Christina's Story

          If you saw Christina Kalembera inside of our Esther’s House gates you would notice her great smile right away, you would see her laughing with her friends, you might even get the impression that she is a typical teenage girl living in Malawi. What you probably wouldn’t be able to guess is the fact that she is the head of her household… that she is the one and only guardian and provider for three other children.

          Christina has never met her father. He didn’t want a place in her life and she only heard the news of his death through someone else’s words. When she was six-years-old, just starting primary school, Christina’s mother died from Malaria. At this point, she and her brother, Chiyembekezo, went to live with her agogo (grandmother). A couple of years later she lost her aunt and Christina’s family grew by two, Mefalo and Enetie, her younger cousins. Again in 2007 Christina’s world turned upside down when her grandmother passed away too.

          Christina became the guardian of three small children at an age too young; she was fourteen years old. When talking with Christina today, she told me that she remembers this time and how difficult it was. She didn’t think she would ever be able to finish school; she did not have the money for school fees. She worried about what would come of her brother and cousins if she wasn’t able to find work. However, a number of years ago, Christina heard a message preached by a certain pastor who was leading a crusade in a local church near her home. On this day, she gave her life to Christ. She was twelve years old and had hope for the first time.

          I asked her how she has kept going all of this time… what motivated her to keep trying. Her response was sweet and powerful. “I know that I am doing this in God’s sight. I know that He is in control, and He will watch over us.”

Do I have that kind of trust?

          Her house is small. It could be compared to the size of many of our own closets, yet it is made of mud bricks and straw. Christina struggles in school, because her time is divided between her studies and trying to provide something for the children in her home to eat. But you wouldn’t be able to see those things from simply looking at her face. She is grateful. She is two grades away from finishing school, and this is possible because of someone in the U.S. who has been gracious enough to sponsor her each month through our program… providing her with school fees, nine meals throughout each week, clothing, and medical expenses if needed.

The main room in Christina's house (1 of 2 rooms)

The bedroom  - where all three girls sleep.

          Christina entered the Esther’s House community program in 2008. She says that she didn’t begin growing spiritually until she began coming to E.H., hearing the teaching of God’s Word on a regular basis. She urged me, today, to continue helping other children like her.

          I don’t write this blog post to cause you guilt. I don’t write it to give you a warm, fuzzy feeling either - about how Esther’s House Ministries saved the day. I write this blog to tell you her very real story, about how God saved the day, and provides for His child. I write this post to beg you to understand that she isn’t the only one. We see these cases every week, even when we are not trying to see them. And you can help. Visit www.puremission.org/give/sponsor-a-child/ and click on a smiling face to sponsor a child like Christina. Their lives are more than difficult. If I could show each of you in person what these kids undertake each and every day, I would. It would break your heart just as it has broken mine! Pray for them like crazy. Yes, it takes a little bit of your money too, but these kids need our support through prayer and encouraging letters, convincing them that they are loved by you, and more importantly, by “Yesu Khristu”. 

Life Lately

          It has been too long since my last post! We have been very busy around here, and I have so much to share about. The Lord is working through this ministry in a great way, and I am so grateful to have a front row seat. The following pictures are a glimpse of life lately at Esther's House. 

          

          The kids received new shoes! Things wear out rather quickly in Malawi, and this was one of the things that we have been needing to replace. After a couple of trips to various markets, we successfully found good shoes for all of our residential kids at E.H. You would have thought it was Christmas morning... they were so excited. After our first go at buying the right sizes, Stacy and I took the shoes to E.H. and had the kids each try on their pair. Almost all of them fit! There were 3 or 4 pairs of shoes that were entirely too large, so we told those children that we would bring them a better pair the next morning. We had a few pouty faces that evening, but the next day we kept our promise and they received their shoes as promised. Thank goodness we got it right on the second try! Precious' shoes were definitely a little big, but there was absolutely no way we were prying those new tennis shoes off of his feet. I wish that you all could have seen him run off with his new shoes... running quite funny, but with the biggest grin you've ever seen.

         In the picture above is Asau with his new shoes. We also got each child a pair of flip flops to wear around the Esther's House compound.

          This past week we also returned to Kanjati village... you know, our driving adventure. This time, when we arrived, there were so many smiling faces to greet us! We stayed to see the program, and were very pleased with their work. Tomorrow, the leaders from this feeding center will travel with us to another site to help teach some of their methods and good habits. We are excited to see their willingness to help others develop good programs. 

