Yesterday was Malawian President Ngwazi Professor Bingu wa Mutharika’s last act of state: his own funeral. He died suddenly and unexpectedly on the 5^th of April from a cardiac arrest. His body was then rushed to South Africa under cover of dark as his retinue plotted to overthrow the elected vice-president in favor of Mutharika’s brother.

The plot failed. And yesterday the nation of Malawi watched ambassadors, archbishops, and all manner of dignitaries—as well as new president Joyce Banda—reverently bid goodbye to their late leader.

Media photograph of the President's coffin in the Malawian Parliament, shortly before burial in Thoylo. Joyce Banda is on the far right.

The 240 million kwacha funeral was fitting for an African president. It saw an honor guard in sober uniforms. It saw neighboring heads of state in bright gowns and crisp suits pay their respects (even Zimbabwean President Comrade Robert Mugabe’s own recent bout of ill health didn’t prevent him from coming in person to grieve his old friend). The departed was bid farewell with both traditional African rites and a full Catholic high mass. But don’t be fooled by the colors and choirs honoring the deceased, nor the slate of speeches praising his accomplishments. Traditionally, in Africa one doesn’t speak bad of the dead, even when there is much bad that could be said. So Mutharika received a funeral fitting to an African president even if few Malawians of late have thought him fit to be president.

As you probably know by now, Malawi has experienced an unprecedented economic collapse in the past two years—this, in a country already long counted among the world’s poorest. Unlike many of the crises broadcast to the first world from Africa, Malawi’s plight was not due to an “act of God” like drought or flood. It was rather an “act of man”. One man, in fact. The aid money that motors Malawi’s economy slowed from a flow to a trickle as foreign governments and NGOs tried to rein in the increasingly autocratic and violent direction of Mutharika’s government. There was a clamp down on freedom of speech, freedom of press, and minority rights. Police were arresting key human rights advocates and critics of government; their homes and offices were destroyed in “accidental” fires; there have even been murders. Legislative power was increasingly centered in the office of the President—for several weeks last summer, for example, Mutharika even ran government the country without a cabinet!—and used without regard to constitutional rights. July was the low point: with a fuel crisis widening over the land, civil servant salaries going unpaid, and prices of even basic goods sky rocketing, people took to the streets in protest. The day ended with almost twenty people killed by police bullets and the President castigating his political and civilian opponents as children of Satan whom he would “smoke out” in revenge.

Welcome to the "Warm Heart of Africa": Malawi on 20 July 2011

In hindsight, Malawi should have been concerned a few years ago when Mutharika bestowed upon himself the honorary title of “Ngwazi”, which means “Conqueror of Conquerors”, and was last used by Malawian dictator Hastings Banda. By 2012 it was clear that we were stumbling fast toward a revived dictatorship.

Then the President died. And the clumsy attempt to hoist his brother on the family “throne” failed. So just like that, Malawi is now hopeful that the aid money will start to flow again, that political reforms will happen, that the constitution will be respected, and that democracy will be fully restored. As mentioned, in many African countries, Malawi included, the traditions of the fathers insist that the departed are held dear in memory. It must be a sign then of the fury burning inside the “Warm Heart of Africa” that even some Malawians took to the street to party when the official announcement of the president’s death came.

Please pray for Malawi. We thank God that in a continent where political transitions often spark conflict, the handover from Mutharika to Joyce Banda was smooth and peaceful, with both army and police cooperating fully. Please lift up Joyce Banda in prayer. Not only are the expectations on her high, the task of repairing this country is enormous. And she is only the second woman in history elected to an African presidency. (She is also, incidentally, a member of the Church of Central Africa, Presbyterian). Please pray for us and for all the missionaries and aid workers who serve Malawi and love its people, that God will give us equal measure of courage, sympathy, and patience. Finally, please pray for the people of Malawi, most of whom struggle to simply live.

We were driving by Mount Mulanje south of Zomba only a few days before the significant events of early April.  A short burst of sun shot through the last gasp downpours of the rainy season, giving us glimpse of a stunning rainbow over the tea estates footing the mountain. The rainbow: of course, a biblical symbol of hope, of God’s promise to humanity of his compassion and care. I recall thinking then rather gloomily—with one eye on the dropping gauge measuring my black market bought petrol—that there seemed little reason for hope in Malawi at present.

