Michael Dant's Blog

I have wanted to write for so many days now. I could use the standard excuse that “ I’ve been too busy” and if ever that excuse were true, it would be true these last two weeks. We have been grinding out the work; finishing rooms, completing the plumbing, for not just the 8 rooms that we will have the California mission team staying in but for the entire orphanage. Most of the electrical has been wired in, the gazebos are built though not roofed. The water tank tower, a 10’plus columned structure with poured slab platform will be complete before I leave. The septic tank and soak away (their version of a drain field which consists of a 6’x8’ deep cylinder formed by laying circular courses of brick and constructing them so that between each brick there is a space a half brick wide) is also complete. The soak away tank is completely porous. The liquids run off of the top of the septic tank through a piece of 4” PVC much like the US version. Then the liquids pour into the soak away tank and then they run into two 8’ deep by 13’ long trenches which are filled with porous basketball-size stones. It is great for areas where space is limited. The plumbing will be ready today and I will test this theory.

So, it is true, we have been busy. We have worked hard, we have gone to bed weary but there have been other issues to keep me from writing. Mostly I have been sick at heart. Sick because while so much good was being done by the people on this project, there will always be those who wish to take advantage.

Nearly two weeks ago, we had an attempted robbery. For some reason, which is still under investigation, two of our four guards did not come to work that evening. Not too long after dark, 6 thieves came across the wall. They were able to steal two, 3’ pieces of PVC, the pieces which extend from the elbow on the outside drain which joins to the main drain. Hardly worth the trouble I would think. The area is well walled and the interior of the building secure, that is why they were not able to get more. The true tragedy to this story is that the remaining security guard confronted one of them with his Panga knife, a large machete used mostly for cutting sugar cane. He bravely faced these six, himself alone, and he surprised the first one to come toward him around a corner. What is uncharacteristic about this part of the story is that normally, even the thieves here are not violent; normally they just want to flee. But not these six and not on this night. After he surprised the lead man and before he himself could react, he was attacked. They cut him deeply in several places on the arms and leg. But worst of all was the gash from above the top of his forehead to his nose. This was the blow that nearly killed him. He went to the government hospital. There the doctors face a caseload of 500 to 1. I’ve visited there and despite the efforts of a young OB/GYN that I know, it is no cleaner in that hospital than the bottom of my parakeet cage. We sent him to a private hospital for treatment as we saw that his condition was worsening. I felt bad for him. He was nearly mortally wounded protecting me and the property here. I felt responsible for him. But I did not cry for him, because I did not know him. Oh, sure many nights I would fix the guards coffee and in true Christian spirit of service I would bring it to them and chat with them. But honestly as I looked at this man, and saw that he looked like some Frankenstein caricature and I wasn’t sure if I had ever spoken to him at all. I felt pity. I felt sorrow. I even felt some guilt. But at what level and at what depth? I had to admit that I was not personally involved. I had not taken my relation ship with him personally.

Shortly after this I began to think that I was making errors in my book keeping. We seemed to be missing some money. At first I thought it was theft, but if that were true it would have to be someone very, very close. So I spent nearly two weeks going over receipts and re-figuring and worrying and not sleeping and not blogging. I had mishandled some money or else someone that I loved and trusted was betraying the ministry…and I was taking it very personally.

There was someone new to us, someone not yet tried, someone new to ministry. This person walked with me and prayed with me over the last 2 months. This person shared meals with and slept in the room next to mine. We talked intimately about things material as well as spiritual. But I knew that it couldn’t be him because the personal relationship that had grown between us was honest and sincere. He had gone through so much to be a servant of Christ surely this duality could not exist in his heart. I thought all of these things until he was caught. The details are not important at this writing. Only that he was caught and the money is being retrieved. I was angry, I was outraged, and I was hurt, I was taking it personally.

I began to think Cassidy Magreta and the orphanage at Mountain View. Because I had visited there I became rapidly and closely involved with that man and the staff and children there. They showed me love I received it and returned it. I was taking it personally.

