Gloucester Knitters

An interesting source of help for children in Malawi One of our supporters in Gloucester has chatted to her hairdresser from time to time about the work in Malawi. The hairdresser herself has been talking to other clients also. As a result, one small group, who are avid knitters, have donated clothes for us to take and give to children in Malawi. The photo on the right shows the first batch of clothes that were given. Before very long more donations were received (photos 2&3 below).

Let there be Light!

After a period of 4 years since applying for and paying the telegraph company to install the poles and cables to connect our Village of Light to the National Electricity Grid, the work was completed on Sunday 16 March. This means that the solar installations, that have so far been the sole source of any power, will provide excellent back-up to this new connection to the Grid. This will ensure a new level of convenience as each house now has its own power supply. Thanks to all who have faithfully held this matter in prayer.

The telegraph poles go up in Nov 2013

This pole connects the houses to the national grid

Web Site Updates - February 2014

We have finished our revision and restructuring of this site. These are the main changes that you will notice:

• Improved navigation around the site. In particular, it is much easier to navigate to pages about important work such as the Joseph Project.
• New pages, including (for example) much more information about the work in Malawi.
• A complete overhaul of the information on every page, to ensure that it is now up to date.

We believe that the site is now more intuitive, and that you can find important information much quicker. Since the whole site has been revised, we recommend that you update yourself on the whole work by browsing right through it, even if you have done that before.

Floods and Famine

In early February Julian emailed the following:

We are in the middle of our rainy season - last week we had about 8 inches of rain - 5 of which fell in just one hour - you can imagine the damage that this does to dirt roads - driving around the villages has become v difficult and in some cases dangerous.

We are in the midst of a significant hunger season that is claiming lives. No one is unaffected. The majority of villagers now eat once a day at the most. We are now distributing food aid to the most vulnerable in the church and in our local village, in addition to our regular feeding programme (part of the Joseph Project).

Please do pray for us.

Break-through at Tsumba - January 2014

Tsumba is the village immediately next to our Village of Light farm community. Last year John and Cameron went to explore the possibilities of sharing Jesus in that village in the way they had found success at Mphalale village a few kilometres further away, which resulted in a strong church plant. Things did not go according to plan. Although there was some initial interest, when they followed up the interest had evaporated and nothing happened. Other issues, e.g. work on the farm and other church work, conspired to prevent further approaches to Tsumba until last December, when John and Cameron determined to try again.

This time the interested villagers included the wife of the village Chief and so a meeting was set up in the Chief’s own house and people came. Julian joined John and Cameron in meeting and teaching this group on a weekly basis through January. Break-through had happened in a village where there has never been a church! The photo shows how this group has almost outgrown the Chief’s house already! Similar outreach is taking place in the three villages of Chakana, Thom and Mchiwiri - please pray for break-through here too.

Farming Update

Julian writes: For some time now local farmers have been unable to afford chemical fertilisers. The land in many parts of Malawi is so infertile that without fertilisers farmers cannot grow an adequate crop. However, the prices are beyond their reach. Even good rain will not be enough to guarantee that there will be no famine next year and in future years too. Our response has been to implement simple conservation principles in our farming of the land we own. This year we saw a significant increase in our harvest of maize despite the drought. It was noticeable that in March when our neighbour's maize was turning brown ours continued to remain green and to grow. In fact it did not go brown until June! We have enough maize to meet all of the needs of the families on the farm and the 14 orphans living with them.

Our hope is that local people will copy what we are doing and so learn better ways to improve their soils. To a limited extent this is now happening without our pushing our methods. There is some hope that our example could make a difference to the lives of people around us. To this end I continue to explore agro-forestry methods of improving soil and land. As I watch the increasing desert-ification (a word that means exactly what it sounds like) of parts of Malawi (and especially our region) as trees are harvested but not replaced I have become convinced that we have to find ways of encouraging people to plant - and what better way than to demonstrate how the right trees used in the right way on a farm can save money (with less need for fertilisers), increase crops (providing food) and at the same time provide firewood (saving money and labour). We are beginning to experience all 3 benefits after just 2 years of tree planting. I plan to plant 250 more trees this year.