Rainbow across the face of Mt. Mulanje

Thanks be to God: for rainbows, for resurrection, for renewal. In a few short weeks, hope has been restored to Malawi. And that is a priceless gift for this very needy  land.

Sophia and Mio cooling off in the garden

Two weeks ago I woke up covered in ants. In fact it was the ants that woke me up. Skin tingling, scalp itching, I opened my eyes to a line of miniscule sugar ants marching up my bed post, under the mosquito net, over the bedspread and onto my head.

No big deal. This is Africa. Even the kids have become nonchalant about the insects swarming around (and often in) our house. And these little ants were only thirsty. They hadn’t seen a drop of moisture for a month…except on us. We’d been sweating day and night for about ten weeks. When we drive down the mountain to work and school at 7:00, it is already a sticky 25 degrees. By nine the temperature is over 30 degrees. By late afternoon the heat is simply oppressive. Kids, parents, and dogs seek out shade on the khonde [Afrikaans = porch], desperate for a breeze. There we sit: cranky and damp.

“The first Noel, the Angels did say

Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay…

On a cold winter’s night that was so deep.”

Nope.

“In the bleak mid-winter, frosty wind made moan…

Snow had fallen, snow on snow;

in the bleak mid-winter, long ago.”

Nope. Sure sounds nice though.

“Lo, how a rose e’er blooming, from tender stem hath sprung!…

It came, a floweret bright, amid the cold of winter,

When half spent was the night.”

Heat shimmering in the valley, looking toward Mulanje from our home

No surprise—favorite carols don’t pull the heartstrings here like they do back home. In fact, most of the seasons’ standards from our cool northern homelands don’t measure up under a sultry southern sun. As a result, that old-time Christmastime cheer seems in short supply in our new location—though it’s not for lack of trying, at least on my wife’s part. Annika is incorrigible about the Advent and Christmas season as German Lutherans can only be. The children were delighted to awaken on 6 December to discover shoes crammed with candies, compliments of the elusive “Sankt Nikolaus”, who visits German children every 6^th December with a sack full of sweets. As we prepared to move to Malawi last February, I had obediently packed up Annika’s traditional German Adventskranz [advent wreath], a substantial, i.e. heavy, wreath of wood and iron; it now hangs from our ceiling. “In the bleak mid-winter…the earth was hard as iron….” But in Malawi in December nothing stays hard as iron. See the photos below for proof!

First Sunday of Advent

Second Sunday of Advent

Third Sunday of Advent

All those cherished Advent and Christmas traditions we brought with us in carton and memory from our old home to our new home don’t stand a chance here. In fact, seen from south of the equator, it’s become clear to me what the Christian celebration of Advent and Christmas north of the equator owes to the ancient pagan traditions of Europe. Evergreens and ivy, light in the darkness, awaiting life from the lifeless winter earth…. Most of what infuses our seasonal festivities with its magical atmosphere has nothing to do, strictly speaking, with the birth of Jesus; rather it has everything to do with the frigid air, dark days, and endless nights of the northern hemisphere (the zenith of which our pagan ancestors celebrated in late December). No wonder beloved traditions like Advent candles and cozy manger scenes shoot wide of the heart in the steaming sunshine of Malawi!

Yet who’s to say we can’t and won’t enjoy advent and Christmas in our new surroundings? In fact, maybe the Spirit will use the sheer strangeness of it all to bless us with a fresh experience of the meaning of the Christ child.

One thing comes to mind by way of example….

Even if most Christians here aren’t too interested in the northern church’s “advent season”, November and December in Malawi is still very much a season of advent. People here are waiting, waiting with baited breath and anxious hearts for the advent of the rains. ‘Silent Night’ might be a favorite carol back home, but believe me, here people are hoping to God for the heat of the day to cook up noisy nights of rumbling thunder and torrential rain! If the rains don’t fall soon, maize and other staple crops will not grow, or will grow late. Families will starve. The advent of the rainy season is literally a waiting for life. As such, this time of year in Malawi mingles fear and desperation with hope and prayer.