 These children are holding their breakfast porridge, Vitameal, which I have told you about before. Love these faces.

          One of the things that is keeping us very busy is our home visitation program. This month we have started a program in which we visit the guardians of all of our children. Honestly, this is so important. While the community children do spend a lot of time with us during the week, ultimately, they still go home to their guardians. It is vital that we are working to be on the same page with them. It is a partnership, and we want to do all we can to assist them in this process. We knew that this would be a good program; however, God has blown us away with the results of our visits. In the short time that we have begun, five of our guardians have accepted Christ for the first time. Just a few days ago, we sat down with a mother to two of our community boys and shared with her the gospel. Not only did she give her life to Christ, but she quit her job to be obedient to the Lord. She owned a business preparing and selling alcohol in her village. She had just prepared several bottles to be sold, and after talking with us she made the decision to dump the bottles and trust the Lord for provision until she could find other work! Are you hearing this? We are so excited. Below is a picture from one of these visitations. We shared Christ to the grandmother/guardian of one of our girls. She had stopped going to church after she lost her husband and daughter. She too, realized she had never truly been saved and accepted Christ during our meeting. A friend of this lady was sitting nearby with her tiny new baby. She was so nice to let me steal him for a little while - only two weeks old! New life all around us; we are so grateful.

          Stacy and I try our best to work with the kids each day on english in various ways. Last week I got out the sidewalk chalk and we had lots of fun. We practiced saying colors and numbers and all sorts of things. 

 And we got a little messy too...

          Last Monday we attended the funeral of one of our own widows. Nelly had been in our program for some time and passed away after being in the hospital for over a month. Thankfully, we had decided to check in on her just a couple of days before her death. We were able to sit and pray with her and it was a special time. Pay attention to those times when you can tell the Spirit is leading you. Maybe it is visiting a sick friend, pursuing the healing of a broken relationship, or taking the time to pray for someone who the Lord has specifically put on your heart. We don't know how much time we have! Ephesians 5 comes to mind. This is how The Message translation puts it...


"Wake up from your sleep, 
Climb out of your coffins; 
Christ will show you the light!
So watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times! Don't live carelessly, unthinkingly. Make sure you understand what the Master wants."


          The very next day, as we arrived at Esther's House, we found that our facilities manager, Jailos, was not there. He normally beats us in the mornings and so we called to see what was up. He explained that his wife was in the hospital. By the way he talked it did not seem too serious, so we continued with our work, planning to check in on him later that day. As we were leaving Tuesday afternoon, Getrude (house mom) asked if we had heard about Esther, Jailos' wife. We responded, telling her that we weren't sure what she was sick with. Getrude's next words to us were shocking to say the least. Our jaws dropped when she explained that Esther was not sick, but rather she had had a baby! NO ONE had known she was even pregnant! We were all so surprised. For some reason, Esther did not want anyone to know of her pregnancy. But sure enough, when we arrived at the hospital later that evening we found this precious baby girl. Both Esther and the baby were in great health. 

Below is our friend Jailos, and his new baby girl! She was quite the surprise to them as well. Jailos turns 51 this week; they were not planning on having any more children! But the surprises didn't end there. As we were visiting the new mother and baby, Jailos asked Stacy and I to name her! We were up all night thinking of names. I threw out Emily, and we both liked it. We told Jailos and Esther the next day and they agreed - Emily it is :) 

States (Stacy, as the Malawians say) and I worked on a new mural for the classroom. We had a great time painting. This isn't quite finished, but you can get the idea.

I feel like this picture below almost all of the time it seems. But these cute kids keep me going. I think I am going to sleep for a week straight when I get home!

Today, Stacy conquered driving the 3-ton Dyna truck! We are learning new things every day. 

          The German orphanage, which is approximately an hours drive from us, has an awesome wood working shop. A few weeks ago we asked them to build us new book cases for the classroom at E.H. They were ready for pick-up today and we were able to put them in their new spot. As you can see below, the community kids love helping with things like this.

And finally... a picture of my favorites :) They are showing off their yogurt that we brought them. Nobody working and no kids in school on this national holiday in Malawi. Happy Mother's Day!! Ha!