When I first came here I bought a pair of local chicks. One of them died within a few days because though it was warm here a day old chick needs heat for the first 72 hours. The remaining black chick bonded to me. It thought that I was its mother. I had to stroke it at night in box in the tent to get it calm enough to sleep. If I put it in another room it would chirp without ceasing until it was near me. But she grew too large to use in my ‘Gospel Allusions’ presentation so I bought more chicks. These chicks are of the manufactured variety. They are yellow and the locals call them ‘English chicks’. They are as aloof and distant as their name implies. I lost one of these chicks. It too passed into the great coop of eternal chicken rest. I was not moved. No matter how well I treated these chicks there was no response, I had only the undying love of my little black chick.

On a Sunday, two and a half weeks ago I came in from church and my chick had been tortured and brutally murdered. At first I noticed the board that I used to block her in her room was gone. Obviously knocked over by a hasty retreat. I called for her and no answer came. I looked in the room and it was as if I stepped into the filming of a CSI episode. There was my chick lying dead in her water tray, her neck broken and shaved clean. I rummaged around in the grass nest that I had provided for her and found one of my disposable razors. Frank Maini and I after some investigative work found that a six year old boy, bored of church, began wandering the grounds and found access to the area where I shower and where the chicken was kept. I wanted to weep for my little friend…I did not, but I wanted to. I wanted to take a belt to the child responsible for the act…I did not but I wanted to.

What was the difference between the ‘English chick’ and the local chick, I was taking it personally. What was the difference between watching some guy on TV raising money for an orphanage and visiting Mountain View? What was the difference between not being heart broken over a fallen hero and then letting my heartbreak over a betrayal? It’s all about how personally I make it, and how personally I take it.

Anger and pain are only the signs of a relationship where there has been some time invested. A passerby on the street cannot hurt me, not until I have let him into heart and home. Is this why today people are so guarded with there relationships, is this why we are so careful with our emotions? Is it because we fear the investment of ourselves may cost us more than we are willing to pay? If the answer is yes than I think that God takes that personally. We won’t invest in much more than ourselves and our own desires. And I am the chief sinner among you. I usually only want what I want. And too many times my motives for doing good are tainted.

I can hate and be angry to the man who made me look foolish in my trust for him. I can demand recompense from the father of the child that ruthlessly killed my pet. But I must stop to think… I must remember my past, both distant and present, and then I must cry out “Please, help me lift the plank from my eye because it is so heavy that it pins me to the ground and I am paralyzed by it”. Shall I demand justice or shall I demand mercy? Whatever my demand let me always remember that I am judged by the standard at which I judge. Oh God, release me from this ‘body of death’, sometimes it and the sin of my own hypocrisy are more than I can bear. Even though I have been forgiven and washed clean why is it that I do those things that I wish not to do. Why am I like the dog that returns to it’s own vomit and the sow that returns to wallowing?

My sin and yours…God takes that personally! It is an affront to him. It is a stench in his nostrils. He takes it so personally that the only way to keep wretches like us from eternal damnation was to suffer for us. Have you taken that personally? I just realized today, all over again how much I need to. How much I owe Him. How much I need Him, and how undeserving of all of that I am. Because there is no difference between that wicked little child or the conniving thief and myself and I can’t help but take that personally. Jesus did for me.

