Malawi

Almost four weeks without internet! Wow! That hasnt happened for some time!

Will start with the end of our trip. Yesterday morning (wednesday) I noticed Seths eye was puffy a little bit, and it looked like he had bite all on one side of his face. We were driving from Petauke, Zambia to Lusaka, 400 km. Seth feel asleep in the car and I though his eye was getting more and more swollen, but wasnt sure because his eye was closed. When he woke up close to Lusaka his eyes was SO SWOLLEN, all on one side of his face, his nose even is swollen, and all the things I thought were bug bites on his fore head are hive kind of things. So we went to drop off rebecca (our friend who helped with our kids at the conference) and Taliah at our friends place, and went straight to the hospital with Seth, (and I had been feeling sick for a few weeks as well and was getting worse everyday). So we both got checked out.
Unfortunately for Seth he had to have the dreaded Malaria test, Seth came out POSITIVE for Malaria : ( The doctor said the swelling/hives could be from many things, one of them being Malaria, or worms, a reaction to something.... so he is on Malaria treatment, and getting dewormed by medication for the next three days. We found the malaria really early with Seth, and he doesnt even seemed bothered by the swelling, he is just acting normal! Thank God. Really praise Jesus he got the swelling other wise we wouldn’t have gone to the doctor.
As for me I have an infection (urinary) I cant see why I would have all the symptoms I do have with this, but we will see after finishing my medications if I feel better.
So we are home!

Now back to what we have been doing in Malawi.

Our conference was AMAZING! It was a BLT : ) Base Leaders Training for YWAM.
LYNN GREEN was our speaker, a HUGE honor for us (mostly because he had to pay his way to come and speak at our conference and he went away with a bag of coffee : ) Other places would pay for his flight accomidation, and a large monitary gift : ) haha, not where we are. You can google him I am sure he is part of the Team Three in YWAM, the directors of the whole YWAM. Anyway, he is a humble man who love Jesus, and calls us to live by faith. It was really inspiring. One of the main things we came out with was his challenge not to us as YWAM in Africa not to make excuses for being poor, that living by faith doesnt work here and so on, which alot of people believe here, that we are different here because of the poverty. But He challenged us to remember we live in the kingdom of God no matter if we are in an afluent country or poor, Jesus said he would take care of us, and it’s no exception here in Africa. Staff are starting to want to do jobs here and there, or even start funds to be paid to be in YWAM, but one of the basic values in YWAM is to live by Faith and on relational support. Anyway Vinjelu will be writing more on this later.
The food at the conference.... so we had the SAME food everyday, prepared exactly the same!
Breakfast: sausage, fries, and hard boiled egg.
Lunch: Chicken or fish, rice, boiled spinach
Supper: Chicken or fish, rice, boiled spinach

Not a bad diet, only that it was the same, by the third day we were really wondering.... and there was no soya sauce or something, just ketchup! (Rob you wouldn’t have survived!) And it gets to you, but you know what’s funny by the last day we were starting to like the predictability of it, you get used to it and start to like it : ) haha.
We met people from our YWAM region from, Mozambique, Anglola, Malawi, Zambia. It was SO GOOD to meet up with some people we already know and to meet some new people who we grew to love in just one week. Some people had just amazing testimonies of the power of Jesus in their lives going out into their communities! It was really exciting!
After the confrence we were leaving to go to Vinjelus grandmas village. We left a bit late because we were giving two YWAMers a lift close to their base. The seed limits are SO BAD n malawi, you have to drive 50 kmh for 100 km at a time... you know how long that takes!!!!! It took us 6 hours to drive 300 kilometers!
So we got instruction to go to mzimba/boma to the bus depot and ask for vinjelu cousin... and we someone would know her and take us to her house. So we thought the town must be REALLY small. But when we got there we found hundreds of people milling around, the sun was down already, so we couldnt see much, vinjelu we nt and asked abotu his cousin but no one seemed to know her. So we went all the way to the YWAM another 100 kilometers, thankfully though it was mostly an 80 to 100 speed limit. So we got to see another YWAM base, and they had hot water in their showers! WOOHOO! It was SO NICE to shower in a shower! Not a bucket bath. Anyway thats a side note. So we left in the morning to go find vinjelus cousin again, we found out her house was only another 100 meters from where we were parked the night before! haha! Thats life. So we picked up the cousin from town and she came with us to show us where the village was.

We got there and were greeted by vinjelus grandma and relatives. No time to write anymore... later.

here are some photos.