Hey everyone.

Firstly, I want to apologize for not updating sooner. Our computer crashed here at home, so I have not been able to tell you all about the past 2 weeks. I want to thank you for all the comments from earlier. I am doing well. I want to update one last time before I get home. I fly out this Thursday afternoon and I will arrive in Atlanta on Friday morning. HOORAY!!! The past 8 weeks have been AMAZING and I want to tell you all stories when I arrive home.

These are the past two weeks in pictures and words… I hope you enjoy.

1. At the Mvuu wildlife camp, I went on a safari… two actually. We saw all kinds of wild animals: Elephants, crocodiles, hippos, birds, warthogs and monkeys. On the second day I got sick as a dog. I couldn’t eat for days. It was very sad but I did see an elephant within about 15 feet of us. I enjoyed my time even though I was sick. Here is a picture from the trip. This elephant looks like he was smiling at us.

2. We have had over 80 students accept Christ as their Savior. Many of the students were at other schools but I feel confident that Heaven is rejoicing over these lost sheep found.

In addition to the almost 90 students saved, we have had over 350 students make abstinence commitments through the True Love Waits program. We taught a seminar at a local church one Saturday and had over 100 youth make the commitment. This is a picture of the people with their cards.

3. On the 4th of July, we went to the U.S. Ambassador’s house for this HUGE embassy U.S. picnic. All American citizens in the country with a valid passport could get in and have food and drinks. It was great to see and hear American English. I didn’t have to strain to understand the English. I really needed it. There were water balloon games and potato sack races. We ate hamburgers and hotdogs and we got into a water balloon fight.

4. The six of us led a youth rally for the Lilongwe youth. That was fun. We taught John 15 on the Vine and Branches. The youth at the gathering were really fun. Kayla and I performed a skit and everyone thought it was funny. I enjoyed it.

5. We went to the lake twice which was great!!! I didn’t know how much I needed a day on the beach. We had a great time playing in the water, playing beach volleyball without a ball and taking pictures. The second time we went, all six of us went snorkeling. I got to see all kinds of fish. It was AMAZING!!! This is me jumping at the lake. Not bad for a white girl huh??

6. The kids at my school are great. When I get back, ask me questions about Piriani, John, Robert and Lillian. They are my stories. I will always tell stories about them. This is my girl Piriani. She is 18 and accepted Christ on the last day we were at the school.


These girls are my closest friends here. Kayla is in the middle. She is from Tennessee and is my traveling buddy. Ruth is from Oklahoma. She is a nurse and really fits us well. I have really treasured having them as my close friends.


I told you last time how women carry their babies on their backs… this is me with Caleb on mine. His mom taught me how to tie him on, and then she let me walk around with him on my back. He was so much fun.


Another thing that Malawians do besides cram themselves into minibuses and walk long distances is eat sugarcane. Malawians eat more sugarcane than any group of people I know. It is kind of like peeling wood, biting off wood and chewing it to get all the juice out of it. The sugar that comes from the cane tastes like corn. I don’t like it, but this is a picture of me eating the sugarcane because I forgot our lunch one day.


This is just a cute little girl. She has Marasmus I think. It is either that or Kwashiorkor. Marasmus if I am right is a malnutrition disease where the people get plenty of calories but not enough nutrients, therefore their little tummies swell up and stick out. The other one, Kwashiorkor I think is the skin and bones malnutrition, where the people don’t get enough nutrients or calories. I may be wrong and they are swapped. This little girl’s stomach was sticking out really far under her dress. She was very brave to come and shake the azungu’s hand.


This was a staged picture to show you just how little time means to the Malawians. “I will pick you up at 1:30” means anytime from 1:30-3:45. Ruth and I decided to walk from our school in the direction he was going to pick us up. He picked us up around 1:45 which was good. But we thought it would be funny to take this picture. In addition, THERE IS NO CELL PHONE COVERAGE ANYWHERE OUT THERE!!! So being on the phone wouldn’t have helped at all. But it all worked out well.

Three of the girls left today to go on a second mission trip up to Northern Malawi. I am here with the other Tennessee girl Kayla and a girl from Nevada.

I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone again. I am preparing to come home. I hope you enjoy these little updates.

Please send me emails or questions….

I will see you in 3 days.

Hannah

Pictures!

It has been about two weeks since I have updated my blog, but I hope that the pictures can help you understand the greatness that is Malawi. Click on a picture to see it full-size. The pictures vary.