Though it is hard to find time to see much of this country I am told by some of it’s many stunning features. There is the largest mountain in central Africa, Mulanje, which shoots almost straight up until it is lost in the clouds then stretches as a single wall of granite for untold kilometers. There is the great plateau that sits like a titan’s table so far above all, as it’s edges, like a tablecloth, cascade perfectly to the desert floor. But there is one feature that seems to stand higher than the rest…a man named Cassidy Magreta. A man I am sure would be offended to be written of in such a way. Nonetheless a man of stature in God’s eyes.
It is and never has been my purpose to puff a man up, to flatter or give undue praise, but in Cassidy’s case I will make this small exception. Cassidy is a humble civil servant, an employee of the government here in Malawi. He earns k20, 000 a month. After taxes that comes to k16, 000 a month. That’s $131.57 in U.S. currency. One Hundred Thirty-One Dollars and some change. And what does he do to earn this government stipend. He takes deaf children and trains them for life.
Eleven years ago he was assigned to open the Mountain View Orphanage. This, when first built, was a lovely, modern facility built by missionaries on forty beautiful acres. On a clear day you can just see Mt. Mulanje looming in the distance. Unfortunately the missionaries built it to give to the Malawian government to run. The government because of a lack of funds in turn let it begin to fall into disrepair. Someone finally decided that they would lose it to the jackals if they did not do something soon. So they sent in Cassidy a teacher, not an administrator, who had just finished a course in teaching the deaf.
Cassidy was first led, by God, to make this not just an orphanage, but one for the deaf (none such existed before) and not just a government orphanage fulfilling the minimum government requirements but one which equips it’s ‘disabled’ graduates to have a productive and fruitful life spiritually as well as physically. He could have entered into this task with all the rigor of most underpaid government employees, but he saw this as an opportunity and mission from God.
Let me first begin by telling you that although this is a Malawian government institution, they supply very few funds along with only a few of the twenty-some salaries necessary. This is why all of the 18 teachers have other duties such as plumbing, maintenance and livestock Then there are several nuns onsite because there is some vague agreement with the Catholic Church, and the nuns are teachers in only 2 classes that I observed yet try to have control over the entire facility. So Cassidy has 2 authorities, which are providing very limited resources, to answer to, yet he has to find additional resources to maintain all of the minimums.
It was early in his tenure there that he received a donation of less than $100. The nuns expected him to fill the nearly empty pantries but instead he bought several hundred chicks and feed and medicine. These they raised to produce eggs which they sold to buy more chicks to produce more eggs to sell in order to build a proper coop which here is called a ‘kraal’ (I think that it is Dutch and may have the same root as our word ‘corral’)
The problem that he now faced was that while the children were learning the valuable skills of animal husbandry they were too tired in the evenings to care for the birds and collect eggs. He did something revolutionary once again. He petitioned the government to rewrite their curriculum guidelines to include the care of these animals during regular class time and to deem it as ‘vocational education’.
Next… more chickens, these are now raised to sell and to be used in the orphanage as meat. They also raise ducks and last year bought 4 calves that will begin to produce milk in June, for the orphanage and for sale in the village. They have planted and tend a small Blue gum tree forest to make charcoal for cooking needs and to burn for heat that the chicks need to survive their first 72 hours. The picture of the small tree is a macadamia; they have planted a grove of them as well. They plant maize (corn) and the children are responsible to tend those fields in addition. He was recently given 2 boxes of carpenter’s hand tools and has begun to train the children in carpentry. (I’ve sent a picture of some of the stools and seats they make in order to sell) A donation of 12 sewing machines has helped to begin a sewing shop where they are making clothes to sell as well as their own school uniforms.
For Cassidy, a strong Christian, there is always another project, always-another goal but never for himself. His utmost concern is--- where will the next meal comfrom for these children. How will they be cared for when they are sick, they have no medical expert on campus and can’t even afford Malaria medicine? How, without some benefactor, will those children who could benefit from a hearing aid ever experience the joy of a movement by Beethoven, the song of a Night Thrush or a human voice saying, “ I love you.” “How have I provided for them?” he asks himself daily “When they walk out of these gates have I done enough to help them survive, yes and even prosper?”
All of this is not so impressive by American standards, but here it is a true miracle in the making. Without Mountain View these intelligent smiling faces would be only at best some sad and distant memory. Some orphans in Malawi survive, but they are the strongest, the most resourceful, the clever ones… not these, not the ones I’ve seen and spoken with today. These because of their disability would have most likely been abandoned, left to perish in some filthy alley or some remote field, but today because of this government worker that I call friend and brother they succeed and they thrive.
When Cassidy and I first met nearly 3 weeks ago he pledged to help the Acts III orphanage in any way he could and I know that he will. He has done amazing things here with very little and I have seen first hand that organizations come from around the world to study his methods and seek his advice yet he is willing to take us under his wing. Ironically, it seems that they come to see what they can take away; rarely do they come to give. Today I have given him a pledge, a pledge to help them as well… a pledge not to walk away and forget. I want for us to be different. I believe that if we hoard our resources selfishly for our own project that, that is the thing that hinders God from blessing the project here! I see plans being made and I see walls being plastered but I also see ones in need and a great institution sitting precariously and teetering upon the gifts of a few and the diligent efforts of this one man. I can give you a list of their needs. They are not so great that they could not be easily met by a few of us. If your heart is so touched contact randy@acts3.org or me at Michael@acts3.org.

