This was a complete surprise - I didn't find out about it until about 5 minutes before worship on Sunday.
But the Malawi team was able to phone us from Lisanjala during worship. It was pretty darn cool! Though I have to admit it was tough to hear my wife's voice and not be able to just chat with her a little. But anyway.
Here's what we heard:
They are having an awesome experience. When they arrived at the airport in Malawi, they were greeted by a choir from our sister church! This is pretty remarkable, because many of those choir members had never even been to the big city, much less to the airport. It was a tremendous display of welcome from our sister church members!
The group spent Sunday morning worshipping with our sister church in Lisanjala. They had a big crowd, including well over 150 kids. Scott Anderson and Jeannie Murray gave a children's message that included some lessons on dental hygiene! Even though they had way more kids than they were expecting, the supply of toothbrushes and toothpaste that Scott brought "multiplied" and every kid got one of each. Melissa and Rick participated in the service and we gave the church a communion service set that was engraved with the names of our two churches on it. I believe that set was used for communion that day!
By the way, the worship service lasted between 4 and 5 hours, which was great to hear seeing as how I preached another marathon sermon yesterday!
The team members were matched up with host families from the village and they spent Sunday afternoon. It sounds like every host family had a person with them who could translate for our team members. They spent the day learning about each other's culture and way of life. The team members gave gifts to each family. I heard that Greg Cozad brought a picture album that his host family had a great time looking through with him.
They are having a few challenges. The banks have been closed for several days due to a national holiday, so they haven't been able to exchange money into the local currency. There also appears to have been a shortage of water, due to rationing. They mentioned that this was an insightful experience into the real need for clean drinking water. Melissa mentioned that they were drinking alot of Coke for the time being. A later text message suggested that the water issue had been worked out.
They asked for prayers for continued health, protection, and safety. Let's all continue to pray that God would work mightily in the hearts of our team members and that they would return so full of God's love and God's heart that they would lead us to an ever greater vision for what it means to love our neighbor!
From everything we hear, it sounds like our team members are being warmly welcomed and are jumping head first into the lives of the people in Lisanjala. We only caught hints of the ways they are being impacted and can't wait to hear more! Tim Jefferson may have summed it up best with a one word text message he sent to Kelley: "Amazing."
sweet.
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