As most of my friends and family already know, I left for Malawi, Africa on August 22 for a 6-month period to work at Esther's House Orphanage, an institution that was created by First Baptist Church in Springdale, Arkansas. I've decided that I'm going to try to regularly write in this blog to share my experiences of Malawi and to update everyone on the progress that's happening at Esther's House!

On September 2 our team of 13 people made the 3 hour drive from Ntcheu to Lilongwe to drop the team off at the airport (minus Ruth Ann, Dr. Martin, and myself). I was so sad to see them go--the 12 day mission trip went by so fast! We accomplished so much in that short period of time: we held a 2-day medical clinic at Esther's House that went really well--we were able to see 342 patients! We held Bible school for the residential and non-residential orphans, and we also went out into the local village and had a Bible school session there as well. A pastor's conference was held, and 3 of the men on the team were able to teach 25 local pastors more about God's word. On Sunday we held a church service at the orphanage for about 150 people, and I had the opportunity to share my personal testimony with them. There was a day of building and repair for both the orphanage and the mission house, and we ended the week by going on an amazing 2-hour boat safari trip at Liwonde Game Park. I'm so grateful to have met all the great people that were on the missions team, and they'll definitely be missed here!

After dropping the team off at the airport, Cindy (the amazing lady who is the director of Esther's House--she'll be living here for 2 years!) and I had quite an adventure trying to get some much needed errands done. I've discovered that Malawians are not too concerned with getting things done on time...or getting things done right the first time around. What should've been a simple car repair ended up taking all day and costing twice as much. As a result of that we ended up having to stay 2 nights in Lilongwe.

I've also learned what "load sharing" is! Apparently Lilongwe does not have enough electricity to power the entire city at once, so they shut the power off in different areas of the city. After having a really difficult day, Cindy and I sat down at a restaurant to have dinner. We had barely looked at the menu for more than a minute when all of the power suddenly shut off, leaving us in dark until the server got around to bringing candles. It was a fitting ending to the kind of day we had! The restaurant was really good though!! We finally made our way back to Ntcheu this afternoon and had dinner at Dear Mama's, an amazing chicken restaurant down the street from our house!

I'm still getting used to being seen as an "azungu" (white person!). I was especially aware of it in Lilongwe, but Malawians are always staring! Cindy told me that she doesn't even notice it anymore, but I'm not quite at that stage yet!

This is the cute guest hut that Cindy and I stayed at while in Lilongwe, on the African Bible College (ABC) campus.

1 Cor. 9:24-26

♥ S