What then could be a better atmosphere for contemplating the birth of Jesus Christ? Even as the Christmas season under the southern sun gets stripped of its cherished familiarity and sentimental comforts for ‘northerners’ like us, the desperate hope hanging in the air right now is startling us to see anew the significance of the advent of Christ. The one in whom “the hopes and fears of all the years” are answered; the one who came and will come again to bring life in abundance.

Sophia welcomes the first real downpour of the year!

Postscript: We woke up unexpectedly a couple of nights back. Not ants this time. Thunder—and then rain pounding our sheet metal roof. Thank God: the rains had finally come to Zomba. So loud that Annika had to yell at me across the din in the bedroom. Silent night, no, but all this noise is the sound of the advent of life.

From our family in Malawi to your’s in Canada: Merry Christmas!

Watching the sun rise over Lake Malawi, August 2011

“…and Heavenly father, protect our lecturer this night, that he may live to teach us tomorrow. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.”

A student closed our theology class last semester with this prayer. “Why wouldn’t I be alive for tomorrow’s class?” I thought indignantly. “Does he know something I don’t?” That was just the first time a student has brought my very survival before the “throne of grace”, as Presbyterians in Malawi like to say. At least once a week, as we close up the hour class with prayer, a student petitions God to preserve my life for yet another lecture! The first few times I was rather unnerved. I plan on living for a long time; as a Canadian, I can safely assume that I will.

I know now that life in central Africa holds no such hope.

In Malawi death is everywhere. This fact is one of the extreme aspects of our family’s culture shock in moving here. Even our kids can’t help but notice the throbbing funeral parades that snarl traffic on Zomba’s streets, or the constant requests for a day off by our domestic staff to attend a funeral back in the village: another uncle, grandmother, cousin, or friend has died. The shops of coffin makers line the highway between Zomba and Blantyre. “Daddy, why do so many people in Malawi die?” our five year old daughter asked me a few months ago.

Death is everywhere, even at my workplace. As far as I can recall, in all my years at university and theological college in Canada, not one of my classmates died, nor did any of their children or spouses. Yet within a week of arriving in Zomba Theological College last March, one of the fourth year students was run over by a minibus–the scourge of Malawi’s roads–as he walked into town from campus. He died a month shy of graduating, leaving behind a wife and house full of kids. Then one of my second year students went into labor as she was finishing her final exam in June. She hurried to hospital but the baby girl was born dead, the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. I had trouble keeping my composure a week later as I graded the exam paper she had written just a few hours before she lost the child. During the semester break a small son of another student contracted cerebral malaria and quickly died. Two weeks ago, just as our new semester was starting, one of the young men in my second year history of Christianity course died of renal failure. And I’ve only been teaching at ZTC for six months! I have no idea how my friend and PCC colleague in Blantyre, Mike Burns, does it (www.pccweb.ca/mikeanddebbieburns). Mike works as a pastor at St. James CCAP. He buries people in week as often as most ministers in Canada hit Tim Hortons for a coffee.

Minibus advertising!

In sub-saharan Africa, poverty, drought, famine, lack of proper medical care, and diseases like malaria, HIV/AIDS, cholera, and TB makes the gap between life and death razor thin. Not surprisingly, the hymnbook of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian, Nyimbo za Mulungu (Hymns to God) is saturated with songs on the afterlife. Okay, I cringe at sickly sweet Victorian hymns like: “there is a friend for little children above the bright blue sky” (299) or “Jerusalem the golden….What joys await us there…what bliss beyond compare!” (192) Some of these old-time hymns, though, strike a profounder note. One that reflects both the experience of life in the ‘majority world’ and a Scriptural witness that I’m realizing we in the long living ‘minority world’ have silenced.

“Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;

Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away;

Change and decay in all around I see;

O Thou who changest not, abide with me.” (Nyimbo za Mulungu, 208)

“Time, like an ever rolling stream,

Bears all its sons away;

They fly, forgotten, as a dream.

