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.