Earlier this year SALT hosted a two-day seminar with key members of the Malawi Prison Service Chaplaincy team.
It became apparent that the importance of chaplaincy as a distinct role within the service is not fully understood, and we undertook to start working with the team to change that.
Karonga is almost as far north as you can go in Malawi – about 12 hours from our Southern Region base.
Today, brother Raphael visited the prison there to leave some basic PPE and some Gospel literature. Here is his moving report of the visit:
Raphael reports that the task of producing all 2250 masks is now complete and distribution of these and the soap and pails to the remaining prisons in Northern Region will happen this week.
Each inmate will receive Gospel literature along with the hygiene items, so please pray that the Lord will use this to the blessing of many souls.
We again express our gratitude to Raphael and his team who have begun distributing the items purchased through the kindness of the Lord’s people.
Pails, soap and masks have already been distributed in Chitipa and work is underway to sew masks for the remaining five prisons in the region.
Each inmate has also received a supply of Gospel Literature.
Thanks to everyone who has given support to this valuable effort.
The government in Malawi has just re-introduced prevention measures designed to slow the progress of the virus – many of them measures which were lifted a month or two back to facilitate the Presidential election. This U-turn has caused considerable confusion about the issue.
Like everyone else, the work of the Trust has been adversely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, but we are grateful to the Lord that none of the directors or local volunteers have so-far contracted the illness.
The above images show the Prison Officers’ sleeping quarters and the Training Centre kitchen.
Although well-established within the prison culture in the UK, chaplaincy is still in its infancy in Malawi.
It was a privilege to spend a couple of days with key officers within the chaplaincy team, who work with limited resources for the spiritual and physical care of inmates.
We put the final touches to our latest consignment of Prison Hygiene Packs this afternoon. 7 pallets with 133 cartons (approx 3000 packs) will be picked up tomorrow and taken to the premises of Revival Movement Association to be consolidated with the second part of our literature shipment, and onward to Malawi this weekend.
If you’d be willing to help with this ministry, please get in touch. https://saltrust.org/pack/packing-instructions/
Prisoner welfare in Malawi suffers greatly due to resource constraints, with clinics under-funded and under-staffed.
Encouraged by the great response to our annual MGO effort, SALT is considering the possibility of assembling a small team of health practitioners to conduct a series of mobile clinics within some of the prisons that we operate in.
