January 2023 Details

Grants and Program Planning

We worked together with friends in New Zealand and Hawaii to help Mo'olelo Kū'i'o submit a grant to help improve Hawaii History curriculum for private schools. We also helped advise on a grant application and program planning for Malawi-based nonprofits Alinafe and New Beginnings, respectively. As we wait to hear back from a couple grants, Greg and I are hoping to continue building our team and assisting some organizations with planning, funding applications, infrastructure, and implementation. Please pray for wisdom about whether to expand or prune back this area of our ministry.

In the Village

Malawi received an abundance of rain this month, which is good news for the country’s many subsistence farmers. It also keeps many of the roads impassable, and so Greg and I didn’t travel from home in January. We hear that Mngwangwa is particularly flooded right now, but that diverse crops are flourishing. Christina has been able to advise about some health conditions from a distance, even though we aren’t going out in person.

Malawi’s Cholera Outbreak

Endemic diseases like typhoid, hepatitis A, and cholera are not rare in Malawi, but in recent months, Cholera has taken the lead as a public health crisis. With hundreds of new cases per day and a shockingly high death rate, hospitals are scrambling to improve diagnosis and treatment capabilities. This is a disease which is preventable with clean water and hand hygiene, and easily treated with oral fluids in its early stages. Please join us in prayer for wise preventive strategies and that messages of health and healing will reach Malawi’s most vulnerable communities.

Greg’s Teaching

Greg is teaching Systematic Theology 2 to a group of 9 students at NTCCA in a class which includes several students from Mozambique. He is teaching back at ABC for the first time since 2018, and this time he is teaching his first Bible class, Exodus, to a full class of about 80 students. He continues to work with the head of the Nazarene Extension Program, to bring relevant courses to pastors in rural villages. He also served as a reviewer for an article in the academic journal Transformed.

Christina’s “Sabbatical”

To help mark her seventh year in Africa, Christina is trying to be intentional about resting and growing. She took off both national holidays this month and averaged 8 hours of work per day for the first month in “recorded” history. Since December, she has completed 40 hours of continuing medical education and has also read 20 books (some simply in an effort to clear off her bookshelves, some for intentional growth. Her favorites so far are Secrets of the Vine by Bruce Wilkinson and Forest Bathing by Qing Li. As an honorable mention, The Lifechanging Magic of Tidying up was, in fact, life changing.) Overall, January was a month of getting in the perfect amount of running, stretching, pullups, and relaxation, with the unwelcome but rest-forcing addition of a brief right hand tendonitis, a lingering right ankle sprain, and a month-ending bout with shortness of breath, chest pain, and fever which has just started to improve.

Sabbatical

It's our seventh year in Malawi. Our 14th year together as a couple, and the 20th year since we met. I suppose if you wanted to count by 7’s, you could say it’s the 21st year since I received my calling into missions, 14th year since God showed me Greg as a partner, and the 7th year since we arrived in Malawi for full-time missions. Now, during that time, we have tried to find seasons of rest to re-center and re-focus. For every 6 months in Malawi we try to set one aside for a future trip back home, but that furlough time is less of a sabbath and more of a taking on of a mantle in another country, a catching up of things behind on there. So coming into this new year, as I try to think of new directions and resolutions, I keep thinking of verses about how important it is to have a sabbath of rest, and of how even land finds time to lay desolate and enjoy its sabbaths after years of pushing too hard.

I know I’m not going to take a year off of work, just working 4 hours less last Friday drove me into anxiety. But I have been thinking of what I would do if I had a full year to rest and grow and not worry about achieving. I would read books and grow in my knowledge. I would spend time outdoors and caring for my body. I would grow in my relationship with Greg. I would enjoy quality time with others. So I’m thinking of how I can do that intentionally this year, even if I am not away from work on a sabbatical. On one hand I can justify an easier year this year, since I took few vacation days last year and worked a lot of holidays the year before. I could work a half day every Friday and still come out even at the end of the year. Provided I can keep from being anxious about it.

