Remembrance Sunday, Nov 14

Today we had our final mission meeting after the church service. All four of us were there, George, Nicky, Libby and I. Being only two weeks away from flying out and having dealt with most of the formalities means that our attention is shifting to other practical questions.

We went through the itinerary once more, which looks busy. Pastor Danie will be driving us long distances on unmade roads to get from Lilongwe to Mocuba and then to Tete. We will also be crossing in and out of Malawi several times - border crossings and getting passports stamped could delay us quite a bit. Although each day is planned now, we know that we must be flexible and be guided by the locals, the circumstances and the Will of our Lord.
We also discussed if we should take the annual funds for Bernadette's field treatment medications in cash but decided that we should give the banking system one more chance to prove itself . . . . .

Another flurry of emails were sent out yesterday by Libby and me to Pastors Danie, Teixeira and Samuel and also to Bernadette, confirming some additional details of our plans.

I bought some orange frisbees on the internet yesterday. We have used them before in Ethiopia and in Mozambique. They are lightweight to carry and great fun to play with. The ones I ordered have the words "Smile ;-) Jesus loves you" printed on them and we hope that this will be a fun way of spreading the Lord's name.

The four of us are entering into a state of quite some excitement now. I'm sure we will all be thinking about the mission ahead of us every day this week. Arlene mentioned that some of the congregations we are visiting will be expecting us to lead a church service - now that should be an amazing experience, especially considering that their services can easily last 3 hours!!!

We are all preparing to speak about the Wordless Book, the Ten Commandments and the Christmas story. The ladies are no doubt going to be more resourceful than the guys in getting their audience to pay attention and they will be working with the women and children. George and I are slightly nervous about the prospect of working with the men and we are not quite sure how to connect with them if we can't talk about cars, bikes, football, computers or politics. Obvious, I hear you say, just talk about religion! . . . . .Good point.