2004-March-Malawi

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By Randy in : Foreign Missions // Jul 29 2010

Mission Trip #3 to Malawi – March 19 – 28, 2004

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This trip would be the beginning of the fruit of what I had sown. It would be the beginning of several years of hard labor cultivating a ground where fruit was sparse and thorns and thickets were plentiful. There would be little or no peace, rest or true unblemished joy for at least two more years. This was truly the season in which, ‘as you have sown, so shall you reap.’
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I want to treat this blog entry / trip report a little differently from the rest. Instead of outlining a day by day account, I want to give you the summation of what happened on the trip and what was beginning to take shape.

BACKGROUND

For starters, between January’s trip and this one, I had been in communication with Frank Maini, Frank Gama and Grey Mnunkha.  Part of our communication was to allow them to start churches in various areas. We also agreed to take charge of the church we helped start in January in Mwaleja. So we started one church in January, and when I arrived in Malawi on this trip, Acts III was responsible for 8 churches.

• The one we started in Mwaleja and started two additional for three in that area.
• Pastor Frank Maini started one in Zomba and three in the Chapola village area.
• Frank Gama and Grey started one in Ndirande.

So the main thrust of this trip was to get organized, hold meetings with the pastor at each church and the leaders they had chosen. Can you guess what the focus was of each church’s meeting with me?  We want… We need… none of the items were spiritual in nature; they were all material things.

I would like to outline the list of demands made at each church / region.

Chapola Demands

[Keep in mind there are around 400 people total in these three villages]

• Better and larger churches made of burnt bricks with iron sheets for the roof. They did not want the bamboo structures with thatch roof that we all fell in love with.
• The people of their village were in poverty so they wanted us to provide for all of the villages (3 – 1 for each church) the following on a continuous basis: food, clothing, medicine, water, transportation, elderly care, orphan care and widow care.
• They also wanted us to provide for the dead as well as the living. The wanted coffins as well as picks, shovels & wheelbarrows to dig the graves.
• The wanted me to stay there for three days to hear all of their needs.
• They wanted a generator and fuel for the generator so they could have electricity.
• They wanted sound equipment, amplifiers, speakers, and microphones.
• They wanted new musical instruments not the hand made ones.
• They wanted us to build a health care facility  in each of the three villages and staff them with full time medical personnel as well as the needed supplies.
• They wanted us to provide each of them with their own P.O. box so they could receive mail.
• They wanted bicycles for all of the pastors and church leaders.

Zomba Demands

These demands were similar in nature but with fewer requests, but larger monetary amounts.

• They wanted us to purchase, lease or buy a very large hall to meet in near down town (cost of around $500+ US per year minimum).
• They wanted matching uniforms for several different groups within the church (the ladies ministry, choir, praise team, youth, pastor & leaders wives, etc)
• They wanted large salaries for Pastors, Elders and Teachers in the church
• They wanted cell phones, allowances for the air time cards, allowance for the internet café, etc.
• They wanted money for notebooks, paper, pens, office supplies, etc.
• They wanted communion supplies
• They wanted Chairs, benches and desks
• They wanted Hymnals
• They wanted similar items including poverty provisions, clothing, food, medicines, clinics, transportation, etc.

Mwaleja Demands

• They wanted a building for the church and another building for the office.
• They wanted matching uniforms, including shoes, for the choir, ladies group, etc
• They wanted Children’s toys and games
• They wanted a clinic and medical staff and supplies.
• They wanted elderly and orphan care facilities and provisions
• They wanted money to buy their own supplies to make their own coffins.

Ndirande Demands

The Ndirande church was much the same as Zomba’s, but they were the only ones to actually ask for the following:

• They wanted more Bibles and Discipleship material
• They wanted us to establish some form of Bible School or Training

So as you can probably imagine, I was more than slightly overwhelmed. Granted, these were the most poverty stricken individuals I had ever come in contact with, but the lists were way over the top.

As best I can remember, I essentially went into shut down mode and wanted to crawl into a corner somewhere in the fetal position, and just close my eyes and rock back and forth incessantly. ‘Overwhelmed’ doesn’t even touch how I felt. I quickly realized that I had bitten off more than I could chew, and was choking in the harvest of my own pride and covetousness.

I had to take a day alone in my hotel to just fast, meditate and pray over this and earnestly seek the Lord.