Rock Walls

          Apparently, Stacy and I needed some adventure in our lives. We had one interesting morning, yesterday! On our schedule, we had planned to visit one of our CBCCs (community based care centers). As I have mentioned before, our ministry partners with Feed The Children to provide Vitameal to almost 1500 children all over this area. Vitameal, like it sounds, is a vitamin-enriched porridge that was developed to counteract malnutrition. These CBCCs also spend time teaching the young children that come daily. We have twelve local feeding centers that are under our care… and I use the term “local” lightly. One of the things we want to accomplish while we are here this fall, is to visit all of our centers and help them to improve in certain areas. Some of our centers are doing better than others, and we really want those who are excelling to reach out and help those CBCCs who are struggling. In my opinion, Malawians helping Malawians goes much farther than our temporary assistance. It is our goal to get them involved in helping each other grow.

          So, back to our adventure… yesterday, we were to visit this Kanjati feeding center. It is one of the most successful centers; they are really invested in this program and have done lots of things right. You can know of their determination for this program when you come to understand that these leaders walk over three hours (one way) to pick up the porridge from Esther’s House each month. Bruce, who is on our staff as a house parent, escorted us this morning – giving us directions. He is the one who checks on these centers regularly. We started out down a particular road that I have travelled many times. However, I had no idea how far this road actually went. Villages and towns just kept popping up, and the terrain got rougher with each one. Stacy is my hero for getting us there… mind you, we have experienced lots of firsts on this trip – driving in Malawi for the first time being one of them, driving a standard vehicle another! There were times yesterday that it felt like our Land Cruiser was actually climbing rock walls. I failed to get any pictures of the so-called “bridges” we crossed, but you get the idea. Bumpy, first gear kind of stuff. There was an intern here this past summer, Matt, who actually biked to Kanjati with Bruce. We are impressed to say the least.

          We made it, and our car made it too! When we arrived at the feeding center, there were no children. Sigh. One of the leaders explained to us that they have had more children coming to their center and so they had run out of porridge. Kanjati is feeding almost 200 children each day. This is a problem because there is supposed to be a limit of 120 children per feeding center. This is simply because that is how many portions of Vitameal are provided. But how do you turn malnourished children away because they are numbers 121 and 122? Hopefully, in 2012, we will be able to fix this issue by starting another feeding center nearby so that this center can split itself in half. How awesome- that they have grown so large and are reaching so many children!

This is a picture of Kanjati's kitchen. It is currently under renovation. Most feeding centers do not even have the means to cook inside of a building; rather, they simply use a large pot on top of an open fire.

Ok, I lied... there were a couple of sweet faces present when we arrived :)

The adventure continues. Because the children weren't there yesterday, it looks like we will be heading back to view their program on Monday!

Reward Day

          Between the different children's programs at Esther's House, there are sixty-three kids who we see on a daily basis. There are ten children currently residing at Esther's House permanently, but there are fifty-three others from surrounding villages who are in our community program. All of these children come to Esther's House each morning to eat breakfast. We partner with Feed The Children, and they provide Vitameal for kids all over Malawi. With the help of our child sponsors in the U.S., we also provide for their school fees and medical care. Along with this meal in the mornings, these children are expected to come in the afternoons (Monday- Saturday) for classes. They are taught God's Word and English among other things. To encourage good attendance to our program, Stacy and I have established a rewards system for those who do well. It's simple. At the end of every month, we reward those who have had perfect attendance. 

          The pictures below were taken on our first "Reward Day." (Clever title - we know) We had so much fun... Stacy and I found a bag of marshmallows in our pantry, and some chocolate chips. We ran to the store and bought some cookies/ biscuits and voila! - we had S'mores, or at least something that slightly resembled the American version of the snack. We taught some of the older guys how to roast the marshmallows, and to say it was a big hit is an understatement. This, you can certainly see from our pictures...

Joshua (above) and Bruce (below), our two "house dads", were particularly vocal about loving the treat. After explaining the snack and its name, Joshua said repeatedly, "I need some more s'mores, please!!" 

          After the kids ate their snack, we had some fun with water balloons! We played the game in which you throw a balloon to your partner at a certain distance... if they catch it and it doesn't break, you take a step further apart and start a new round. The winner is obviously the last team with their balloon in tact. The kids had so much fun. If ever a balloon burst, it seemed to take us three minutes to settle the kids down to start the game again! 

I think that I may just have the best job ever, this fall.

Enelesi the lion

         We have been stuck at our house since Friday night due to mechanical trouble with our vehicle. Three and a half days. Stacy and I have gone a little stir crazy, but we are anxious at the possibility that our car will be fixed sometime tomorrow morning. We miss those cute kids out at Esther's House! If you think of us throughout your day and night- we would appreciate your prayers very much. I had a few pictures I wanted to share... They make me smile. This is Enelesi (pronounced Inless). Although she puts up a good face, she's not so mean ;) Enelesi is one of our residential children at Esther's House. She is five years old, and steals LOTS of hearts from American team members who visit! 

