Shawn
Amanda
Gemma
Suki diving
Amanda in front of our house
Shawn wrestling with Suki
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Progress in Pakistan
Unfortunately (as per usual) I have left my laptop at someone elses house and therefore am unable to finish the Malawi blog. However the "punchline" of the visit is still to come so there will be more coming!
In the meantime we have exciting news from Pakistan..... our friend who we met at an immigration centre has been back in Pakistan for three years. He has ministries to four local prisons, an adult education centre and visits and supports Christian communities that have received persecution.
He translated the Foundation Stone Bible class into Urdu and we did a sponsored climb in England to raise funds for the printing. Here is Yaqoob and his wife, Surriya, with the finished product.....isn't it great ? And he will be distributing these freely in the prisons in the Lahore area.
There is a great deal of upheaval in Pakistan right now as terrorists are making all sorts of ground and really threatening the peace and stability there. I feel it means all the more that we should be providing the Pakistani Christians with as much Christian equipment as we can to prepare them for the times ahead.
Yaqoob , Shazzard and Asiya outside Lahore prison program.Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Simon's Trip to Malawi Part 2
Having said good bye to the pastors on the Saturday we prepared for a drive to one of the rural churches the following Sunday.
We drove about 40km south of Lilongwe and then left the main road. Maston said that this was where he would normally start walking! 10 km later we arrived at the church, which I would like to call the "church on the hill".
Maston told us how the church came to be there. He had been trying to start a church in this village for many years. However there was a lot of traditional witchcraft etc in the area and when they used to meet in the village only a handful of people would ever come to the church. So he was close to giving up when he decided the solution was to build a church away from the village up on a hill. Maston went there for a few weeks, set up a kiln for baking bricks and built this church with his own bare hands. Soon the church flourished and when we were there it was packed with about 160 people.
We helped to lead the service there. My fellow travellers from South Africa Ike and Praise separately prayed about what to share with the people. Praise and I both received Psalm 103 as I found out when I asked her just before I was due to stand up! Its a beautiful Psalm the first few lines I will put here.
Bless the Lord O my sould and all that is within me
Bless the Lord O my soul and forget not all of this benefits.
Who forgiveth all my iniquities
Who heals all my diseases
Who redeemeth thy life from destruction
Who crowneth me with loving kindness and tender mercies
Who satisifes thy mouth with good things so that thy youth is renewed like the eagles.
In the church !
It was a wonderful time and musically very vibrant and entertaining. They used a "guitar" fashioned from a an old tin can and wood and a sort of bass cello also from a larger tin can and wood and with just a single "string". The quality and noise was wonderful.
Praise and myself after the service.
All in all it was a very impressive time and you could see what a service to the community this church brings. AIDS is also a significant problem in these areas and several people asked for prayer against it.
Having left my computer at someone's house I am unable to finish the posting so will do so later in Part 3. But I will leave you with a beautiful Lilongwe (capital of Malawi) sunset. Lots of love to you all.
We drove about 40km south of Lilongwe and then left the main road. Maston said that this was where he would normally start walking! 10 km later we arrived at the church, which I would like to call the "church on the hill".
Maston told us how the church came to be there. He had been trying to start a church in this village for many years. However there was a lot of traditional witchcraft etc in the area and when they used to meet in the village only a handful of people would ever come to the church. So he was close to giving up when he decided the solution was to build a church away from the village up on a hill. Maston went there for a few weeks, set up a kiln for baking bricks and built this church with his own bare hands. Soon the church flourished and when we were there it was packed with about 160 people.We helped to lead the service there. My fellow travellers from South Africa Ike and Praise separately prayed about what to share with the people. Praise and I both received Psalm 103 as I found out when I asked her just before I was due to stand up! Its a beautiful Psalm the first few lines I will put here.
Bless the Lord O my sould and all that is within me
Bless the Lord O my soul and forget not all of this benefits.
