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.