Saturday, April 16th, 2022
At this point I should assume I’m going to be giving a message in each place that I go. I don’t know why I waited to hear if my name would be on the schedule. Thankfully I had checked in with Haiton a few days before so I knew what to expect. I also had a handful of messages (perhaps 10 or 15) already written which would be appropriate for the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Matt, on the other hand, was only asked to speak a few days ahead of time. I guess I should have mentioned that he might be speaking at least a few times along the way. He did a fine job preparing some meat in due season for the brethren in the Lilongwe congregation for the Holy Day.
Haiton Thungula pastors the Lilongwe, Malawi congregation. At one point I thought half of the congregation was made up of his grandchildren. I still remember meeting Haiton Thungula, Cephas Chapamba, Osborne Liyao, and Gracious Mpilangwe at a leadership training session held in Zambia more than ten years ago. At that time the four of them were all deacons. Just beginning my career as a Speech-Language Pathologist, I was far from being a pastor. Although Lena had traveled to Zambia before, that was my first trip to the continent. I wasn’t sure if I would ever make it back. I’m thankful to still be working with these men in serving God’s people.
Lilongwe is the capital city and generally very crowded and very busy. Thankfully many people in and around the city were not moving around as much as usual because of the holiday weekend. It made our life much easier. Since he had to give the sermon in Nkhwazi, Cephas lent us his car for the trip to and from the city for the day. In 2017 I had driven almost the entire expanse of the country of Malawi, but I was most familiar with Lilongwe since that’s where Lena and I were based. Honestly I probably could have gotten to the church hall with very little problem just from memory, but it helped that we had been there on Thursday. Matt and I set out on the road at about 8am and made quick time getting into the city. We would have been the first people to arrive if it hadn’t been for Mr. Chitsime and Nester Phiri. Nester, one of the deaconesses in the congregation, lives in Salima which is east of Lilongwe near Lake Malawi. It takes her a long time to get to the city, but there is a spare room in the church building which she can stay in so she doesn’t have to worry about traveling on the Sabbath or Holy Days. Wilfred Chitsime, and older member of the congregation, also lives very far away and usually takes more than a day to travel to Lilongwe. He faithfully comes to services nearly every Sabbath except during the rainy season when the main road to his village (somewhere north of the city of Mchinji) becomes impassable.
Arriving at the church hall early and getting ready for services felt very familiar. In fact as soon as I began the sermon, I felt like I had never left. Having side-by-side translation still isn’t my favorite way to present any kind of message but it is necessary to help convey the biblical concepts more clearly to the entire congregation. Most of the brethren in Lilongwe speak English and Chichewa fluently but there are a few who do benefit from having a translator. Haiton translated for Matt and Howard Elia translated for me. From what I can tell, Haiton is very precise with his translation while Howard is fast and does his best to convey the thought rather than word for word. There are benefits to both methods for different concepts. For both messages we asked the translators to read the Bible verses from the Chichewa version rather than having hearing them twice when everyone can read the verses for themselves in their own Bibles.
Although many of the members expected it to happen, I had at least surprised them with the timing of the ordination of a deacon in the congregation. Francis Ngopola has faithfully served his brethren in Lilongwe for a long time. Since the only previous deacons from this congregation are now pastors serving between two congregations, it was time that another servant be given the acknowledgement and official responsibility to assist in making sure the people are adequately served. God has designed His spiritual body much like the human body. There are many parts and each part works together for the food of the whole body. When one part has need then another part has the obligation to assist.
After services Matt and I had a chance to fellowship with our brethren and share a few unleavened snacks. This gave Matt the chance to meet almost everyone and even interview a few of the brethren for an upcoming video project he will be working on. This time gave me a chance to catch up with individuals from the congregation. Getting to know their needs and their successes helps me as a senior pastor. If I am better acquainted with the lives of the individual members I might better be able to assist my fellow pastors in their work.
At about 2pm everyone gathered in a circle for a Bible study. Since I had covered 1 Corinthians 10 and 11 in my sermon I decided to continue on and cover chapter 12. The theme of this chapter is unity on the body of Christ. It’s a theme that God has laid out for His people to be reminded of especially during the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread. When we finished with the chapter I opened things up to questions. As usual, some individuals are more willing to ask questions in a group while others prefer to ask privately afterwards. The congregation’s we deacon, Francis, helped quite a bit in answering some of the questions. It was really great to see members of the congregation serving in various capacities in obvious and not so obvious ways (part of the message of the Bible study).
After the Bible study Matt and I stayed around until everyone was out the door including the pastor. As always it was lovely to see everyone even if only for a day. It made me feel like I was home again, except for the fact that Lena was missing. I’ve probably told everyone at some point that she misses all of them as well, and God willing she will be able to join me on my next trip to Malawi. One of a handful of people who stayed around for a little while longer was Esther Chilopora. Esther is a widow and a long time member of the Church of God. She and her husband, Dr. Sam Chilopora, were among some of the first few members of the Church in Malawi. She stays in contact with Lena through WhatsApp periodically. She always expresses her gratitude for the prayers of her brethren, and always reminds us that God continues to sustain her. Dr. Chilopora had died sometime during our visit in 2019. I was honored to have been able to speak at his funeral.
Matt and I grabbed our things, said our final goodbyes to Haiton and his grandchildren (only Mwai and Gloria were present), and drove off back through Lilongwe. The city has a series of traffic circles which can be misdirecting if a person isn’t familiar with the city. Thankfully I only got slightly turned around once or twice … or three times but quickly remembered where I was and the direction I needed to go. Heading to and from Lilongwe on our own, we only got stopped by police at checkpoints three times. Only twice did they ask us where we were going and only once did they ask us who we were and what we were doing in Malawi. It was a pleasant contrast to the handful of times we had to pull out our passports when we were riding with Cephas. As we left the city the sun began to set. Dusk seems to last forever in Lilongwe since there aren’t many large mountains nearby. The sun soon set and we were off dodging dogs, bicycles, motorcycles, goats, pedestrians, and potholes. We survived the drive and enjoyed a quiet evening back in Nkhwazi with the Chapamba family. I tried not to stay up too late packing since we still had a few hours in the morning to prepare for our trip to Blantyre.
– Lewis VanAusdle
Leave a Reply