In August of this year a team of 19 women and 1 man visited the Njewa, Mgona and Kawale communities of Lilongwe, Malawi through our partners Somebody Cares and Kawale Orphan Care.  In the first week the team split up between Njewa and Mgona and spent the mornings praising God with the widows and children through lots of dancing and singing.

Even though everyone felt the dancing could continue forever, we did eventually split again so that some team members worked with the children teaching bible stories and playing lots of games and the other team members sat with the widows in the community shelter, where all community meetings take place, and talked about basic health care, taught simple bible lessons and shared testimonies.  It was such a rich time of relationship building with both the children and the widows in these WOW communities.  The team enjoyed hugging the children and encouraging the widows in their everyday lives.

The afternoons were spent joining the home based care workers on their home visits with families in need.  We had a special treat for these families because we came equipped with materials to make beautiful Memory Books.  During our first home visits we would introduce ourselves, talk with the families, pray with them and share about our memory book project.  We would take pictures and gather family information such as names, ages, favourite foods, colours and bibles verses which would then be organized into a unique memory book to be left as a gift for each family.  I can’t tell you how impressed each family was to receive such a treasure.  It’s important to know that most children have never seen their own picture apart from the reflection they would find in a puddle or bucket of water.

Our home based care visits had each team member joining in on the normal tasks carried out by the volunteers such as mudding floors, carrying water, splitting wood, preparing food, pounding maize and washing dishes.

The Njewa widows have been working on their IGAs, (income generating activities) for about a year now and were so pleased to show our team their work.  We enjoyed sitting and watching their skilled hands work their crafts.  Some even handed over their half finished work so that we could try doing what they do.  It was with immense joy that we were able to be a part of these new small businesses that they widows had begun. 

Gloria Sululu is part of the widows group that is making blankets for orphaned children from the WOW patches Canadian women are decorating and sending to Africa.  She shares this: 

“You know I am now a tailor. I have a trade!  The uniforms the children wear are made by me and my fellow tailors.  I have a source of income now.  I even make clothes for women in the community.  This is life. I have a life now.  Thank you for encouraging us and believing in us.  We now believe in ourselves, we can do it.”

 It was a thrill to see the blankets being sewn while our team was in Njewa.  The widows who were sewing on the day we visited were just beginning their training with the tailor but they turned out to be great students because their blankets where beautiful.  The WOW team had brought over more than 500 patches, each decorated beautifully and prayed for by many women here in North America.  It was pretty neat to see these patches being turned into blankets knowing that a child would be spending  many hours looking at each patch and enjoying their unique patterns and colours. Because of these blankets, many children will no longer have to suffer through the cold nights.  

The second week of our trip took us to the Kawale community which was quite different from Njewa and Mgona.  Kawale is a community within the city of Lilongwe and is more of an urban ministry to those in need around them.  Kawale Orphan Care is run by a group of local pastors from surrounding churches and they were so excited to receive their first mission team.  They had many activities planned for us – in fact, more than could be done in any given day.  But we were pleased to see that they were so ambitious.  The pastor’s intent was for us to help the volunteers in their daily work and by doing so, learning just what it is like to walk in their shoes.  We quickly found out that there were some pretty big shoes to fill.  We spent time again each day teaching biblical principles to both the children and widows, helping to cook the daily meals for 100 children, carrying wood, hoeing fields, washing dishes and even playing netball with the volunteers.

 

It was just such an honour to see what God is doing in the WOW communities and to build relationships with the women, children and pastors in these communities.  Each member of the team came away blessed for having had the chance to become good friends with many of those who are sacrificing their lives to help others and we came away reevaluating their own lives.  It is really by the grace of God that we have the privilege each day to participate in His plan for the orphan and the widow.