of worship and experiencing the Presence of God. It was good to be reminded that God is my Father, because in the natural I am an orphan, but I know I have a Heavenly Father. I enjoyed the teaching on Sonship as I hadn't really heard of orphan thinking and sonship thinking. Whilst I identified with some of the orphan thinking it was encouraging to see that the sonship way of life is fully available to me"

 

We also had the pleasure of taking Jonah with us to the Thucila Hope Centre with us recently. Jonah is part of the leadership team at our church and we have the privilege of mentoring him. Jonah shared his testimony of coming into the revelation of God as his Good Father, and how that has transformed his thinking as a child of God. The pastors loved hearing from Jonah and we think it was very powerful for them to hear from a peer about what Father God can do.

Jonah sharing with the Pastors

 

 

Thank you as always for your support in what we’re doing here in Malawi. If you wish to partner with the work here in Malawi and invest in seeing the Kingdom of God continue to grow in this nation we value your prayers as we know they are powerful!

As we continue to trust Father completely for His financial provision in everything we do here, if you wish to invest financially we have ongoing areas for investment in our vehicle & fuel costs allowing us to drive out to remote areas to reach the pastors we train. One off or regular gifts can be done through our Stewardship account:  https://www.give.net/20189271     

 

Much love from us!