When the switch was flipped the kids flipped too!!!!

Stephen Makasu, age 17, said they played with the switch all night just to see the lights go on and off.

Special thanks to Steve Pruitt from Auburn, AL for going over and putting the electricity in. The kids are amazed and overwhelmed.

Alert. It’s 2010 and these children are just getting electricity. Not to beat us up too much, but we turn our air conditioning down low in this blazing heat of Summer. Enjoying the cool. Relaxing. We complain if we sweat.

These children are praising the Lord to have LIGHT for the first time in their lives!!!

We ought to be giving to the children AT LEAST the amount of our air conditioning bill each month. Right?

How about $100 a month? Gift $100 a month How about $500? Gift $500 a month

Let’s rescue more orphans!!!!

Blessings!

Paul

Mtendere Mom Sponsor Click Here

Child Meal Sponsor Click Here

Child School Sponsor Click Here

It has been such an exciting time at the village! Many of you are aware that one of our sponsors, Katie Sanderson, who is a nurse is here doing first aid classes and physicals at Mtendere. 2 weeks ago she was very sick and had to go to South Africa due to kidney stones. She is back with us and doing wonderful. The kids & staff gathered together every day to pray for her until she was back on Malawi soil. They truly love and appreciate ALL who come and serve!

The past week we have been blessed to have 27 sponsors come to Mtendere and serve! The volunteers have been really focused on giving the children extra classes to help them pass their exams this upcoming week with flying colors! We have also had many wonderful nights with our teen girls during our devotion time. Many of our volunteers shared their life story with them. The girls were amazed at how similar we truly are to one another. They were very open about their hurts from the abandonment and abuse they experienced before coming to Mtendere. A lot of healing has taken place and has been absolutely beautiful (o’congola)! God is truly at work!

Also, on Saturday the children threw a very elaborate surprise birthday party for ME ( with the help of little Alley, Katie, & Phyllis)! I have truly NEVER experienced such a party! Lots of speeches, songs (even my favorite song by Creed), prayers, presentation of birthday cards, eating, & dancing! Everyone was served rice, greens, chicken, & coke (This was a HUGE honor for an orphanage to have as a meal) and then a Malawian DJ came and played music and we danced until we couldn’t dance anymore!

This upcoming week is our big exam week for our children in grade 1-8. Please keep them in your prayers! Our house mother, Elinali, is still at home on bedrest. Also please pray for our new assistant, Towangay (She has taken the place of Ruthie & Grace who died in the tragic car accident in September). Towangay’s brother drowned on Saturday and she is burying him today. He was like a son to her. He had just graduated from 12th grade.

Thank you so much for your encouragement and prayers! I will post pictures as soon as I get a good connection with internet!

Dana Blanchard
100X Missions

Wow!

Thanks to Cecelia Brenny for organizing an awesome service project for the children of Mtendere Village, malawi Africa.

Each child's foot was outlines by Cecelia when she and Rick worked with Mtendere.

Each teen (over 200) got a set of footprints and went to local stores to buy shoes for the children!

Cecelia talking with christian recording artist Charlie Hall about 100X Missions

A couple of student look over info about Mtendere and purchase artwork the children painted.

Dana and I were blow away by the heart of this church and these teens. Thanks to youth pastor Ryan for hosting us and taking care of lunch at Pete’s.

Blessings!

Paul

At 6:30 AM today I received a phone call from Napoleon.  This morning
our Mtendere administrator, Grecian, and our two other employees,
Grace & Ruthie, were in a head on collision on M-1 as they were headed
into Lilongwe to buy groceries from Mtendere.  Grace & Ruthie did not
survive the accident.  Grecian is in critical care at Central Hospital
with “many fractures”.  A fourth person in the vehicle (whom we did
not know) was also killed.

You will recall Ruthie has been our house helper for many years at the
guesthouse and her smile was so infectious.  Her & her three children
accompanied our team on safari this summer.  Their father is not
involved in their lives.  We will be working with locals to look after
her children.  I am also grieved to tell you that Grace was pregnant
at the time of the accident.

The accident had only happened just several hours prior to Napoleon
calling me, so details on Grecians condition were still developing.
We will be in touch with Napoleon throughout the day and keep you
informed of any new developments.

Please be prayerful for the whole village and all the families as they
grieve the loss of Ruthie & Grace.  Pray that God will miraculously
heal Grecian.

As of 9 PM Central time on Monday night, Dana is en route to Malawi.  We were able to get her out on the 8 PM Delta flight to JNB.  She will overnight Tuesday night and be on the first plane up Wednesday.  This is the fastest we could get her there.  Please be in prayer for her safety in travel.

