my happenings.........

Hello everyone,

I hope you had a blessed Easter time.  We had lots of Easter celebrations in the church the whole of Holy Week!  The service on Easter Sunday was a real celebration of the risen Christ.

Before the Easter break we had a Board Meeting for Early Childhood Development.  Our Board Chair, Rev. John J Gondwe was appointed Moderator Elect last year and so cannot hold two positions in the Synod.  Because of this the Synod appointed a new Board Chair in the name of Rev Stephen Bota.  Here you can see Rev J J Gondwe on the right congratulating the new Board Chair, Rev S Bota!

The Board members went to visit two ECD centres in the morning - one which is running well and the other which is not!  It was an eye opener for all of them!

An organisation called 'Vision 4 kids' sent me some money to buy Bibles in the local language to distribute to some children who did not have Bibles.  I bought 70 Bibles in Chichewa (they are not available in Chitumbuka), and took them to one of the local primary schools where they have a Bible club every Wednesday!

The kids were so excited and immediately sat down and began reading them!  They sang a couple of songs (which I could have done with ear plugs for they were so loud) and had a great time!

I am grateful to Vision4kids for thinking of Malawi!

Easter as I said is a great celebration here.  The Anglican and Catholic churches have the 'way of the cross' on Good Friday where they carry a cross between two strategic points and have Bibles readings at each station of the cross.  It is a very moving experience.

On Palm Sunday the children take part in the service by bringing palm branches and singing as they parade into the church to do a short drama!

Work continues to be busy as the ECD Presbytery Trainers (EPT's) begin their monitoring in May and they are preparing for that.  Presbytery meetings also begin in May and I have to present a report at each Presbytery, so I have been working on that!  We are also struggling financially as a Department and I spent the last few days trying to draft a project proposal to send to a few prospective donors!!

Usually on Sunday afternoon I go for a walk with three friends - last week we had quite a strenuous walk but at least the rain stayed off!

Its a bit worrying in the country at present as some places in the south had tremendous flooding earlier in the year, and yet some areas have a drought.  The harvest will not be a good one overall and already maize prices are high!  Please pray that the Government will take steps to ensure that there is food security in the country this year!

I continue to have a lot of wildlife in the garden and sometimes in the house too!  

During the Easter break I went to the lake for a day and found some wildlife there too!!

There had been really heavy rains just before I arrived at  the lake but it cleared up and was a beautiful day!

Even at night it was beautiful - there was a full moon and this is the reflection over the lake around 7pm (it gets dark here at 6pm).

Wishing you all a wonderful week!  Thank you for all the good wishes I received over Easter - much appreciated!!

Blessings,

Diane

Hello everyone,

I was privileged to be invited to Blantyre Synod at the end of February for a couple of days to discuss with their Education Secretary about Early Childhood Development in their synod.  I met with Rev Moyenda Kanjerwa, the Deputy General Secretary and was treated like a queen for the few days I was there.  It was lovely to see what is happening in another synod and also to have good discussions with the Education Secretary!

Rev M Kanjerwa

I kept bumping into past students of Zomba Theological College which was so nice, to hear stories of what they are doing now and where they are serving.  I spent a morning with Rev Dennis Mulele who is the Youth Director in the synod.  We had some good conversation as we went to visit two of Blantyre Synod's early childhood programmes.

Rev Dennis Mulele

I visited Orbus which is funded by the Presbyterian church of Australia.  Of course they had a great location and wonderful buildings, but I was so disappointed to see so many young children having no play materials, but instead being forced to write!  This is a similar story all across Malawi though!

At Chifundo 2 a similar story - lots of children, no play materials but at least they had porridge!

I was taken to Mulanje but it bucketed with rain the whole day and so we could barely see the majestic mountain.  We did manage to buy some pineapples though!

Back home and we continue our training programme in our CCAP International Pre-school on Friday afternoons with the teachers.  They really are quite knowledgeable if only they had the confidence to show it!!

We had four zonal meetings in March where Nicolas, Gerrie and myself were facilitating! The synod is divided into 4 zones and we met our trainers from each zone at each meeting!  The first meeting was Livingstonia zone which was held in Rumphi!

I was glad to arrive safely as the road was quite treacherous - this was when we were coming home and it had dried up a lot!  I was very thankful to get home safely!

An activity showing children the water cycle!

The second meeting was in Bandawe zone and it was held in Mzuzu.

Then we travelled to Nkhamenya to meet with Lilongwe zone!

 And finally to Mzimba to meet with Loudon Zone.

I must admit I was tired after all the travelling and all the talking and I am glad they are over.  This coming week I am busy again with a Early Childhood Board meeting which I have to organise....no rest for the wicked!

I am thankful that with all our travelling we had safe journeys and a good time of fellowship with all our trainers.

Of course our focus at all these training meetings is the child and how we can assist the young children of Malawi in their development.  We had no shortage of kids to pose for us in the various locations!

Wishing you all a blessed week,

Diane

Training...........

Hello again,

Although its been some time since I posted the last update, time is flying past and its been really busy.  We had a couple of days where we brought some of our ToT's together to help us in a taskforce to make additional modules for our caregiver training.  One module is on caring for the environment and the other one is about spirituality in our ECD centres and how we can assist both our caregivers and children!  It was a good time and modules are almost completed!

We try to have regular teaching sessions with the caregivers from CCAP International Pre-school in Mzuzu just to keep them on their toes and to help them learn new skills.  This term we have four afternoon sessions with them!

As part of our ECD programme we also train ministers and session clerks from Presbyteries.  This month we went to Bandawe Presbytery to do the programme - we had a lot of fun, and I think they learnt a lot.  I just hope they put the knowledge into practice as they run our ECD centres in the communities!

Training the ministers!

 Over the past couple of years, as Presbyteries have more ECD centres, they have chosen a committee at Presbytery level to help run their centres.  This committee usually comprises of a person from each congregation within the Presbytery.  Two of our trainers were training in Champhira Presbytery and because Gerrie had not seen training before, we went out for a morning to observe!

Usually once a year and sometimes twice a year, we bring all our trainers together to evaluate the programme and look at how we can make it better.  We went to Ekwendeni for four days and there was much discussion and I hope much learning too!  It also gives us time to think and pray for the work of Early Childhood in the synod.

Rev Stephen Bota leading one of the sessions!

Leading another session!

Participants doing role play

Nicolas and Gerrie leading a session

The whole group!

For those of you following my blog who know me, you will know that where I go my camera goes too!  But these few shots were taken in my garden.  I am privileged to live in a place where there is abundant wildlife even if it is in the centre of town!

Of course, being the rainy season there are lots of other bugs like spiders, cockroaches and some larger animals like snakes too!  All good for a photo!

Wishing you all a blessed week ahead.  I am off to bed as I have to drive to Blantyre tomorrow - an all day journey!  No doubt you will have a report on the next blog!

Diane x