This picture is of me at the lake. This was the first time we ate out at a restaurant. It was very exciting. If you want a coke, it comes in a glass bottle. It is very exciting still. Drinking coke out of a bottle in America is a treat, but here it is normal and will cost you about 60 Kwacha (About $.40).



This is Nsima. This is what Malawians eat everyday for every meal. For breakfast, they water it down to a Cream of Wheat type substance. Lunch and dinner are Nsima, nsima and beans or nsima and relish (relish meaning cabbage substance), or nsima and vegetables. I have never tasted something that tasted so much like nothing. It is about the consistency of thick grits made of corn mush. They do not have utensils, so everything is eaten with your hands. Nsima will stick to your fingers and the last thing you want to do is lick your fingers. I'm glad I live with Americans so I can get by with only eating Nsima every once in a while.



Because the mosquitoes carry malaria here, we have to sleep with nets over us. I sleep on the bottom of a bunk bed, so I kinda sleep in a cave. It is nice if I want to take a nap because it is dark. I voted to brink Larry on the trip. He isn't allowed to get out in case he gets malaria. He is not on Malarone.



This is the way women carry babies in Malawi. I bought a few chitenjes to carry by babies in when I have them. This is the cutest little boy. He is my favorite so far.


These are the toilets. When we go into the villages, they might have a toilet this nice, if not, find a tree. I have discovered that it is better to pee in a dirt toilet than one of these cement ones because they tend to splash.

In my last entry, I talked about being picked up in the back of a pickup truck. This is me in the back. It is a good picture of Malawi. The man riding a bicycle and the people standing up in the back of the truck in the background. It is winter here which means it never rains. This past rainy season was one of the best in years so people had a good crop this year. No one is really going hungry which is nice. They are enjoying their nsima. This is me in the back of the truck.

American chocolate is really difficult to come by, so when I found a quarter of a snicker in my lunch box I was very excited.

Finally, These are some of the girls that I teach at Gateway Girls Private Secondary School. The other American girls that I work with/live with/teach with and I have been teaching True Love Waits, Chicondi Chenicheni Chimadakira. We have been pondering ways to share reasons to stay a virgin until marriage and seek to attain purity, but what we have found is that it is much more difficult/nearly impossible to stay a virgin in this culture without Jesus Christ. All of our lessons have come back to the gospel. It is nearly impossible to fight the temptation of sex without Christ. By realizing this, the girls I am teaching with have had a renewed fervor to share the love of Christ with these students. This past week, we had over 80 different students and 1 teacher accept Christ as their personal savior. PRAISE GOD!!! A teacher (we had never met before) walked up to Ruth and I and said, “I want to thank you for telling the students how to enter the Kingdom of God. Can you tell me how to become born again?” CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?!?!?!?!? The harvest is plentiful but it is true that the workers are few. People here are starving for the truth.

Wednesday, I spent my birthday with my new friends. We celebrated. I got to talk to Nathan and my family. It was a really nice treat. I had been feeling really homesick, but having people remind me how much I am loved and how much people are praying for me, encouraged me to continue following his plan for me here.

This weekend we are going with our pseudo-mom on an African Safari to Mvuu. I am going to take lots of pictures to show you when I get home. Elephants and hippos, here we come!!!

Continue to pray for the hearts of the students we are working with and for us to have the strength and wisdom to follow Gods plan for us.

MUAH!!!

Baptisms, dedications and a wreck.