We spoke with Napoleon and Mama Kadzamira this afternoon (about 2 PM our time).  There was no update on Grecian’s condition except that they were hopeful.  We expressed to them our desire for him to receive the very best care and if he needed to be taken elsewhere we would cover the expenses.  I will be speaking with Napoleon again on Tuesday morning (our time) and will get an update.

Both Ruthie and Grace’s funerals will be on Tuesday.  Grace will be buried in Blantyre and Ruthie in Lumbadzi area.  It is typical in Malawi culture to bury within 24 hours of death.  Napoleon went and purchased their caskets this afternoon and collected their bodies to give to their families.  Please pray on Tuesday for comfort for their families, especially the children left behind.  Ruthie’s two youngest kids are named Precious and Bryant.  I cannot remember the oldest girl’s name.  Grace also had a young daughter who lived with her mother.  As I mentioned this morning, Grace was also pregnant.

http://www.nyasatimes.com/national/catholic-priest-four-others-die-in-road-accident.html

FRONT ROOM:  The Library!

 

  

The Head Teacher, Victor, made up some rules for the Library.  My favorite one is: “Books are Like Lovers, They need gentle handling”.

 
ROOMS ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE HOUSE:
.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
PLAYROOM                                                             
Originally we said the front room would be an office for our teachers however, the teachers asked to remain in the office and to allow the nursery to have two rooms.  We have found that this has been working extremely well!  We will be receiving more small children in January so I know the number of our preschool will grow.  Currently we only have 7 children in the Preschool
 
    
 
 
THE PRESCHOOL:
The preschool room has three centers defined:  Reading circle, Touch & Feel Center, & Alphabet & Numbers Center.

Each child now has his own blanket (hanging below under their names) and also their own napping mat.  Chewa & English words have been laminated and posted all around this room and the bathroom.  Special thanks to Ambassadors for Children, Robin & Phyllis Collins, Haley Blanchard, & Lari Long who put in MANY hours of love and labor for our New Preschool!

 
 
 

 
ROOMS ON THE LEFT SIDE OF THE HOUSE

STUDY HALL/ READING ZONE:
This room was meant to be the computer room, however since we don’t have computers yet we are using it as the Study Hall/ Reading Zone.  The Children love all the laminated maps of all the continents, the sciences, math, and reading posters.  
 
 
 
 
Future Computer Lab:
We have received many book donations.  The books below is what we have left after taking what we need.  Most of these books are for Secondary school. We will be distributing them to schools soon.  The teachers have informed me that they use all the European and American books as Supplementary teaching aids, but they shared with me that they desire most to follow the schools syllabus.  They are making a list of these books. These are specifically for the Elementary classes and are sold here in Malawi.  


 
 
 
 I don’t know if you remember our existing garden that we expanded?  When walking into the front gate, the garden is in the far left corner.  Gracian had the tractor plow on the right side for more gardens!  The pictures are of the growth of the left side.


 
 
Security Guard Gate House
Gate houses are very common here.  The guards have a hole they can see through to see who is at the gate.  It can be dangerous for a guard if an intruder has a weapon and the guard opens the gate not knowing whose on the other side.  Also the gate house is great for the winter and the rainy season.  The guards are very thankful for these (one at the front gate and one at the back gate).  They also are very happy for the home we have provided for them (house #24) and the mattresses.  The roof is a bit damaged from a storm 2 years ago.  The whole roof was blown off and then reattached,  so we will be using some of the project money to fix it before the rainy season.

Malawi friends,

Muli Bwanji!

We had a wonderful short-term trip this summer and great things are happening with our 135 children at Mtendere Village.  Every #1 spot in each grade at Lumbadzi primary school is now held by an Mtendere child!  With Dana Blanchard’s arrival to coordinate the work, we went from 66% pass rate to 88% passing rate.  Our summer team also helped to do a two day church leadership event, an HIV seminar for church leaders, a gospel meeting, and a youth rally for 300 teens in Lilongwe.  

