Finally....an update to share!

Hello & welcome to our blog! We’ve purposefully chosen at this stage to make this blog known to close friends only. We’ve actually had this blog in place for a few weeks now but have hesitated writing and sharing it due what we thought was our way into moving into Malawi no longer being an option. However recently a friend challenged us to not wait to share until everything was ‘sorted’ but share with people the reality of the journey currently….so that’s what we’re going to do... 

Firstly, why ‘His Presence – Malawi’? We have both recently read and loved a book by Bill Johnson (Bethel Church) called ‘Hosting His Presence’. Bill essentially challenges those of us that know and love God to host His presence at all times and subsequently change the world around us. In a nutshell this is what we want to do in Malawi! To see His Kingdom come, to see salvation, people realise their identity as sons and daughters of the Father, to see preaching accompanied with miracles, healing, signs and wonders, to see people delivered from demonic influences and for people to receive inner healing and to experience freedom.  

We also love this Kris Vallotton quote from a recent blog of his entitled ‘history makers’ blog:

‘We are called to disciple all the nations of the world. Discipling nations means submerging them in God…We are to be counter-culture until the mindset of the nation’s begins to take on the attitude of the Kingdom’ 

So – where are we up to on our journey to move to Malawi? As most of you will know we visited Malawi this summer and the short version was that during one of our meetings out there Mark was offered a part time voluntary position within an accounts department of a Christian hospital. This job offer brought with it visas for us to both live in Malawi (difficult to come by) and the payment of our rent for a property (which are ridiculously expensive in cities in Malawi!). We accepted feeling happy that a major issue, being sponsored a visa, had been sorted. Fast forward to a few weeks ago and during a Skype conversation with their operations director (not who we initially dealt with) it was communicated to us that no such role was required in their accounts department. This was a disappointing surprise to us but quite quickly we felt peaceful knowing that for whatever reason this was not the way into Malawi that God has for us and He has an even better plan (not that we know what that is yet!).   

We have both remained feeling really peaceful and excited about our move and have felt it is right to continue with the sale of our house, which is nearing exchange of contracts, and we have both handed in our notices at work, finishing our roles in January. Our plan remains to move to Malawi in March. So…we are freeing ourselves up from our commitments here in the UK and in faith believing God will open the right doors for our move to Malawi.  

We would love it if you would stand with us in prayer in this season of our transition and if you feel God saying anything please do share!!  Prayer points: 

• The main one being that we connect with the right Malawian organisation who are both willing and in position to sponsor us a visa to live out there. Only Malawian organisations are able to sponsor visas, so we needs God’s guidance as to which individuals / organisations to make contact with                         
• That our house sale continues to progress well and reach completion
• Housing in Malawi – we have put our name down on a rental property in Malawi based upon this job offer that has fallen through, as it stands at the moment we would be taking up tenancy on the 1^st March. The landlord is waiting for us to confirm either way if he should keep the property aside for us, we agreed to let him in know November so we really need to be getting back to him as soon as possible. There is a waiting list for this house so the landlord wouldn’t be able to delay the start of our tenancy beyond the 1^st March. Peace / guidance about whether we should in faith agree to take up this tenancy – the house is very reasonable rent wise by Malawi standards, and has its own water supply (very important & rare!) and its own backup power generator (a rare luxury in houses as power can be out all day on a regular basis) & all of this is unheard of in Malawi at the rent the landlord is looking for – the landlord is also a Christian and we have mutual good friends.

                                                                                     Thank you!