The Bennetts In Africa: July 2011

In June Ike and I made a third trip to Malawi. I spent a few days in Blantyre doing prison visitation with a local pastor and then joined Ike in Lilongwe. Here is a summary of our work so far in Malawi.

Beginnings

I arrived in South Africa in September 2009 full of expectation. I had participated in an immigration center ministry for several years in the UK, which had really whet my appetite for working with Africans. Soon after my arrival I met Ike, who mentioned that they had received an invitation, via the local Family web site, to hold a Bible training seminar for rural pastors and elders. All they lacked was a vehicle to make the trip. I was in the process of buying a vehicle for my family and so I grabbed at the opportunity to offer the vehicle as long as I could join the trip!

Bible Seminars

This was the first of two weeklong seminars that were held over the next 6 months. Nearly 50 rural pastors and elders benefited from an intensive week of Bible training, memorization and inspiration! What a joy it is to pass on the word training and the spirit of what we have received in the Family to hungry receptive people! How wonderful to spend a whole week in the word preparing and giving classes!

Crusades

On the second trip we also held two crusades in the rural areas, planting churches in two new areas. We showed the Jesus movie in the evening; this was paused, as Jesus carried the cross, for a powerful salvation message. The following morning we held a follow-up outdoor event and two new churches resulted. On our third trip we were happy to hear the two churches were going strong!

Marquee Tent

The church we are working with, Gospel Harvest Church has 27 rural branches and is very keen to expand into the rural areas where there are no churches. However they still have no central church building and are renting a school classroom. They do have a plot of land in their name and are looking build a headquarters church. Of course they were keen to enlist our help! However, after a couple of months, Ike and I felt burdened that fundraising for a large church building was not really our calling! The Lord encouraged us to abide in our calling of teaching the word and trust Him that “Your heavenly Father knows you have need of these things.” Three days later I visited a church to pick up some shoes and discovered they had a large discarded marquee tent lying outside. They agreed to donate the tent to us for Malawi. Over a period of several months we made some repairs to the tent and provisioned what was missing. Ike called a man he was referred to who had a haulage company and this man offered to take the tent up for us for free and also offered Ike a vehicle for the next trip. This also meant we could fly up and not waste so many days driving. The tent is, as I write, on its way!

Into the Rural

On this third trip during we visited 10 rural churches, sometimes hiking up and down hills and across rivers to reach them. It was great! We also sourced and bought a computer for the leader of the church so he could begin work on translating an adapted Foundation Stones into Chichewa, the local language. We hope to print them down here in South Africa. We also brought a library of Family devotional books for the central church. If they can make the library work then we will try to provide more for the other branches.

Bible Seminar for 250 Pastors

Also on this third trip I, Simon diverted for a few days to Blantyre to answer another invitation from a pastor in that city, who is very active in prison ministry. We visited five prisons together and I taught in his church. He was very excited by the teaching and suggested a Bible training seminar for 250 pastors in his area. So many of them have never been to Bible school. We believe this is a wonderful open door that we hope to put into action next year.

Accept Invitations!

I feel one of the principle lessons is to accept invitations to teach the word. The Lord really wants us to share the spiritual wealth we have. Even if it seems impossible to accept, just do it. The Lord will make a way!

In 2010 we accepted an invitation to go to Kenya without knowing how it would work out. The Lord did it and supplied. Six months later my wife Natasha, Mike and Donna made a six-week faith trip all the way to rural Kenya. If we follow Him in order to feed His children, I believe He will take care of everything else!

Unfortunataly I have no pictures from the Blantyre leg of the trip so here are some from
Lilongwe.

This is the central church in Lilongwe still renting a classroom.

We donated a library of materials to the church. If the library works here then we can supply more for other areas. We also donated a whole lot of Gospels of John in Chichewa and English.

This is the plot where we are planning to errect the tent. The tent was delayed coming up but there was still a power line that still needed to be removed in order to put up the tent. We were therefore free to visit the rural churches during our visit.