1st February 2026
… 7:30am …
Coffee and breakfast complete, backpacks in tow, passengers in their seats. The men were headed to Lilongwe for the day. Cephas, George, Mr. Phiri, and I climbed in the car and headed for the highway, stopping briefly so we could get another two liters of petrol which we hoped would get us to a real filling station. Dalles and Rachel would be headed back to school by early afternoon. Apparently their teacher mentioned something about a presentation the next day. I started to say goodbye but was quickly reminded that we are planning to stop and see them at school on either Monday or Tuesday on our way to or from other places.
I never quite finished spokesman’s club. In fact I’ve never actually technically been in a spokesman’s club, at least not by that name. At the end of my teenage years and into my early twenties my home congregation (then located in Sedro-Woolley) had a sermonette class. My friend and I were the only young adults in the class and by the end, although we knew the basics and had both heard countless messages having grown up in the Church of God, I was only able to manage to put together a very short micro sermonette once.
I never wanted to speak in front of crowds. In fact I had terrible stage fright from the time I was a small boy. I used to try it anyway for some reason, reading my own terrible poetry at certain poetry nights in coffee houses in Bellingham. A few times I even wrote songs on guitar and put my poems to music, performing a handful of times at open mic events in different coffee houses. My fear really began to change thanks to some friends in college who loved to play music together in front of our friends. I would join them once a week for “The 808 Awards” (our campus apartment was 808). We would play music, sing songs, tell stories, give awards, and entertain our fellow students for about an hour.
Eventually the weekly awards show came to an end. We all graduated and moved away. At a certain point I headed to Cincinnati to attend ABC. At that time speech class was an extracurricular option. I started in the class but soon realized it wasn’t for me (I was also very busy since I had to work during ABC). I dropped out of speech class, finished ABC, got married, and traveled the world. I ended up in one of UCG’s Young Men’s Christian Leadership Clubs (YMCLC) in the Akron area, but I only made it partway through the assigned speeches when the club was dissolved for various reasons. Later on I joined the Cincinnati YMCLC and started over with the same speeches. The second year I was there they asked me to be the president and at that time presidents didn’t give speeches since they addressed the club weekly anyway. Before I was able to graduate from club I was asked to go into the ministerial training program and was sent out somewhere else to begin my training. By that time I was able to give proper length sermonettes and even started giving split sermons. But I never did graduate from any spokesman’s clubs.
… 9:05 …
I bring up the topic of spokesman’s clubs because today we planned to have a marathon spokesman’s club in Lilongwe which would include both experienced and inexperienced speakers. The inexperienced speakers, six in total, gave sermonettes limited to 12 minutes maximum. The three more experienced speakers were tasked with give a sermon limited to 40 minutes. There were a few individuals who were there as observers including Mr. Mvunguti from Monkey Bay who had traveled to the area with his son and a new attendee. Mr. Phiri came along as well, representing the potential speakers from Nkhwazi.
All of the speakers were asked to give their messages exclusively in English mostly for my sake, even though when they speak regularly they mostly use Chichewa with a handful of English words that everyone understands. Even though it turned out to be a very long day of sitting and analyzing messages, it was highly profitable for me as a senior pastor and for the participants. I’ve known most of these men for almost a decade. The younger men I met when they were still just boys. In the reports from their pastor I receive each month I see their names on the speaking schedule which makes me hopeful for the future of the congregation. But until this day I hadn’t heard any of them speak.
Thankfully we did stop for a lunch break in the middle of the marathon, only leaving two sermons for the finale. The ladies who prepared the meal were very much appreciated. I had forgotten to take photos of the men while they spoke, and in fact I didn’t even manage to get a group photo before everyone left. The lunchtime photos will have to do. After all the speeches were finished we had a discussion that involved some inaccurate thinking about names of God which actually started with those who first translated the Bible into Chichewa from other languages. We also had a brief discussion about the types of clothes we wear for Sabbath services and when we address the congregation from the pulpit. Malawi doesn’t really have a standard traditional formalwear for men even among the different tribes so the default has always been what the British wear.
… 7:45pm …
I remember looking at the time just before we arrived back in Nkhwazi. Mr. Phiri rode with us to Lilongwe but he had ridden his bicycle from home to meet us in the morning. This meant he would be riding home in the dark, lightning in the clouds potentially signaling rain. When we arrived at the house the power was out. Patricia said it had only gone off five minutes before we got there. This was the first power outage that I have experienced on this trip. They still do happen, planned or unplanned, but they are less frequent than in the past. We still had a pleasant dinner of butter fish and chips to end the day, but since the fans were off the mosquitoes were able to find us more easily so we headed to bed a little early to escape the wrath of the tiny flying creatures.
-Lewis VanAusdle
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