This year a travel author stopped by Mtendere and did a piece on the village in conjunction with another group that brought a team to Malawi.  The article is on ABC News and you can view it at:

http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/story?id=5708629&page=1

Another video interview, with lots of Mtendere photos is at:
http://better.tv/bettertv/?cid=507869917&lid=1631239495&tid=1729330719

The Troy team did a three night VBS with the children.  They all were taught great lessons about Joseph.  The children enjoyed singing and learning new songs, watching the puppet show, and watching a skit about Joseph.  After this the children were split into 3 groups by ages and did activities and discussed the lesson.  The group of older kids were given a journal with their names on it for taking notes each day.  During their time together Bobby challenged the teens to dig deeper into the story of Joseph.  Many good questions were asked by the kids.  After the classes, the kids all came back together and sang more songs and prayed.The houses are looking very beautiful!  I had hoped to send this to you after the grass and road was in place but looks like it may be awhile.  The Electrician has been testing the wires that were originally put in by Moses and he has found more wires that need to be replaced.  This is going to take more time than we expected, but still hopeful that electricity will be finalized by mid June.  I have done the walk thru on all the houses and the construction crew and plumber are working on a large list i gave them.  The two teams that were painting only got 2 houses completed so I have decided to hire painters for the rest of the houses.  There is still plenty of work for our teams (including decorative painting in the kids bedrooms).   We have hired 5 house moms, 3 aunts, and 2 more security guards.  The training begins this week for all of them.  By the third week of June, the mothers will be ready to accept the new children.  Next week, Napoleon, Gracian, and I are going to a few villages who are in need and interviewing the Chiefs and Children to ensure that the children are truly orphaned or abandoned.  I want to be sure to train our staff how to “enroll” the new children into their new home (including sponsorship info).  Lari will be here during that time to help me.Although the Troy team has already traveled back home, we can still hear the kids sing the new songs and repeating the skits!  Bobby- your team is truly missed!  Thank you for all your hard work and for sharing God’s glory!

In April, Alley and I spoke to the kids about how we celebrate Easter in America.  My mom sent us some Easter egg dying kits for the kids.  So we boiled 300 eggs and the children came to our house and dyed eggs.  When I was explaining the dying of eggs, hiding the eggs, and finding the eggs, the kids were silent.  So when I told them after they find the eggs, they get to eat them, they broke out in applause and cheering!!!

The children and house mothers stayed at our house while, Alley, the teachers, and I  hide the eggs in the orphanage.  As you can see in the picture, the kids are running down the hill from our house to the village to find the eggs.  After they found their eggs, they hid eggs for their house mothers to find.  It was a very fun day!

The children color their eggs click for the picture.

Running to Find Eggs! click for picture

The students have received their new uniforms and they are looking sharp!

New uniforms! click for the picture

And the winter (yes, it’s about to be winter in Malawi!) coats have been distributed and the children are ready!!!

Winter Coats! click for the picture

The Children are very proud of the harvest from their maize garden they planted!  The maize is still wet and so now we are preparing it to be dried and then it will be ready to be taken to the maize mill.

A-maize-ing click for pictureLove from Dana and Alley

Moni achemwali & achemwene,

Alley and I are settled in Malawi Africa now!  Still having trouble with internet but hope to be in touch as much as possible.  Please email us at this new email account for the next year.  Also, kindly take us off your “forwards” list!  The connection is VERY slow and forwards make it difficult to receive all our emails! 

(Andesen came to Mtendere fragile and malnourshed. Now he is healthy and driving!)

The Month of January was a lot of adjustments!  Alley celebrated her 9th b’day and started a new school!  Fortunately she is loving school here!  Driving is very DIFFERENT here!  Not only am I on the other side of the car, but the other side of the road.  I got 2 flat tires in one week!  I have learned where the pot holes are now!  We have had only one snake under our bed! 

It is rainy season and pouring down!  We have been working on construction of the houses (only 12 more houses to complete), repairing broken windows, plumbing, roofing, and  working on getting electricity etc….

The kids are doing well.  We have had 5 kids with Malaria (out of 137).  There are many mosquitoes so keep the kids in your prayers. 

One quick story:

You know how we have all sat back very full from a meal and still have loads of food on the table and someone says, “it’s a shame all this food is going to waste, some kid in Africa would be glad to eat our leftovers”. Well I saw this Malawian man at a hole-n-the wall restaurant eating chicken and rice.  When he was finished, he stretched his arm through the bars on the window and two skinny arms of a street child reached in and took his left overs. 

It really made me stop in my tracks. I get to see our kids (all 137 of them) eat 3 meals a day, and I feel so satisfied, so blessed and excited, and I have forgotten about these street kids.  A lot of people shun them everyday.  Know one wants to “raise up a generation of beggars”, so we all just pass them by doing nothing. Of course we don’t want to hand out money to beggars, but what this man did was a simple way of helping God’s children.

Continue to pray for Mtendere Village, but also please pray for all the street children, I have forgotten to inform you of in the past!

God Bless you all,

Zikomo Quambiri,

Dana