Ministry in the Mountains

Since 2020 I have had it on my heart to visit Pastor Rodgers in Nsanje, Malawi. I have been there 5 times in the last 20 years and kept in fairly regular contact. But Nsanje is HOT, and with lots of mosquitos and not much breeze, fellow Malawians even ask the Pastor (he's actually a bishop - overseeing around 300 churches) why he chooses to stay there. There are no supermarkets, no plumbed in water, and at this time of year it doesn't ever really cool down. His answer is simply that while he could leave, the people and the need for the gospel would still be there. So he stays. And I guess for similar reasons I headed into the 43degree heat for my 6th visit! 🥵

Now half way through their DTS outreach, it was great to be able to meet up with students again as they entered Malawi and travel down to the South of the country with them. There's a massive fuel shortage at the moment, so our bus had to stop with painful regularity to top up its tank with 500ml bottles of petrol sold in coke bottles etc at the roadside. On one of these stops we were offered lunch through the bus window - sparrow and chips anyone??! 🫢  Jesus asked "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?" but I never really thought about why someone would want to buy them!

One of the things I'd been looking forward to most was simply to catch up with Pastor Rodger's family. His youngest children (twins - Angel and Andrew) were only about 3 when I last saw them so it was incredibly special to now minister alongside them in hospitals, on the streets and in market places, them acting as our translators. (Andrew is the young twin on the right in the photo above👆🏻and now the young man on the left hand side of the photo below).

It was good to show people the old photos I still had of them on my phone, bringing back memories and lots of smiles. And it was equally lovely for me to find people at the top of mount Chididi (where it was several degrees cooler) who had kept physical copies of various photos from my visits with previous teams!!

Ministry in the mountains, despite the exhausting climb to get there, was really worthwhile. We saw people healed, kids searching for bugs to eat coming to know Jesus, and then a couple of pictures people had during a prayer time leading us to someone who really needed a reminder of God's love. A few months ago when we were praying about the outreach one of the team had a picture of old metal tools / machinery of some kind which we simply made a note of. But then as we hiked the last part of the mountain I noticed this old rusty and ramshackle hammer mill which immediately made me think of the picture he'd had.

The next day in another prayer time when considering where we should go to visit, the same person had a picture of a windmill and so we quickly agreed we should head back to the place where we had seen the hammer mill. We met and ministered to various people on the way there, one young man deciding to join us and walk along with us. The hammer mill seemed really far away and we wondered if we should turn back but the young man with us said it wasn't much further. When it came into view there was nobody nearby so we thought we'd had a wasted journey. But then we realised the young man had disappeared. We called out for him and he reappeared just below us on a path going down behind the machinery to a small village. It turned out there were a number of houses down there and this boy (above left) lived in one of them - but all alone. He told us his parents werent around at the moment and when we asked when he had last seen them he said 5-6 years ago! Understandably, this young teenager living in the mountains felt incredibly lonely and was really pleased to have us spend time with him. It seems God had put him in our path and arranged for us to escort him home - such is His great love for every individual! 🙌🏻

Here's a video from my time with the team over these last 2 weeks 👇🏻 Including a silly celebration dance when I reached the bottom of the mountain! Enjoy! 😂