I want to apologize now for the long post. I hope you enjoy it.
Yesterday, we left the house around 8:45 A.M. to go to church. It is a new church that a group from Oklahoma had just started this week. They spent all week going from hut to hut talking with the people and sharing Christ with them. This was the first Sunday that the new church would meet. The head chief donated some land for the church on which it is to be built. The chiefs know, even if they are not Christian that having a church in their village causes the people of the village to act more moral and form closer relationships thus causing the village to survive longer. We knew there were some people who accepted Christ that week and were going to be baptized. I was very excited to witness an African baptism first hand. It actually ended up being like 25 people. Included in those 25 people were a young chief and the chief mother. It was very exciting to see leadership in the village giving a public declaration of their faith. The entire village could see these people stepping out on faith.
The people of the new church came to Pastor Malenko (A Malawian pastor who works very closely with Mat and Janet, my missionaries, and serves as a leader and an interpreter for volunteer groups who come for short term trips) and asked if he wouldn’t mind dedicating their children. They took a list of all the children they wanted to dedicate. No one mentioned this to them. No one told them they could do that. God is already working in their hearts to see the value in raising their children in the ways of the Lord. It was a very humbling and awesome sight to see the pastors and the Oklahoma team praying for these 15-20 children.
The custom in Malawi is to publicly thank any and all chiefs that are present for their presence. Today there were 8 different chiefs present at the first church service. They were all thanked individually and corporately. When you meet and shake hands with a chief, you are to drop to one knee. It is an awesome sight to see an entire village respect one person so much. In America, you will never find a person that such a large group respects. That is nearly impossible. Here, there were chiefs from all of the surrounding villages, including the head chief and the high chief. The head chief is over all the other chiefs and the high chief is over the head chief. The high chief is rarely seen at a group event like this, but he was there. He was dressed in an olive green suit, brown shiny leather shoes, a black carved walking stick and cold framed sun glasses. He looked ready for church in America. The head chief (second in charge) was wearing what looked to be seersucker. It was awesome. They defiantly dressed their best for the church service and for the Americans.
We left the village around 1:00. The service was not over, but we were allowed to leave because the remaining time was to discuss details with the new congregation. We left about 20 minutes early. We were all soo hungry and it was really warm so we were glad we were able to get away. After leaving the dirt path to the village, we turned left onto the main road. Main road meaning paved road. About half a mile down the road we see this huge crowd blocking the road. There were probably 100 people blocking the path and Mat said it could either be a funeral or a wreck. When we got closer we saw that is was a really bad wreck. Then this younger African man who could speak English came to our window and said that there were two people hurt and they needed someone to take then to the hospital. Something you should know about Malawi, is that there aren’t any laws governing how many people can be in a vehicle. The backbone of public transportation is minibuses. The only law is that there can only be 3 people in the front seat. Therefore, they cram as many people into the back as possible. Likewise, some people have flatbed trucks and they will haul people around in the back. Sometimes they can fit about 30 people in the back of one of these trucks. Apparently, one of these trucks had flipped over with 5 or 10 people in the back and rolled. 5 or 6 people were hurt, but they thought only 2 were seriously injured. Some of us were going to get out so there would be room for the two injured. Janet was the one with the driver’s license so Mat would stay with the one’s left behind. By this time our vehicle was surrounded by people wanting/needing to go to the hospital, so the rest of us decided to get out. Good thing. Before all of us could even get all the way out, Africans were piling in. I think there ended up being several children and several adults along with family and friends. We felt really bad for Janet because she was alone with a car full of people we weren’t sure would even survive the trip. Before Janet pulled off, a catholic priest came along and picked up some more of the injured people and followed Janet. He spoke fluent Chichewa.
Janet drove off and Mat decides we will continue on foot. It hot and we’re all wearing long skirts. We have already been in the sun for about 4 hours that morning with not a lot of water intake. It is miles to home, but we walk and walk and walk. We kept walking for about 20 minutes then this marvelous empty truck cruised by and it turned around and came back for us! The man asked if we were tired yet. We said yes, very tired. We were soo excited, a true Malawi experience! Note: It didn’t cross our minds that the car full of people going to the hospital had been riding in a very similar situation. We were excited. All those days of riding in the back of my dad’s truck as a kid came in handy with all the turns, bumps and potholes. Don’t worry, I held on tight. Quite a bit of Malawians could not stop staring at us, because they have never seen Mzungos (white people) riding in a truck bed. Typically, white people have their own vehicles. Before we got in the truck, the man asked us why we were walking. Mat explained the situation. After the nice man dropped us off at 7-Eleven he wouldn’t even take money from Mat. We went in and got cokes and before too long Mat flagged Janet down.
On the way home, Janet told us about the people she took to the hospital. One was drifting in and out of consciousness the entire time, one had a very swollen head and broken wrists from trying to catch her fall, one man had a broken ankle/leg, one sounded like he had a punctured lung and one little girl was crying for her mom. Janet didn’t know if the little girl was hurt, or if her mom was one of the injured women. Thankfully, all made it to the hospital alive and the Catholic priest was able to hurry the staff at the hospital. He was a great help.
We finally arrived home about 3 or 3:30, sunburned and starved. I felt like by sharing today’s story, I am able to give you a glimpse as to how God is working here. Everyday it seems like God is working things out so perfectly and beyond anything we could have planned. God worked today out so wonderfully. Why did we leave earlier from church? If we had left 30 minutes later there would have been people already dead when we arrived on the scene. If Mat had not forgotten his license, he would have taken them to the hospital and Janet would have been walking with us. Mat needed to be the one walking with 6 white girls cross-country in Africa. If the catholic priest had not come along right behind us, many more would have suffered and who knows what would have happened at the hospital? It is amazing how God uses all of his people to come together to benefit the people he loves so dearly.
Today was a true Malawian adventure. As you can see, your prayers are needed here. God is working in mysterious ways. Pray that I am able to see them. I am off to school, I have another exciting day ahead of me. Pray people pray. Much love from Lilongwe.

