My Spaceship Knows Which Way To Go

The semester is in full swing now, hence the lack of posts the last 10 days. Instead of writing to you, I was writing up a Greek assignment for Mark 1:1-13 that took around 15 hours to complete. Keep in mind, this is not a major assignment. One of these bad boys is due each week. I plan on spending the majority of tomorrow holed up in the library working on this weeks as well as getting ready to teach on Sunday.

There has actually been a lot going on. Many big changes could be around the corner. I find myself currently waiting on others in order to be able to make those decisions. That's the worst part. I will no doubt allude to them in some later posts.

*Awe Inspired Silence*

As if the world needed another reason to love Cadbury and their delicious chocolate, they went out and did this...


I was literally speechless with delight.

Malawi

I got kind of sidetracked last night while writing the "Blitzfest Malawi" post because Rachelle and I were watching Friends. There were some other things that I wanted to add and then I just forgot.

There are many questions that have to be answered before you can even start to help people in need.

How do you choose where to begin your work? Is the organization that you are going through credible? What percentage of the money you raise will go directly to the people you are trying to help? There are people all over the world in need, which makes the task seem daunting. We will be partnering with a group called Y Malawi? The reason that the High School Ministry chose to work n Malawi was because of a bond previously made through our church.

The sad truth is that over 4,000 children die everyday from preventable illnesses. In order to do our part to help in this crisis, our church partnered with African Bible College and in particular the ABC Community Clinic in Lilongwe, Malawi. This clinic sees 3,000 people every month, many of which are infected with the AIDS virus. The clinic wanted to build a pediatric ward to help with the growing number of children they were seeing but did not have the funds. We were told a few months before Christmas that it would cost $300k to build the new ward. Slightly disheartened by the sum that we wanted to raise by the end of the year, we moved forward anyway in an effort to prepare the congregation and push for what seemed impossible in the time we had. On Christmas day we took our Malawi offering, unsure what would happen as Bill asked for a miracle from the pulpit.

Part of the etymology of the word miracle is "to smile", which sounds funny at first but just makes sense when you think about it. That Christmas day we raised just over a half a million dollars, $568, 979.15 for you sticklers out there. Checks have been sent and construction has begun on a 40 bed pediatric ward as well as building a house for a new doctor that they are praying will join staff soon. Dr. Boersma runs the clinic in Malawi and you can visit his website or see a video about what they are doing here.

I often think about what is in store for Rachelle and I. Rachelle has talked about taking a leave from work to go into the mission field, I guess I could tag along with her. Nurses and teachers are needed in all kinds of communities and I'm sure we could go wherever we wanted to help. Right now we are trying to do our part from here, we just started sponsoring a little girl from, yup, Malawi through World Vision.

Maybe some day we'll be in Malawi too.