Anna says: Give thanks for those who came to the first Bible class for secondary students today. This is a group I’ve long been burdened for because they aren’t really covered in any of our other classes, but until now I lacked the confidence in Chichewa.
The Bibletime curriculum is already proving to be a blessing in that regard.
Please pray for God’s word to bear fruit in these lives.
Stephen asks that we join in giving thanks for his safe return and for a very profitable trip to Malawi. Although he landed in Addis Ababa in a very serious rain and lightning storm, the return journey was otherwise long, but uneventful.
Brother Goodson asks us to pray for his son John (19) who was hospitalised yesterday with a recurrence of the problem he had a few weeks ago.
Health care in Malawi is very poor, so please really pray that John will get good medical attention and that the Lord will put his healing hand upon John.
Please give thanks for the hugely successful 4-day child protection training we did on site at Saidi last week.
This was very enlightening concerning the depth and extent of the problem of child abuse, and extremely informative on ways to address the issues in an African context.
Please pray too that what we have learnt will really inform the way we interract with children, and that it may ultimately result in outreach opportunities in our community.
Stephen will appreciate prayer as he starts the long return journey home from Malawi on Wednesday.
Also pray for the remaining couple of days of his trip, that he will be able to accomplish what he needs to.
Stephen has meetings today with both the architect and a chap whom he hopes will be able to help short out some of our IT challenges in Malawi. In particular, he’s hoping to be able to get the issue of powering the CCTV cameras sorted out once and for all.
The Saidi Building project hasn’t exactly been at a stand-still so much as a go-slow over the past few months.
We’ve had an exceptionally wet wet-season, and this certainly put the brakes on the building work. Which wasn’t a bad thing, really. As we’ve reported elsewhere, the spiritual work at Saidi has been growing steadily. Since MGO 2022, more and more children have been coming to the weeking Bible club. Similarly, the mid-week adults’ Bible has been growing, and we now have a Gospel meeting on site every Sunday morning.
Brother Goodson has a lot of responsibility for all of this work, which has been taking up more and more of his time. Recently he organised a program to visit each of the families to get to know them in their own homes.
On top of all that there was the huge task of distributing our 2023 Gospel Calendar – a major effort in itself.
Nevertheless, Goodson and his building team have managed to make good progress on the perimeter wall, which is now much nearer completion.
This continuous work has been an additional burden on Goodson, our de facto building project manager – one which he has shouldered gladly. However, we are all agreed that we must not allow the building project to distract us from our mission. The infrastructure is intended to support the mission. It is not the mission.
Going forward, we will have to find the balance between the cost savings we can achieve by doing the in-house, and the effect that inevitably has on our ability to press on with the spiritual work. Please pray.
In the meantime, we have been working behind the scenes. Our local architect, Jackson, is well on with the development proposal for the entire building project. This should be ready for publication shortly – watch this space. Jackson is putting us in touch with a Quantity Surveyor who will help us cost some of the major parts of the project. This will help us have a better idea of an overall budget for the project. We know it’s likely to be significant.
The prolific rains also prevented a drone survey of the site we had commissioned several months ago. Carl was finally able to do it last week when the Lord graciously granted a break in the weather. The results are incredible and will be of enormous help to the planning team. I have included some of the drone images in this article, and hope to share some of the more complex 3D modelling at a later stage.
Some months ago we started work on a maintenance workshop and store. It still needs to be roofed and finished internally. We aim to do that over the next couple of months, with a view to using it temporarily as a dormitory when we hold our Bible teaching conference in May (DV). We also need to refit our block workshop for the same purpose.
The building project team will also continue work on the perimeter wall. We want to section off the area where we intend to build a Gospel Hall, in such a way that it will be outside the main perimeter. And the section which runs along the eastern side of the site, next to the main road, needs to be raised with a steel railing on top of the existing block wall.
Apart from that, when we complete the maize harvest, we want to build some simple staff quarters. If we can finish that on time, they will also double as dormitory accommodation for the conference.
Yes – “Give Thanks: The Nthawi ya Baibulo (Bibletime) books have arrived” from the printer.
Anna adds:
Please pray for the five groups including us who will be using the curriculum, for help to get comfortable and use it prayerfully to ground children in the truth of the gospel.
Note: This is a very significant moment for the team who have been involved in the painstaking work of translation for well over a year now. This is Year 1 of 3. The experience gained from this should enable the process to go more smoothly in the future as the next two years’ material is translated.
Our new website, saltrust.org, is finally live.