I paid for pain

Day 2:
So I can officially say that today I did something that I will never do again. I had my legs waxed in Africa. So I thought I would be living near the bush, but we definitely walked next door to the Indian woman and paid her about $7 (1000 Kwacha). I am really hearting. My legs are really red and splotchy. I’m really feeling it.

Interesting observation of the day: we live off of coffin road. Apparently one of the more profitable businesses in Malawi is coffin making. The road we live off of has about 10 coffin making vendors up and down it. The coffins are very nice.

I met the teacher I will be working with. He is very nice, but I am really overwhelmed. I am teaching physical science: chemical bonding, mole and molarity, and matter. I got matter in the bag but chemical bonding, moles and molarity are a little crazy. Good thing my Africa mom Janet is a former science teacher.

Tomorrow we are going to Lake Malawi and Janet and I are going to sit and learn Chemistry while looking at Lake Malawi.

God gave me a verse in Philippians today: Be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Now I need my mind filled with Physical Science and my heart filled with prayer.

Join with me in prayer for these children.

Day 1

Hello from Malawi.
Tuesday, Wednesday and most of Thursday were spent traveling. We flew from Nashville to Atlanta. Atlanta to Dakar (note: we didn’t get off the plane) and Dakar to Johannesburg. In Johannesburg we spent the night, and then got up early the next morning to fly to Malawi. The Lawrences were waiting on us at the airport with the other girls. The are all so welcoming.

Tonight is my first night in Malawi. The missionaries and girls I am working with are all wonderfully unique. I am enjoying every minute with them. There will definitely be challenging times in the future, but that happens when 7 women live under one roof. God is going to be doing amazing things.

We spend the day driving around the city and going in some shops. There are some fun things that are REALLY different. First of all, with any British colony, the steering wheel is on the right side, you drive on the left. Unlike most British colonies, people walk all over the place, all women wear skirts (government law) and they sell rats to eat. (This is kinda weird: people, mostly children will stand on the side of the road with dead mice on a three foot long stick hoping people will stop and buy them to cook and eat. I’m adventurous, but that is one thing that will probably go untested.) My goal is to keep a running list of things I think are interesting and hopefully look back to see how different they really are.

I will probably check my email only a few times a week. Certainly not everyday, but keep them coming and I will try to respond as quickly as possible. If the email says it is from Mat and Janet Lawrence, it is really from me. Send replies to their email and put my name in the subject line. If you continue to send them to my GMAIL account, I will get them, just not as fast.
I am really nervous about teaching. I don’t feel like I know enough about AIDS, the people here, the culture here, or the schools to teach as effectively as possible, but I know that whatever God has planned will happen. Please pray that I will be able to teach God in EVERY lesson. I am teaching physical science, and I want every lesson to be so centered on God that there is no choice but to share the Gospel everyday. That would be an amazing blessing. I am feeling a little jet lagged but for the most part I am feeling good.

God is good. I love you!!

24 on a plane

Goodbyes are no fun.

Tonight is my last night in the country. I spent it having to say goodbye to Nathan and some other friends. I will see Nathan at the airport, but that is public and sad and stuff. I felt like our real goodbye was tonight. I am really going to miss a lot of things about America, but mostly the people.

I took my first anti-malaria pill today. HOORAY for no side effects.

I'm really nervous about flying 24 hours....

I want to be there now, skip the travel part. I'm nervous that I will forget something, write the wrong address, get sick or something like that. (Note: these are prayer requests. )
Hopefully, next time, I'll have pictures from the travel.

I appreciate your prayers SSSOOOOO much. Knowing people are praying for me will give me the encouragement to keep on when I think I can't. You play a vital role in my effectiveness.

I'm going to try to sleep some. I've gotta big day tomorrow.

This is my address while I'm in Malawi:

Mat and Janet Lawrence (Hannah)
PO Box 30724
Lilongwe 3
Malawi
Central Africa

It takes about 3 weeks to get there and it costs about a dollar. I'll love you forever if you send me mail :-D