July 2, 2007 - from Lilongwe

Hello!!

Well, in a way there is nothing major that has happened in the past week plus, butyet there is a lot for us to say! We are still in the town of Nkhoma and have "settled" into a routine over the past two weeks. Although on Wednesday (July 4) classes will end and our routine will have to change.

The best way to keep you up to date on our happenings is just to go day by day from our last update.

Sunday - June 24
The four guys and Mark were assigned to join a first year student to their Sunday school class on Sunday morning. And when we say morning, we mean it! Mark met Mr.Chiwaya in front of the school at 6:00am!!(Michelle had planned to join him, but was trying to get over some sort of illness that she had had for a couple days) It was a really cold morning, which meant that most of the children were slow in coming toSunday School. Where we were supposed to start just after 6:00, we had 10 kids at 6:30. However, by 7:15 there were about 80-90 children in the classroom (at the Primary School). After Sunday School I walked back the Guest House to eat breakfastand prepare for the church service. Normally there are two church services on Sundays. At 8:30 there is an English service and at 10:00 is the Chichewa service. However, this Sunday was a special Thanksgiving service.

The thanksgiving service happens once a year at harvest time. Since these people are mostly all farmers, their harvest offering is just that - a portion from their own way to make a living. The majority of the offerings were maize (corn) contained in big bags (which required two people to carry) or in big buckets on the women's heads. The buckets were usually decorated a little bit as well. Other goods that were brought were eggs, sugar-cane, peanuts, and even a live chicken or two! The offerings were brought forward in front of a packed church section by section while the people sang and danced. It was quite the occasion. There were a lot of visitors like us who were taking pictures, therefore Mark was able to get some pictures and even some video as well. It was hard to explain our method of Thanksgiving offerings to these people!

The rest of the day was relaxing as we were just hanging out at the Guest House.

Monday - June 25
Mark didn't have any classes this day, but there was plenty for him to do as he needed to prepare for his 6 class periods later in the week. Mondays are Michelle's short days so she was done early. We ended up talking as a group for quite a whilej ust chatting, so Mark wasn't able to get done all that he wanted too, but getting to know the other guys a little better was nice.

Tuesday - June 26
Again for Mark he had no classes, but because not everything was accomplished Monday, this day was booked solid with reading! Tuesdays are one of Michelle's longer days. She had a fun day with her classes and the lessons went well. She is starting to get to know some of the children better during their breaks.

There is a group of medical students from Ireland that are staying at a house nearby. Steve Roberts and Matt Barker have become friends with them, so we invited them over for dinner. We had a good pasta dinner and a good time of fellowship. None of them are Christians, but they have been asking Roberts and Barker a lot of questions because the Christianity they know is a "dead" Roman Catholicism and seeing a couple of committed Christians who are excited about their faith is strange to them! Lord willing the conversations will continue to grow.

Wednesday - June 27
This is Michelle's longest day of teaching 7:20 until 12:45 (still not too long, but a long time to be standing with only one 15 minute break). The classes are going well. Sometimes she wonders if the students are understanding everything she says. She needs to remind herself to talk slower since the children are still learning english. The children are wonderful however and she is loving her experience at the school.

Mark finally gets to teach class!! He taught two class periods of preaching which covered looking at the book of Hebrews as a NT sermon and also some theological foundations of OT texts and how they are to be seen especially in relation to NT revelation. The classes went really well, and Mark hopes that the students are getting something out of them. They don't ask a lot of questions, but most of them seem to be taking a lot of notes. All of us teachers will be adding questions to the final exams so we will be able to figure out if they are getting the material!

The power was going in and out most of the afternoon and around 6:15 it went out for quite a while. This has happened a number of times since our being here. Thankfully we had already prepared our dinner! We were using our headlamps and candles to make it through the darkness.

We are now alone in the Guest House. There was a four person accounting team from the Netherlands who were auditing the hospital but they left early in the morning. It is nice to have the place to ourselves!!

Thursday - June 28
Michelle had another good day! The children love when she tries to talk Chichewa to them. During their break they took pleasure in being the teacher to her and trying to teach her more Chichewa. They even made her write things on the board. In the afternoon Michelle decided to walk around town and talk to some people. Anyone will talk to you, everyone is so friendly. She picked up some "chips" (littlefried potatoes) for the group at the roadside stand. The children still see her around town and shout "Vander Pol!"

Mark had two classes again, but this time one was an OT class and the other was NT. The OT class covered the Abrahamic Covenant and the NT class talked about the Kingdom of God with an emphasis on the two-age model. After class Mark had to continue to prepare for Friday's preaching class, so more reading was in store.

Nothing else really happened!

Friday - June 29
Michelle gave her students a test today. The tests are all graded and some of them did very well and some did not:). It was a short day but most of the afternoon was spent grading 180 english tests!

Mark had two more preaching classes this time covering really a basic overview ofthe themes in Scripture and how we can see the fallenness of man and the need behind each text. Ultimately seeing Christ fulfilling his prophetic, priestly, and kingly roles. The other part of the class we looked at five OT genres and talked about basic over-arching strategies in which to preach those texts.

We were out walking around and up in some trees were monkeys!! There were three or four of them playing around! Needless to say, Michelle was thrilled! We did get some photos!

Since there were no more classes for anybody, the afternoon was kind of relaxed and we walked around the town a little bit. We each had dinner with a student's family which is a great time for all. We were with Mr. Mkokamasa, his wife Georgina (sp?) and their 20 month old child. Michelle enjoyed having a female to talk to. Spending most of her time with 4 guys was taking its toll. The Malawian people are so hospitable even when they don't have much.

Saturday - June 30
There is a mountain north of the town called Mount Nkhoma. It is a quite an impressive mountain and we wanted to try and climb to the top of it. The Guest House has a cabin up in the mountains which you can stay over for a night. We all made it up to the cabin and then the guys took off to try and make it to the peak. After an hour of pretty much trail-blazing to get closer to the peak we ended up turning back, Michelle met some people who passed by the cabin and they told her that they have only heard of one person making it to the top. Once Mark and Steve Roberts heard that they have made it a point to make another effort to be number two and three!

The highlight of the trip though was that we saw wild BABOONS!!! On a few different occasions we saw families of baboons playing and sitting around on rocks and such. It was great! They were a little far off, but we got some photos of them.

In the evening we all were invited to the Principle of the Theological School's house for dinner. Everybody here is so welcoming and open that we have great times when we get to have dinner with people. And we get a real taste of Malawian food.

Sunday - July 1
All of us men were assigned to fourth-year students to accompany them to their respective prayer-houses to have an opportunity to see the village churches(or prayer houses) of Malawi as well as preach. The student I was assigned to was busy this week so we had a choice of where to go this weekend. We decided to accompany Steve Roberts to his church service. It was an hour walk and we are figuring it was about 3-4 miles each way. Steve preached through an interpreter and he did a good job. We walked back home and we were quite sweaty and dirty! Michelle was wearing sandals and over dirt roads her feet were filthy! Once we got home we took showers and crashed. We were tired from the hike yesterday and the walking today gave us some good excercise!

So that is about it! Michelle will be leaving next Monday (she wishes she wasn't :() so we are going to try and send out another e-mail then with information from this coming week!

Michelle has made some plans with the wives of the men at the seminary, and she plans to attend a fellowship time on Tuesday with some woman. Again she is looking forward to some time with females!

We miss you all!

Take care,
Mark and Michelle