nurturing a heart for the people of tanzania
Hello one last time before departure…Please pray for my friend and ministry partner, Marcia Yount. This has been an unpredictable trip for her. This morning she slipped, fell and fractured her wrist. After six hours at the hospital it is set in a temporary cast, but will require surgery when we return. Pray for comfortable flights home…to London tonight, then a transfer from Heathrow to Gatwick, then the flight to Orlando. Thanks so much!
Mike
We begin the homeward journey today, leaving Nairobi at 11:45 pm local time. It has been a great trip; very encouraging. It was a significant addition, having the folks from McLean Presbyterian Church with us: James and Rosie Forsyth, March and Mariam Bell. Those of you who have prayed for me and us, thank you. These are prayers the impact of which we will learn in the new heaven and new earth. Blessings.
Mike
All
We have just learned that David Lukafuba, the young man who is the
manager of the hotel where we stay, and who has become a good friend
to us, the young man I wrote about requesting prayer earlier this
week, has been diagnosed with bone cancer. This is obviously very
serious. He will have surgery of some kind on Tuesday. We were
hoping to see him while in Nairobi, but that will not be possible.
Please pray for him. He was just married two months or so ago. Pray
for his wife and family.
Thanks.
Mike
The conference was completed on Friday. It was a great time of fellowship, learning and worship. The time flies by when we are here. It is hard to believe that it is over. Today was spent visiting villages where we have completed water projects. As with the conversation on Thursday with the pastors and wives the stories we heard are riveting and remarkable. I wish those who have given so generously could have been with us to hear the expressions of appreciation. You have changed life for thousands. Thank you!! And if you want to know more, let me know. The picture below is a church building built with mud bricks. The building could not have been built without the water well…living water for the body and THE Living Water for the soul. Bwana ni mwema.
Spent about an hour and a half with pastors and wives from villages where Christ the King and McLean Presbyterian Churches have completed well projects. We heard reports of significant reduction in instances of disease among children, women who are able to attend to children, gardens and other domestic tasks without the burden of walking hours to a water source, children able to go to school, businesses being started, church buildings being built because of close access to water and scores of people being introduced to Jesus Christ as a result of the church meeting this very real and critical need. Bwana ni mwema…God is so very good. It is a remarkable privilege to see and hear these stories! Thank you for praying. Please pray for more generosity. We have completed twenty of these projects. Dozens more are needed.
Mike
Greetings all. I arrived safely on London but have been delayed here
for two hours. Our departure is scheduled for 12:45 local time (7:45
a.m. eastern time). We will arrive in time to get a few hours of
sleep before flying to Mwanza. We are then in Mwanza overnight on
Friday, will leave for Musoma after having breakfast with Sheila
Dilworth. Sheila is a dear friend, a fifth or sixth generation
missionary and whose husband Norm was the director of the Nassa
Theological College before his ‘untimely’ death several years ago.
Please keep us in your prayers. And pray for other team members who
are making their way to Tanzania: James Forsyth, pastor of McLean
Presbyteerian Church (McLean, Virginia) and his wife; March and Mariam
Bell, also from McLean; and Elisha Kitula who is traveling from the
Netherlands. More later!
Mike Malone
One of my favorite books is by Cornelius Plantinga, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be. The title captures the sentiment of anyone who has traveled to a country where infant mortality rates are high, disease is rampant and people struggle to find food and water. These are evidences that things are ‘not the way they are supposed to be’. Why did Jesus come into the world? To seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10 and give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). And he came to put everything right. He came in fulfillment of the first promise of the gospel: ‘he will crush you on the head and you will bruise him on the heel’ (Genesis 3:15). The coming of Christ into the world is for the overthrow of the one who has the power of death, the salvation of a people who have lived in lifelong fear of death and the final liberation of the entire creation (Hebrews 2:14-15; Romans 8:18-24). I love what Sinclair Ferguson has written concerning the coming of Jesus and his encounter with Satan in the temptation in the wilderness:
“Jesus was ‘led by the Spirit’ into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil (Mt. 4:1; Lk. 4:1). Whereas Luke uses a relatively innocuous very (‘ago’, to lead), Mark’s account is markedly more vigorous: the Spirit ‘drove out (ekballei) Jesus; (Mk 1:12)….It has been commonplace to interpret Jesus’ temptations as analogous to, almost a model for, the tempting of the Christian: Christ was tempted as we are, but resisted; therefore we should resist in similar ways. But this leads to a partial and negative interpretation of his experiences. His temptations constitute an epochal event. They are not merely personal, but cosmic. They constitute the tempting of the last Adam. True, there is a common bond between his temptations and ours: he is really and personally confronted by dark powers. But the significance of the event does not lie in the ways in which our temptations are like his, but in the particularity and uniqueness of his experiences. He was driven into the wilderness as an assault force. His testing was set in the context of a holy war in which he entered the enemy’s domain, absorbed his attacks and sent him into retreat (Mt. 4:11, and especially Lk 4:13). In the power of the Spirit, Jesus advanced as the divine warrior, the God of battles who fights on behalf of his people and for their salvation (Ex. 15:3; Ps. 98:1). His triumph demonstrated that ‘the kingdom of God is near’ and that the messianic conflict had begun.” (THE HOLY SPIRIT pp. 48-49)
Every conversion to Christ from darkness and every well drilled in Jesus’s name is evidence that the battle continues, the Savior is fighting and the conflict will be resolved on the great and final day when Christ will bring to conclusion what he has begun: the renovation of all things so that everything IS the way it is supposed to be.
impact tanzania 