"He delivers and rescues; He works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth, He who has saved Daniel from the power of the lions." -Daniel 6:27

        I've got a lot of catching up to do! I was finally able to upload some pictures this morning, and I want to share about the August team's time in Malawi. We had a group of ten travel to Malawi on August 28th. There were representatives from all three Cross Church campuses, and it was a neat experience getting to know everyone. I believe that we had running water one of the days that they were here, and they all had outstanding attitudes regardless. God used this team in many ways - here are some of the things that they did...

Here is the team with our Esther's House friends - the best shot we got :)

The team tried out a new technique called Bible storying as they shared the Gospel. This technique equips team members to share God's Word in a way that allows oral learning cultures to understand scripture more easily. The team studied these specific stories in detail so that they were able to tell each Bible story without a lot of help from text or other resources. In Malawi, this especially helps to fully engage the listener. It will be a 52 week program that tells the complete story of the Bible.

In this picture: Heidi May, along with her interpreter John, are teaching some kids a Bible story.

Our team spent a lot of time loving on kids at Esther's House and those in the surrounding villages.

One of the most exciting experiences for me on this trip, so far, has been the opportunity to finally meet the other children living at Esther's House. During my last stay in Malawi there were only two boys living at E.H. and now there are 10 kids, plus the children of our new house parents. They are pretty stinking cute! 

Kyle hit it big with the widows in our ministry :)

Throughout the week our team had the opportunity to do some village evangelism. We saw nearly 200 people receive Christ. Praise the Lord. On Sunday, Doug preached about the importance of believer's baptism, and 17 people made the decision to follow Christ in baptism that afternoon!

Two of our team members, Hanna and Claire, are hair stylists in Arkansas. They were able to use their skill in Malawi not only to cut the children's hair, but also to train a couple of the women to be able to do this in the future.

This is a picture of half of our team on a boat safari along the Shire river.  We had a fun and relaxing day, apart from the angry hippo charging towards our boat.

Another task that this group had while they were in Malawi, was to help move the Hart family into their new home. Shortly after we arrived, this family of four traveled from Arkansas to Malawi to join us. The Hart family has committed to be in Malawi, working at Esther's House, for a two year period. Malawian houses aren't exactly built for a guy of Ryan's height :)

       Thanks again to all of you who have been praying. I have lots more to share - so keep checking in for new posts. 

        "Let all those who seek You rejoice and be glad in You; Let such as love Your salvation say continually, 'The LORD be magnified!' But I am poor and needy; yet the LORD thinks upon me. You are my help and my deliverer; Do not delay, O my God." -Psalm 40:16-17

My life has been a whirlwind over the past month it seems. I can’t begin to describe to you how exciting it has been to observe the Lord’s hand in my life lately. The scripture that talks about the fact that God’s ways and thoughts are higher than mine has never meant more to me. For the past several weeks, I have felt uneasy. I wasn’t sure why and I didn’t know what to do or where to move. So I prayed. And prayed and prayed. About 30 days ago, the Lord made it very clear. I received the opportunity to return to Esther’s House in Malawi until late November and I knew. If you know me at all – you know that I love this place. But its not the place that got me excited… its that I was given that irreplaceable peace – knowing that I am where God wants me to be for this exact time in my life. It was easy this time, and I am thankful for that. I know that decisions aren’t always this simple.

I haven’t been able to get the following scripture out of my mind. Had I been accepted for that certain position I applied for, I would not have been able to come this fall. My thoughts are not His thoughts. I had planned it all out – thought I would be working away in NWA for the next year or so. He ordered my steps differently. I can’t believe He has given me this opportunity again! He knows me.

Proverbs 16:9 says, “The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.”

I am in Malawi! I can hardly believe it still. We (a team of 10) left NWA on August 28^th, and their time ended yesterday. Stacy Mossberger and I will be staying in Malawi until late November – helping to accomplish some things for this ministry while the permanent missionary is in the states for a while. When I returned to Arkansas after my summer in Malawi, Stacy went to stay in Malawi for several months. We have been very busy working with this team for that past two weeks. I apologize for the lack of blogging! We have done a number of different things, and have seen many people saved throughout the team’s time here. God has been good.

I appreciate your support and prayer so much. God has blessed me immeasurably in the area of friends and family! Pictures to come as soon as I get a faster internet connection!