04/30/08 - Wednesday
I WONDER…
The orphanage job-site is becoming home (in it’s own way) to me now. When I return from town in the afternoons my chicks are always glad to see me get home. The remaining black one I named Bob because of his erratic chicken-like head movement (Oh that’s right he’s supposed to do that.) Things at the site were moving well but I’m experiencing another slow-down, The word around the site is that if you slow down that you will be given a raise in order to speed you back up again. I will go to them in the morning with my walking stick (a worn out African hoe handle which looks something like a 3ft. long peace pipe) and I will give them the ‘walk-softly-but-carry-a-big-stick-speech’ and then I will tell them about my father’s mule who, before he would pull the wagon, had to be rapped soundly on the head with an axe-handle. Dad would say, “ The mule wasn’t really stubborn…you just had to get his attention. Other than that I think things are on task and I sent some pictures along with the last email to Randy so that you can see the progress.

One of the pastors, Emmanuel recently lost his young daughter and nearly lost his wife as well, in an auto accident that he believes was deliberate because he left the religion of Islam. He was a man under Jihad because he had been hand-picked to be one of three ruling Imams for the country of Malawi and this was not the first attempt to harm him and his family (a fascinating story for another time) and Randy found him dying, of what some diagnosed as possibly AIDS.

While Randy was doing street ministry with some of the pastors here, Emmanuel’s mother beckoned Randy to come and pray for him. The man was covered with sores and lesions. Randy did not want to touch him but the Holy Spirit kept telling him to ‘put your hands on him and pray’. When Randy obeyed, Emmanuel began to be healed immediately and was soon walking around; the sores disappearing as well.

This story seems, incredible and unbelievable but it is true! I prayed for a Hindu woman in India, in a crowd, at her request. She was on her knees in front of me when she asked me, as a hundred others did, to pray for her. I prayed, and then moved on. For some reason because I was a Christian from the US even the Hindus thought that I had some extra power…But I have no power nor is there any power at work in me other than at God’s choosing. When I was done praying my friends told me that the woman was a well-known cripple in the neighborhood… and that for the first time in her life she walked away unaided. I had no sense that anything had happened or that my prayer was particularly powerful the point is that this had far more to do with the woman and Jesus than it had much of anything to do with me, yet God moved according to this woman’s faith. Whether she accepted Christ that night or before or after I do not know. I only know that she was healed.

We have pastors here who have witnessed great healings but we have many who, though faithful in prayer, have not. Some live and some die, how does God decide? Who could possibly understand that in this lifetime? No one can, but the mystery

That can be understood is this: it is not how God decides, but how we decide. Case in point: this is the story of a man who came to this job-site for work, his name is Mr. Brown. He is from a village that takes 1.5 kwacha to travel to; I think that might be around 50 miles. He was lead by the lord to come and do children’s ministry with the pastor of a relatively new church in Ndrandi; the poor overpopulated township that borders the city of Blantyre. Ndrandi is where the orphanage is being built. Neither Mr. Brown nor the pastor is paid. He is working here to get enough money to move his family, meanwhile he is living off of the charity of people such as young pastor Bosco and Pastor Maini who have been giving him a place to sleep and food to eat.

Brown comes to visit me in the evenings, to be taught a new trick or technique. He has a great heart for children and desires to reach them with visual aids such as ‘Gospel Allusions’. Sometimes, it is after dark that I return from Blantyre and he is waiting to show me that he has practiced what I have given him the night before and is eager to learn the next part of the trick. We have become good friends.


Today as he dug the new hole for the overflow septic tank he did not say much, It was mid-morning when Frank M. told me that Brown’s wife called Frank’s phone earlier, to tell him that Brown’s 3 year-old daughter had died early that morning of Malaria. I brought him to the room and the 3 of us prayed for him, he wept, and I excused him from work until Monday and gave him transport and a little over to help with her burial. This is a man who loves children so much that to serve in a ministry for them he would leave his family in harm’s way. I wonder what Jesus will have to say about that? Jesus admonished his disciples because they were critical of the time he was spending with some children one afternoon. He said, “ Suffer not the little children to come unto me!” and then he told them that for them to enter the kingdom of heaven they must “enter as one of these (little children)”. I wonder why in so many churches today children’s ministry is last on the list. I wonder why it’s always hard to find dedicated workers? I wonder why it always has the smallest budget? I wonder why it is treated as a baby-sitting service so that the adults can ‘get fed’ without interruption. I wonder why we don’t delight in the fact that these little ones will more easily be won to Christ than someone who has led a life of sin. I wonder why we won’t rely on this closing line to this poem: Heed these words, for they are heaven-sent--- ‘Tis harder to straighten the tree…once it’s bent. I wonder…

