Loving Malawi

Well...I have now been in Malawi for 5 days...and can I just say, I LOVE IT. I mean a big part of it is that I am getting to spend so much time with Ryan...but another big part is that I just love to be in new cultures! (p.s. Ryan is hard at work right now...so I thought I would take this opportune time to update people I love!)

Well let's start from when I arrived. I got here Wednesday night at 10:00 pm. I got here all in one piece and so did my luggage! Praise the Lord. I was so nervous about traveling all that way by myself, and I really felt the prayers of my brothers and sisters back home! I could not have asked for a smoother travel experience.

When I walked out of the customs room and saw Ryan's smiling face every moment of the 15 hour flight crammed in the middle was worth it!

It was dark that night so I didn't get to see much of Malawi until the next day.

Thursday morning started my tour of Malawi. It is SO beautiful here! It's not really what I expected, get desert Africa out of your mind. It is rainy season so everything is green and lush (I love that word) and mountainous.

We drove around town and then we went to the market to buy some vegetables. It was so nice being with Ryan and letting him handle the buying aspect so I could let the millions of thoughts run through my head.

As we drove up, like 10 kids swarmed our car and asked us if they could carry our vegetables. Ryan got a boy (his name was Medicine) that he had befriended in his previous times to the market to carry our vegetable. I liked how communal the whole experience was. I liked that Ryan already had a relationship with a small boy and the way that he talked to the people selling in the market. It made me want to know them and know their stories. I loved how they smiled as Ryan waved at them and stopped by their booths. I loved how they enjoyed bargaining with him. I loved the man that encouraged some other seller to give us a good price because he liked Ryan. I know that I was walking among people that live on very little money, people that we would have labeled in the west as poor, but that's not really what I was thinking about. I felt like I was suppose to be having this emotional experience where I thought about their poverty, but actually what my mind focused on was that they were people.

These people were wives, mothers, brothers, husbands, fathers, sons, daughters, and friends. These people had lives. They had hurts, struggles, joys, and fears. Just as I have hurts, struggles, joys, and fears. I know I have only been here a couple days, so I am sure the weight of everything that is going on around me has not sunk in, and it may never since I am only here two weeks. However, the more I meet people, the more I see people. I don't really think of how we are different or that in the West I spend more in a day than they do in a month. I really don't know if that thought would help anybody anyways. I just see them as people, and maybe if I just let my thoughts rest there, I can really love them.

After hanging out a few days in Blantyre (the city Ryan lives in) we traveled to a big ol mountain near by. It is called Mt. Mulanje.


Can I just say, God is a stinkin good artist. He creates like no one else. It was beautiful. The mountain was really big and though I wanted to...Ryan said we couldn't climb to the top! (if you believe that I actually wanted to exert strenuous physical activity, you must be new to reading my blog!) We drove up a VERY, VERY bumpy trail in a Pajero...basically a HAUS of a SUV. Ryan is the best standard driver I have ever met. He is my driving hero.

After the car miraculously made it to a certain area, we then hiked a little ways and made it to a beautiful waterfall. It was so beautiful and we were the only ones there! I thought, you know God is smart because I never would have thought that water falling off a cliff would be pretty, but it is. (I don't want you to think that I have never seen waterfall before, I just had this thought this time.) I just had to thank God while we were there for making something so beautiful and then letting us enjoy it.


Later we went down to some natural pools and met some local guys there. It was so cool to build a friendship with these guys just for the hours that we were there. What was cool was that they were willing to talk to us and get to know us. They taught us where it was deep enough to jump off rocks into the water and how to sit under a waterfall. They were unlike people in America who are so individual. When we go somewhere we keep to ourselves and are awkward about talking to people we don't know, these guys weren't like that. Seriously, they became our friends in a matter of minutes. They shared mangos with us and even wanted to give us a bunch without taking anything in return. They were living off the land and sharing what God had provided them.

There are a lot of other cool things these guys taught me, but I will just have to share that when I get back. I got to save something to keep yall talking to me in real life!

Anyways, tomorrow we are heading to a village in southern Malawi. I will get to see the Home Based Care program that is going on there. I am super excited to see what God is doing there through this program.

Well that is the update for now. Thanks for all your prayers! I love you guys and miss you!