The reason I struggle with days off is because I have been working 10-12 hours a day. I get very excited about my work and I have a hard time letting it go. I keep working until the adrenaline is receding and I can do no more. That’s when I aim to work 8 hours a day. So this last week, I tried aiming for 6 hours a day. Some days I worked 8, other days I worked 6, and by the end I could confidently say that I had taken a full day off, all things averaged together. I also read 5 books and 10 journal articles, and met all my physical activity goals.

I’m trying. It’s three weeks into the year and I haven’t written any systematic resolutions, but I’m thinking them through and getting ready. I have some smaller goals, I have some bigger goals. But if I could stay intentional about not overworking, and taking time to rest and grow, and finally catching up on all those missed vacation days, I think I would be really excited to see what this year could bring.

Power Outage

Our power went off 46 hours ago. Yes, I am counting. It went off at lunchtime before my clinic on Thursday. I was ten minutes too late to heat up lunch leftovers in the microwave. Usually power comes back on by nighttime, but this time it wasn’t. We have two solar panels powering a couple light bulbs and enough battery backup to power a computer and our internet, so we were doing OK the first night. By Friday morning we started moving cheese into the freezer. We don’t have any fridge power backup, so we systematically go through our food, eat what we can, and toss the rest. This time, the casualties were the frozen bananas, mangos, and strawberries which I was hoping to use for smoothies in warmer weather. I think our mozzarella cheese was going moldy before the power outage. I treated myself to a $8 stovetop kettle and guzzled tea like usual. We went out to a very nice $20 dinner – our compromise for not investing in an expensive generator or fridge backup system. And without a fridge we had to eat our leftovers quickly – they become breakfast the next day. I spent time outside and limited use of my computer, keeping everything on power saving mode. Greg called the power company a half dozen times, the issues are often not known, and surprisingly the company does respond well. When he finally got through, they said they are working on the issue.

By the second morning, Saturday, we knew we had to step up our efforts. It was time to buy a bag of ice and eat everything left in our fridge that we could. I made a soup with all sorts of veggie pieces, and we had grilled cheese with more of our cheddar than we should. Later, Greg heated a frozen quiche using a couple of pots and boiling water. We don’t know if we will get power again before the end of the holiday weekend, so we can’t buy much food. But that also means we might be able to go out to lunch on Sunday. I’m sure our water heater is getting cool, so I’m trying to decide whether to wash my hair sooner or later. At least we still have water. It’s hard not knowing if or when the power will come back, not knowing how long our backup battery will last. Last night I accidentally turned on lights in three rooms at once, and the battery started beeping. So we are close to our limit, I can tell.

It makes me feel a bit out of control, it is hard for me to plan my day. We are trying to make the best of it, like camping in our own home. I don’t like it when the stress makes me snappy. I don’t like seeing food go bad. But our worms were starving because we don’t give them good food scraps, and I needed less screen time anyway. So we have plans for the next few days. If power stays out more than 4 days, and that might be a record for us in our 6 years here, we are already thinking of inviting ourselves over to a friend’s house. We know that the blackout is limited to our area, so across town our friends might have warm water and a place to charge our phone. Always an adventure here, but never quite the adventure we expect. I wish I could say that I was always looking on the bright side, thinking of how fortunate we are instead of our lack or the uncertainty. But this does bring out some of the worst in me, a realization that I get stressed when I cannot plan or control. Our poor Bear dog can sense it, he goes in the garden, digs a hole, and tries to hide in it. It’s a wakeup call for me. Time to take things one step at a time. Time to read some books, get some exercise, and maybe take a cold shower.

In the end, our power was out 60 hours. Praise God, our backup batteries didn’t die and we were able to keep the lights on and the internet going throughout. We had to empty most of the perishables out of our fridge, and buy a bag of ice so we could keep our most important fridge foods cold. The ice didn’t melt before the power came back, and now our fridge is much more tidy than before. We still get power outages about 10-12 hours a day, but half the time we barely notice. We are truly blessed.