Tomorrow a man will bury his three-year old daughter, and if he could see the lack of dedication for children in our churches then I believe, with tears in his eyes, he would wonder too!

I am sorry dear reader because, as usual, I set out to make a point and have strayed to another. My original point was to understand how we decide who lives and who dies. There are so many times when these things are purely in God’s hands, but what about all the nearly infinite number of times that God puts the fate of others in our hands. Cain wrongfully killed his brother Abel than defiantly asked God “Am I my brother’s keeper?”. Do we secretly ask the same question when we feel the tug of God’s spirit to ‘give to’ or ‘spend time with’ or sacrifice some small portion of our blessings. If we want to know what God really thinks of the church of this age we have only to go to the book of Revelation, to the end of chapter 3 and read about the church at Laodicea. This is the church of today, which God is not particularly pleased with.

Mr. Brown’s daughter could be Malaria-free for 6 months for less than 2 cents, for 2 cents Mr. Brown could be tucking her in tonight instead of buying her coffin.

I did not know Mr. Brown in time to do anything about it, but I do know many children (children and the elderly are least likely to survive this disease) that I can protect. There are thousands just across the river from where I write this. I will be there distributing medicine as we’ve done so many times in the past. We know where there are two large suitcases with medicine that are currently tied up and we could use your prayers to have them released or you could contact Randy at randy@acts3.org to see if there is some other way that you could actually save a life.

I wonder if anyone will? I wonder…

Today I did ‘Gospel Allusions’ at the church in Nkolokoti, and then I spoke about healing in the church. This church fell apart for a time due to an indiscretion on the part of their leadership. A pastor did wrong to an elder and in turn that elder or some other, I’m not sure, took off with the church funds. While trying to recover from this they are thrown into confusion because the Nzungu’s that have been nurturing them have left.

Shawn and Heather’s ministry here has been a blessing to many and it is hard to understand how and why God will change a calling. One thing that we should try to understand about Him is that we will never fully understand Him, though we can fully trust Him. The people of this village needed, I think to hear this. I think that we should remember it, as well, when we see people, who we know are following God, suddenly change direction. Our first response is ‘Well I thought they should be working that ministry for the next 10 or 15 years. It’s been less than a year and they are already packing it in’.

There are some things that I know about my God and this is one of them; He will not stay in my ‘box’ for long. He cannot be predicted to the next moment or much less to the next decade. He will so often get us to a certain place for one reason and then change the reason because He knows he could not move us if we knew all that we had to face.

Maribeth came to Malawi, she thought, to look into working with another ministry; she did not know that the Lord was sending her to Acts III. I as a young man thought that I was moving, for a few months, from the Washington D.C. area for a temporary job in Georgia., until I moved back to Las Vegas. I had no idea, and probably would have changed direction, if at that time of such great personal immaturity, some one had told me that Georgia would be the land of my wife, the land where my children and grandchildren would be born and the land of my Salvation.

It is believed by the people of Ethiopia that, when Candace their Queen visited the court of Solomon, she returned with a son. It is tradition that this child was from the union between she and Solomon. That very blood line existed through to the days of the last king of Ethiopia; Haile Salasie. He and all of their kings were called the ‘Lion of Judah’ and to this day a lion, the ‘Lion of Judah’ is still found on their flag.

Ethiopia has an unusually large number of both Jews and Christians which for many generations have lived in this African nation. It may be that, because of an ancient tradition and heritage, on a particular day there happened to be returning from the temple in Jerusalem a certain Ethiopian eunuch who had a chance encounter with a disciple named Phillip. This eunuch was a man of influence in the court. Following tradition, he came many miles to worship in the temple of his forefathers. He thought that he was there to learn, study and worship in the way of ancient observance. Little did he know that he would kindle a flame for Christ in his faraway land. Thank God that He has a plan better than our own and that plan may change not according to our desire but his.

