And we're home!

Firstly a huge thank you to those of you who generously contributed towards a purchase of 1 solar panel pack. This solar panel has been ordered and will allow us to charge our 2 laptops & access the internet when the electricity is out, allowing us continue to working on the planning & preparation for all of our training & teaching that we do here in Malawi!  

OUR UK TRIP

It was so good to reconnect with so many people during our time in England. We had a wonderful time; a real highlight for the both of us was taking a few days out to attend the European Leaders Advance Conference. We had the privilege of listening to teaching from some of our favourite teachers from Bethel church. It was such a time of refreshing & encouragement being with 2000 likeminded people & God spoke to us both very much, as usual blowing our minds with what He’s telling us!

If you weren’t at an event where we played our video about our work in Malawi, if you have 5 minutes here is the link to the video to give you a flavour of what we’re up to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwegqUw1tU4

During our time in England we encountered some reoccurring questions and we thought it might be helpful to answer these in this update in case you may have been wondering some of the same things: 

WHAT DOES YOUR TYPICAL WEEK LOOK LIKE?  

MONDAY – Mornings are spent 1:1 mentoring / discipleship with a leader in our home church here in Malawi. Afternoons – language learning & language lesson.

TUESDAY – Sozo appointments – this is an inner healing & deliverance ministry

WEDNESDAY – Office day planning & writing our training for the Pastors & Hope Centre Staff.

THURSDAY – Thucila Hope Centre – Deliver training to pastors, training to Hope Centre staff, discussion / discipleship group with older teenagers

FRIDAY – Kogoya Hope Centre – Deliver training to pastors, training to Hope Centre staff, discussion / discipleship group with older teenagers

SATURDAY – Day off

SUNDAY – Church 

WHAT DO YOU EAT IN MALAWI? WHAT KIND OF FOODS ARE AVAILABLE?

Our diet remains very British! There are a number of South African supermarkets so we are able to access a surprisingly large range of foods, however because this is imported it is usually very expensive. The most common (& best value) meat here is beef so we have a lot of lasagne, spaghetti bolognaise, chilli con carne etc. What is different here is that we are forced to buy seasonally, so only eat the fruits and vegetables when they are in season. Unlike the UK where we could go to 1 supermarket and do all of our shopping we usually have to go to a minimum of 3 shops to do a week’s food shop in order to get what we need and also at the best price; more time consuming than England & no online shopping here!   

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CHALLENGES YOU FACE LIVING IN MALAWI IN YOUR DAY TO DAY LIFE?

 Ummmm….where to start lol! There are some amazing privileges to living here (beautiful scenery, more sunshine, slower pace of life!) but there are a number of challenges too but God is so graceful to us in our ability to cope with these on a daily basis.

The long daily power cuts, the most annoying thing with this is not being able to heat water for a shower, food going off in the fridge so having to throw food / milk etc away, and not being able to cook anything (our oven is entirely electric, no mains gas in Malawi). We find we eat a lot more cereal for dinner than we ever did in the UK!

In England everything ‘works’, here we find we’ve taken on the mind-set that things won’t go right and it’s a pleasant surprise when it does! For example, a friend of ours went to get the Malawian version of an MOT, what should have been an hour’s job took him a full 5 days. Another example is our visa application, submitted in October, meant to have a turnaround of 3 months, and 10 months later no further on. Everything here takes longer than in England, household bills are a good example; we set up standing orders for all of our outgoings in England & never had to give them any other thought. Here we have to drive to the water board to pay our water bill, then drive to the electricity board to buy electric units, drive to the internet company to pay the bill, and so on! All of this takes up time driving around the city, queueing to pay bills.  

The list could go on (rife corruption & deceit in all branches of the government, poor & very expensive internet, at times being so hot you feel like you can’t move or sleep, the emotional sacrifice of being away from loved ones, not being a hands on part of nieces, nephews, godchildren’s lives, not having people around us to learn from who are more mature in areas such as the supernatural, Kingdom of God etc that we can tap into the grow – we miss you Gilgal!)  BUT in all of that we don’t want to sound negative about life here, thanks to some special friend’s insight we walked into life in Malawi with our eyes wide open and God has given us the strength and grace thus far to cope with all of these challenges overall very well!  

ARE YOU PAID FOR ANY OF YOUR WORK IN MALAWI? CAN YOU EARN MONEY IN MALAWI?

No – we receive no payment for anything we do in Malawi. We are trusting God for His financial provision as we stepped out in faith to follow His call on our lives here. It has been a challenging learning curve for us as we learn to trust in Him more! Our financial needs are met primarily in two ways, we have a rental property in England & profit from this goes towards our living costs out here. We also have a group of generous family & friends who partner with us financially on a monthly basis enabling us to minister here in Malawi. We certainly have what humanly speaking looks like ‘holes’ in the budget but with God there is no lack.

And no, we’re not able to earn any money here in Malawi. The Malawian government want to reduce the number of expats like ourselves in the country, they especially do not want expats to be earning here as their stance is an expat is taking away a much needed job from a Malawian. We have a number of expat friends who earn here (mainly as teachers in the internationals schools) and their visas are being denied. Our visa application has been submitted as volunteers therefore making it much more likely we will get approval. Because we will be classed as volunteers our visa will not allow us to undertake any paid work and being honest there aren’t any real job opportunities here with Malawi being the poorest country in the world.  

Thank you as always to those of you who join us in prayer.

The ongoing prayer request for our visa remains! Upon our return to Malawi we visited the Immigration Department. We had been told that in January our visa went to the capital city for final approval from the Government Department. We have now found out our application never left the local office here & therefore no progress has been made on it since January. However….we both felt a little relieved actually as we felt like we’d finally been told the truth rather than being fobbed off for months that it’s ‘in process’. They assure us that our application will now make its way to the capital city for approval, please pray this actually happens & that our application supernaturally makes it way to the top of the very large pile of thousands of applications!  

Ministry – that Father would guide us & give us His wisdom as we do our 1:1 mentoring with our Malawian pastor, we don’t want to give him head knowledge but instead help guide him towards a life changing revelation of God as his loving father & his identity as a son of God

Thank you & much love from us