When we seek the Lord, the best place to find Him and His Wisdom is in His Word. So I opened my Bible and begin to read in Acts 12 and came across this account of Herod, “And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory.” If you read the whole chapter you will see that he gave a great speech and people praised him ‘as being a god and not a man.’  So the Lord struck him dead.

I also began thinking of  something that was reverberating in my head all day, ‘Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:33)

What the Lord began to get through to me was that, (1) the people were looking to me, the white American, to solve ALL their problems. That was not my place. I cannot take the place of God in theirs or anyone’s life. I did not want to be the object of their attention that belonged to God, or I would be no different than Herod. (2) Their attention was primarily on earthly things and not spiritual things. They needed to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. If they did, they would not have to seek any material things.

Based on the sheer magnitude of their list of demands (and they really expected to get everything on their list, immediately), these individuals were extremely covetess. I recognized the speck in their eyes because of the familiarity with the planks in my own eye.

As I leaned back on the bed of the hotel room, I glanced down at one of my Acts III business cards. I was drawn to the slogan, “Sometimes what you need the most, you don’t even know you need.”  It was then the Lord called me to remember what Acts III’s name means…what He called our ministry to focus on…the store of the lame man in Acts Chapter 3.

He had his head down in shame begging for money. He thought that was what he really needed.  But when the apostles Peter and John walked up to him, they proclaimed, ‘silver and gold have I none, but such as I have I give unto thee. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, arise and walk.’

I was not there to meet their demands and take the dependence they should have upon the Lord on my shoulders. Rather, I was there to give them and point them to Jesus.  The Lord kept me balanced by reminding of James 2 and the like. I need to give food and water, the necessities as I have opportunity, but the rest was just a sign of spiritual immaturity at the least.

So the Lord resolved in my heart to buy some grain, Malaria medicines, and Bibles for each village according to the number of the people.  The delivery of goods however, had to be delivered with a message of loving rebuke and stern cautions about where these churches were headed if they did not change their focus.  They needed to set their attention and affections on things above, not of the flesh.

The rest of my time with each area focused on rehearsing what was expected of and the qualifications for church leaders according to Scripture. I also did evangelism training in each of the 8 church areas. I explained our task was to be about the Lord’s business. The worker (not the slacker) is worth his wages.

I left feeling as though the ship was righted, the leaks were plugged, and we were pointed in the right direction…was I right or fooling myself? Time would tell.

HINDSIGHT is 20/20

While typing this from my journals, and taking multiple breaks to shake my head in disbelief at myself 6 years ago, I thought of the story of God’s people in the wilderness when they cried out and wanted more than what He was providing for them. Look at how He responded to their lack of contentment with Manna, in Numbers 11:

“4 Now the mixed multitude who were among them yielded to intense craving; so the children of Israel also wept again and said: “Who will give us meat to eat? 5 We remember the fish which we ate freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; 6 but now our whole being is dried up; there is nothing at all except this manna before our eyes!… 18 Then you shall say to the people, ‘Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat; for you have wept in the hearing of the LORD, saying, “Who will give us meat to eat? For it was well with us in Egypt.” Therefore the LORD will give you meat, and you shall eat. 19 You shall eat, not one day, nor two days, nor five days, nor ten days, nor twenty days, 20 but for a whole month, until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you, because you have despised the LORD who is among you”

This cut me to the heart.  A lack of contentment equates to despising God. On my first trip to Malawi, I fell victim to this mentality. I wanted more than to just be a helper to another ministry. I wanted to have a ministry presence in Africa. I wanted Acts III to be Global. I wanted to keep the money from the 1st trip in Malawi to establish our presence here…so the Lord started to turn me over to that sin until I had my fill of it and it would come out of my nostrils and it would be a loathsome thing to me. This would soon be the case. (though not soon enough as you will see if you read the rest of the story in the other logs)

I thought of a time when I was a teenager and got food poisoning.  Have you ever gotten sick from eating a certain food?  When I was younger, I loved mayonnaise. I would order a hamburger and a bowl of mayonnaise at restaurants and dip my hamburger in it and eat it. That was my habit for years until one day I got food poising either from mayonnaise or what I was eating that had a bunch of it on there.  To this day, I have never been able to eat mayonnaise again.

This may be what the Lord would have to allow to come in my life to break me so that these fleshly desires would be loathsome in my eyes. Is there a parallel in your life? Is there something, some besetting sin, that the Lord is giving you over to until it becomes loathsome in your eyes and you get your fill?

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