Though this entry is for Saturday it is really the evening of Wednesday the 23rd. I am racing to catch up with the blog, keep costs down, keep everyone working, provide materials, track finances, have an answer for every question, make meals, clean “the cave”, hand-launder, keep a daily job log, wash dishes, do ministry, say “no” a hundred times and tuck my chicken in at night. How does my wife do it? (By the way, honey, I now wash every dish as I use it.) What I really don’t get is how did Whitney do it and work in the ditches digging with the best of them. I am trying to follow his good example and to earn everyone’s respect by working beside all of the workers, as much as possible. I think I am doing that, but perhaps not, as I have not yet been offered roast rat; a delicacy, I am told, that he is certain never to pass-up.

We were taken to the airport today to see Randy off, driven by Pio, a tall extremely thin and grizzled faced older man who is one of Mahesh’s drivers. He is a simple and kind man like so many of the few remaining older generation. I was thankful to Mahesh who, although he is second generation Malawian, still has the gift of hospitality that we saw displayed toward us so many times in India. That culture has so many things right, they are so close to living a righteous life but still depend upon their own works for salvation.


Mahesh is a truly kind and loving man, not just to friends and family but to strangers in the street as well. As many beggars occupy the streets of Blantyre as any third-world nation and no one ever gives them anything. The reason is many are professionals and as soon as you give to one they are on you quicker than a seagull on a french-fry in a McDonald’s parking lot. What is unique is that Mahesh seems to have some unspoken rule about those who come in to his hardware supply store who are actually needy and those who are not and there is a slow and orderly stream throughout the day of the needy which he gives to, though he doesn’t give a great deal to each it certainly adds over the years. The book of Isaiah proclaims that our righteous deeds are like filthy rags to God without a right relationship with him first. There was time for me and perhaps also for you when I thought it was enough to please God through the righteousness of my filthy rags.

Later I will tell you about how in 1922 at the age of 11, Mahesh’s father left India to come to the ‘land of opportunity’. No not the U.S.—Malawi! And seeing where Shawn and Heather planted… fruit is ripening.

L.G.
Julie’s blog the other day and what I saw today gave me something to reflect on. The messages are on a similar theme but different perspectives. Julie talked about the difficulties in serving Christ and that the trials of life are, in part at least, “the good life”. So what is the different perspective?

I recently discovered on this, my third trip here, that there is more going on than is at first obvious. I pointed to this when I mentioned the luxuriant lifestyles of people ranging from “retired corrupt government officials” to white missionaries. I know that there is and always have been a separation between the rich and the poor, Jesus said that ‘the poor you will always have’. I don’t know why it bothers me more here than at home, it maybe that I just never saw it coming. In my previous visits I had seen a smattering of large estates behind brick walls and reasoned that there must be a very small percentage of elitists per capita. But what has smacked me right upside my head is this entire culture that is separated, and that I was too ignorant to see. There is much more here than a mid twentieth-century city and it’s nineteenth-century suburbs trying to catch up to the present. There are two such distinct socio-economic structures that they could almost be described as being in two different dimensions. This is apparent to me now wherever I go.

I go to a vendor in the street who is set up next to a half-naked beggar and I can buy oranges or bananas picked fresh and wild from the mountainside and at the same dusty table I can buy a cell phone and have my minutes toped off. The streets are filthy with an unpleasant potpourri as I turn a corner to go to the Internet café to download this blog and see a four-year-old girl pull down her pants, squat and urinate in the street. The thing that I was missing, the thing that I had to discover is that I can hop on a crowded sweat and chicken-stinkin’ mini-bus and for 60 kwacha (about 39 cents) I can go to the Game store shopping center. I can shop at the game store (it’s almost half a Wal-Mart) or buy groceries at the Shop-Rite, but best of all I have found one of the places where the “nzungu” (whites) congregate. These are the ones who never cross the line except to collect a bill, and I am discovering day-by-day more such oases. But is it any different than where I come from? It might be, I’ll write some on that tomorrow.
The point that struck me is this…L.G.; it’s a brand name. They make all sorts of electronic stuff; chances are you’ve had one of their phones.