Who forgiveth all my iniquities
Who heals all my diseases
Who redeemeth thy life from destruction
Who crowneth me with loving kindness and tender mercies
Who satisifes thy mouth with good things so that thy youth is renewed like the eagles.
In the church !It was a wonderful time and musically very vibrant and entertaining. They used a "guitar" fashioned from a an old tin can and wood and a sort of bass cello also from a larger tin can and wood and with just a single "string". The quality and noise was wonderful.
Praise and myself after the service.All in all it was a very impressive time and you could see what a service to the community this church brings. AIDS is also a significant problem in these areas and several people asked for prayer against it.
Having left my computer at someone's house I am unable to finish the posting so will do so later in Part 3. But I will leave you with a beautiful Lilongwe (capital of Malawi) sunset. Lots of love to you all.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Simon's Malawi Trip Part 1
Here are few pictures from my Malawi trip. I want to post some more shortly. It was such a blessing to travel up into Africa, through Botswana and Zambia into Malawi.
One of the first things to comment on was that people don't have Bibles. They are really quite expensive and common people just cant afford them . We brought up 200 Bibles from South Africa to distribute along the way and it was so precious to see the peoples reactions, hugging the Bibles to their chests, signing their names to the flyleaf asap, and sometimes literally jumping for joy! So one knows that if one takes alot of Bibles up into Africa you are going to make a lot of people very happy!
Both Botswana and southern Zambia were quite dry and dusty and had huge expanses of seemingly empty bush.. only punctuated by some waterways most notably the Zambesi river.........
The massive Zambesi--hippos were visible at a distance.
Lorries waiting to cross Zambesi
Ferry across the Zambesi
but as we climbed up to Chipata on the eastern border of Zambia, we rose out of the bush up into very well populated and developed agricultural land which increased as we arrived in Malawi.
We were greeted by our host Bishop Maston Davite a 55 year old ex-cartographer who singlehandely has planted 26 rural churches north and south of the capital Lilongwe. He has no car but relies on public transport and his own two feet!
I meet the bishop!
He loves to talk about David Livingstone and often exclaims "If David Linvinstone a foreinger should walk so far up into Africa to spread the Gospel howmuch further should I, an African, walk." We stayed with Maston for our entire 8 day stay in his house. He put in a European toliet and shower especially for our visit!
The Bishops House.... our car on the side ..... (we bought this car just a couple of days before the trip after quite a few weeks of procrastination..its a Toyota Prado..we discovered on the trip that it has a 180 litre fuel tank ..excellent for doing long distcances through Africa..meaning next time we may be able to drive straight through Zimbabwe where diesel is very hard to come by)
The bishop had invited us to teach his rural pastors a Bible course over a week period ..the same one I had used in the prisons and immigration centres... this meant we would be teaching four classes a day two in the morning and two in the afternoon each lasting one and a half house with a break for much meaning that we generally started at about 9 in th emorning and finished around five.
We were in a rented school room. Amazingly he still has no permanent church in Llilongwe. he rents a school hall. He has spent all his money on helping to build churches in the rural areas.
Due to some misunderstanding we had to move to another school. It was baking hot no fan or air con but somehow it didn't seem to matter and we all had a great time. There was generally a fairly good breeze to keep us somewhat cool!
The pastors in the classroom!
Simon and Isaac and Ebenezer , Maston's oldest son, who also interpeted for us with Bibles for all the attendees.
I teach a class intepreted by the wonderfully named Hardwell!
On the last day of classes we went out into the local community to witness and distribute tracts.
Here I am with a group of school children, Hardwell translating for me.
At the end of the week we had a fun graduation party on Saturday morning so the pastors could get buses back to their churches in time for Sunday morning service.
Graduates of the Bible course all together!
Team-building fun at the graduation ceremony..
All of us together!
Duty calls so have to go now but quite a bit more to share which I hope to do in the next few days!