Well as I stood outside of the GAME store two black employees escorted a brand-new large-screen plasma T.V. to it’s excited and flushed owner (do you know how I know that he was flushed?) I watched as it floated heavenly by seeming almost to transcend the wobble-wheeled cart that bore its feather-like weight. I read the packaging. It continued to float. I noticed the brand name and their catch phrase…L.G.----Life’s Good! And I wondered is life good?

Webster’s says that when applying the word good as a value judgment then to be good is to be perfect. So, is life perfect? When using the word good as a moral judgment then to be good would be to be morally perfect. I put it to you again, is your life morally perfect. No of course not. But there was one life that was. Do you know who that is? Do you truly know Him and his good life?

L.G. has it wrong but it’s not really their fault, life is good for those who seek the good life in Malawi or anywhere else. It is just how you define the word. You must encounter, as one of our former presidents had to, just exactly what “is, is”. If we think that the good life consists of the things of this world then, we are missing the real life that God has for us.

In Matthew 19, the rich young ruler came to Jesus and said “Good master what must I do to receive eternal life?” Jesus did not answer that question until he first corrected the young man. The man had tried to flatter Jesus. He was calling him good or morally perfect but should have realized that Jesus could have been like so many teachers of his day, full of corruption—this man did not know he was standing in front of the Son of God, yet he called him good. Jesus said that there is no one but God that is good! (You are looking at God in the flesh, you just don’t know it.) Next Jesus told the man to obey the Law (commandments). The man now proved himself to be a liar by answering that he had obeyed them all since his youth. (Have you ever gone a day or a week without breaking even one?) For the final blow Jesus exposed this man’s idol, that thing which kept him from seeing God and truly knowing Christ. His money was not the problem as money and possessions are not our problems. God can bless a man with great wealth, He did it with David and Solomon and Abraham and so many others. The problem is our attitude to it. Do we desire it, do we lust for it, does it drive us…then it is an idol and it keeps us from God. The bible tells us to “seek the kingdom of heaven first and all these things will be added unto you”.

There is no problem with what we own as long as it does not own us, there is no problem in seeking the “Good Life” as long as it is the perfect life of our savior that we seek first. Jesus finally told him to do what was impossible for the young ruler—to sell everything that he had and give it to the poor! But he does not ask us all to do that, only those of us for whom it is an idol.

All that we have we may keep as long as we have no brother who goes cold and without food tonight and as long as no child goes hungry and unprotected. Then we are allowed to covet this “good life”.

The mortar mixers are now coming in at 7:30am to have the mortar mixed so that the masons can begin, without delay at 8:00am. They use shovels not large pitchforks contrary to what some believe. For 5 to 10 minutes every morning Grey Mnunka gives job assignments for the day. The masons are now on quota. They must point one section of the perimeter wall every day or plaster the foundation of five sections of the wall to receive a day’s wages. The drainage channels for the exterior of the building have been sloped, plumbed and dug and will double as sidewalks when the weather is dry. Everyone is doing their part to keep costs down and we’ve brokered some discounts due to Randy’s refusal to allow Grey and Bosco to accept anyone’s first price. The Lord has really opened doors for people to help us and we are saving so much of the project money, ( admin. money is separate and raised through the thrift stores so that no contribution for the home is used for anything else) that we will come very close to completing enough of the construction with the $30,000 that we brought with us so as to make it livable for Maribeth when she comes in June!

We now have a price on a water tank and tower,which will increase the pressure from the weak trickle of ‘city water’ and will supply a surplus when the water is cut off. Yesterday the water went off for 24 hours and the power is shut off now for several hours almost daily.

The Senior Pastor Frank Maini and his wife Ester, after saving for a number of years to buy a small tract of land and on it build a three room brick house have decided, after seeing us camping out at the site, that they should do more to help their own. They are no different than anyone, they want a piece of land and a house to call their own but they were broken by the Lord and now are giving away their children’s inheritance. Today I go with them to have their property transferred to ACTS III. What an example of selflessness. If I wasn’t so awestruck I’d be ashamed.

This parcel of land is adjacent to but not located in a very exclusive neighborhood. I did not know that such places exist with such rampant poverty all around, though I should have known better. These are the kind of places where the walls are so high that you have no idea what is behind them as you drive by. This is a neighborhood with houses larger than a typical U.S. neighborhood. A neighborhood with dish antennae, air-conditioners, a golf course, manicured lawns, doctors, lawyers, retired corrupt government officials, and of course… white missionaries with two- and three-story homes and swimming pools.

(Hey, I got a swimming pool too, but then I wasn’t called to live amongst the impoverished of Malawi or was I? Maybe before I try removing the speck from my brother’s eye etc.).The point is that I asked Frank who, exactly, these people minister to. He didn’t know, and I certainly had not seen them anywhere around ( though, they might have been those folks that I see in the new Range Rover dropping off their kids at that fine new private school every morning). It made me realize that I did not fully understand what Pastor Kingsley meant (he was the chief that asked us to lead a revival at his village of 250, and 500 to 600 got saved, Praise Jesus!) when he told us on our first trip here that we were unique in coming to the rural villages because missionaries “just don’t do that”. Most places we went told us we were the first whites to step foot in their village in their lifetime.

Anyway I think I was about to tell you about the land transfer. Frank and Ester Maini, myself and Pastor Frank Gama, who came as a witness, walked to the village- whose name is on the transfer deed though I can’t make it out. We walked for about a mile and a half through the most beautiful hill country around to the backside of Mt. Nyambadwe (Nee-ahm-bod-way) the mountain just west of the orphanage site. We visited the Maini’s property and took a few pictures, then headed to the chief’s house not more than a hundred yard’s away. The chief was holding court over some minor dispute, the government officially recognized their power to do so as late as 1990. The chief was not what you’d expect. He was a slightly rounded man, what some might call healthy, in his mid 40’s wearing a clean horizontally stripped t-shirt. He was jovial and good natured. He invited us to sit. There was only one chair in sight and he insisted that I sit there next to him. He sat only a few feet away from his concrete walled front porch as a silent man sitting across from him eyed us, then him, then returned his concentration to the Bawo board. Bawo is a board game that as far as I could tell is a cross between backgammon, chess, and marbles. It is played on a thick wooden game board about 2’x3’ with 4 rows of spaces, 8 spaces in each row and two home spaces near the center. The spaces are carved out of the board in bowl shapes giving it the appearance of a large wooden muffin pan. I gathered by the look on the chief’s opponent’s face that the loser might get struck upside the head with the Bawo board.

I joked with him about having to divide his attention between his game and official business and asked if he would blame us if he lost. He asserted that losing was not going to be a problem. I asked if he would like to see some I.D. and joked that I would first like to see his credentials. He jumped up ran inside an produced a picture I.D. showing me that, beside his chiefly duties, he was also employed as a cook for one of the local private schools. I guess chief’s tribute is not what it used to be either.

As Frank Maini borrowed a piece of lined notebook paper to inscribe the official document, I inquired to exactly how one becomes a chief ( just in case the market picks up for chiefs pay and I run out of ministry work). He told me how in his grandfather’s day men would challenge the old chief to fight, sometimes to the death, and the winner kept his title or became the new chief. As things worked out, once his grandfather had won, the fighting was outlawed and the title of chieftain was handed down through generations.

It was then that I realized that I was the only one to notice a large black hen pounce upon and capture a small wriggling ten-inch black snake. She quickly ran into the cornfield with it, as her rooster also noticed her catch and was in hot pursuit!

This was the third time I’ve seen this type of small black snake this trip and I know that in the hills there are some Black Mambas but I know that there are other varieties of snakes as well. I asked Frank what kind of snake it was. “Mamba” was his reply. Thinking that he might be pulling this old “nzungu’s” leg I checked into it. I found that if you want to see a large Mamba you must go into the mountains but they are quite plentiful in their infancy around the city. The difference is that they don’t get very large before something or somebody gets to them first. They are not tolerated by man or beast. (O.K. here comes the biblical parallel) They are like sin in that they when left to mature are deadly and dangerous. They are aggressive and venomous. Their poison rots our flesh until it is lifeless and useless. From the time that the Mamba slithers its first yard it is pursued and destroyed. Man nor beast will not abide it’s presence.----- Kill and destroy the sin that is growing in me Lord Jesus, while it is young and before it’s poison overtakes me.