One of the first things to comment on was that people don't have Bibles. They are really quite expensive and common people just cant afford them . We brought up 200 Bibles from South Africa to distribute along the way and it was so precious to see the peoples reactions, hugging the Bibles to their chests, signing their names to the flyleaf asap, and sometimes literally jumping for joy! So one knows that if one takes alot of Bibles up into Africa you are going to make a lot of people very happy!
Both Botswana and southern Zambia were quite dry and dusty and had huge expanses of seemingly empty bush.. only punctuated by some waterways most notably the Zambesi river.........
The massive Zambesi--hippos were visible at a distance.
Lorries waiting to cross Zambesi
Ferry across the Zambesibut as we climbed up to Chipata on the eastern border of Zambia, we rose out of the bush up into very well populated and developed agricultural land which increased as we arrived in Malawi.
We were greeted by our host Bishop Maston Davite a 55 year old ex-cartographer who singlehandely has planted 26 rural churches north and south of the capital Lilongwe. He has no car but relies on public transport and his own two feet!
I meet the bishop!He loves to talk about David Livingstone and often exclaims "If David Linvinstone a foreinger should walk so far up into Africa to spread the Gospel howmuch further should I, an African, walk." We stayed with Maston for our entire 8 day stay in his house. He put in a European toliet and shower especially for our visit!
The Bishops House.... our car on the side ..... (we bought this car just a couple of days before the trip after quite a few weeks of procrastination..its a Toyota Prado..we discovered on the trip that it has a 180 litre fuel tank ..excellent for doing long distcances through Africa..meaning next time we may be able to drive straight through Zimbabwe where diesel is very hard to come by)The bishop had invited us to teach his rural pastors a Bible course over a week period ..the same one I had used in the prisons and immigration centres... this meant we would be teaching four classes a day two in the morning and two in the afternoon each lasting one and a half house with a break for much meaning that we generally started at about 9 in th emorning and finished around five.
We were in a rented school room. Amazingly he still has no permanent church in Llilongwe. he rents a school hall. He has spent all his money on helping to build churches in the rural areas.
Due to some misunderstanding we had to move to another school. It was baking hot no fan or air con but somehow it didn't seem to matter and we all had a great time. There was generally a fairly good breeze to keep us somewhat cool!
The pastors in the classroom!
Simon and Isaac and Ebenezer , Maston's oldest son, who also interpeted for us with Bibles for all the attendees.
I teach a class intepreted by the wonderfully named Hardwell!On the last day of classes we went out into the local community to witness and distribute tracts.
Here I am with a group of school children, Hardwell translating for me.At the end of the week we had a fun graduation party on Saturday morning so the pastors could get buses back to their churches in time for Sunday morning service.
Graduates of the Bible course all together!
Team-building fun at the graduation ceremony..
All of us together!Duty calls so have to go now but quite a bit more to share which I hope to do in the next few days!
missing you
groovy we got internet
i am so happy
i miss eveyone one but i guess that south africa is ok and i hope that it will grow on me. just got my bed which is a blessing. our pool is getting so warm and i hope that some day you guys can come visit us. the heat is sometimes un bearable but at least i have a great sun tan he he he. we all got our school uniform which is ok but i definetly perferd the kings school one.
i am so happy
i miss eveyone one but i guess that south africa is ok and i hope that it will grow on me. just got my bed which is a blessing. our pool is getting so warm and i hope that some day you guys can come visit us. the heat is sometimes un bearable but at least i have a great sun tan he he he. we all got our school uniform which is ok but i definetly perferd the kings school one.
Assorted Photos
Here are some assorted photos.......of Gemma riding,.... Amanda and Suki at the beach with friend Bethy,N .....Gemma on the way to the beach,..... Suki and Gemma at horseriding show.....
A little bit of heaven on earth......
This morning we were up early on the verandah having breakfast and wondering at the lovely view and the beauty of the day........ here is a pictures of our view and breakfast on our verandah. The Lord has really blessed us so much and our hearts are filled with gratitude to be in a place which we love,near people who we love and doing things we love! The only thing that could make us happier would be for all our friends and family from England to join us here!
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