Dies at the op’ning day.” (Nyimbo za Mulungu, 311)

Of course these hymns still find a place in Canadian hymnbooks. But do congregations sing them? My hunch is that most Christians in Canada sing of death or eternal life about as often as Canadians in general contemplate “life’s little day”. In other words, we don’t. Our culture celebrates living long and living happy, and the former, at least, is something we have achieved, even if the latter proves rather more elusive. The fact of death, if not denied, is delayed, as in “don’t think about it until you must”. And even then euphemisms like “he passed away” or “she is not with us anymore” blunt the bitter fact.

I had a professor at university, an esteemed theologian, who repeatedly castigated “otherworldly” piety, including belief in the resurrection of the dead. As he saw it, Christians who hoped for heaven were of no earthly good. “Can we really ask those in our world who are suffering from economic and political injustice,” I remember him asking the class, “that they can expect nothing else but a post mortem paradise?” He insisted on God’s solidarity with those suffering here and now. A future tense piety like heaven and eternal life only distracted from the urgent present tense task of seeking justice that should be the church’s business. Then, I thought his critique of “otherworldliness” well made, though not entirely convincing (a future hope and a present responsibility don’t necessarily need to be at odds). I’m even less convinced now after a half year in central Africa. I’d turn his argument on its head, in fact. Can I really tell the fellow believers I meet every single day here in Malawi, whose lives are dominated by a despotic government, who are waiting this very month upon the rains that will (hopefully) grow their maize but also grow the dreaded mosquitoes, whose small houses are crowded further by nieces and nephews orphaned by AIDS, can I really tell them that this is all they can expect?

I’m shocked to realize how disconcerted I’ve been by the open and frank manner in which my Malawian colleagues and friends speak of death. On Sunday morning I sing of the brevity of this life and I sing of the life everlasting. Ministers preach at me to get my heart right with God before it’s too late. I see folks flocking to funerals, parading through the streets, weeping and wailing and waving fronds; they watch the coffin lowered into the ground, and then they get on with life with a smile and laugh. For death, terrible and bitter, yes, is unavoidable, inevitable. “Time, like an ever rolling stream/ Bears all its sons away…” In fact, studies made of southern African preaching have discovered that James 4:14 is one of the most popular sermon texts: “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” Have you ever heard a sermon on this Bible passage? And, yes, Malawians even commit their college lecturer’s life into the hands of God for the gift of just one more day!

All this has made me realize two things. First, because of their experience of a world troubled by famine and plague, poverty and disparity, Malawian Christians are far closer to the world of the Bible than we are in the West. The strong biblical witness to the transience of life and the weight of eternity, to the judgment to come and the blessed hope of resurrection from the dead aren’t poetic images or lifeless metaphors for them but real, vital truths. Second, I wonder if one of the many contributions that “third world Christianity” (as it’s often called) can make to the global church, especially the church in the “first world”, is to remind us precisely of that which we are tempted to forget: the fact of “life’s little day”. Who are we fooling? Whether we live for 45 years (life expectancy in Malawi) or 79 years (life expectancy in Canada), our life is a mist. Maybe Christians in Malawi and other majority world countries can help us see the many artful ways in which our culture (and perhaps even some of our theologians!) deceive us into acting otherwise. For the antidote to the ‘sting of death’ (I Cor. 15) is not to squeeze out a few more years from this life but rather to cast our faith on the One who has defeated death, and who consoles us: “do not be afraid….I was dead, but behold I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and hades.” (Rev. 3).

Jacaranda in bloom, October 2011

Friendly strangers and well-meaning colleagues often ask me what I miss most about my homeland, now that I’ve been living in Malawi for almost six months. After making the perfunctory clarification that I haven’t lived in my homeland for some time anyway, having lived between 2006 to 2011 in my wife’s Mutterland of Germany, I surprise them with my answer: fuel.

They’re expecting an answer brimming with nostalgia. Ice capped mountains, lonely pine forests, maple syrup drenched pancakes. But my answer is starkly realistic: fuel. I miss gas stations filled with gas. It’s that simple. You can keep your Tim Hortons, ice hockey, and Mounties. I miss gas stations where lineups of cars and trucks don’t stretch a kilometer from the pumps like a creeping line of ants. I miss gas stations where mobs of men with dirty yellow jerry cans don’t budge in front of my car to seize those last precious drops of diesel or “petrol” (as it’s called here). I miss the freedom of not having to meticulously plan out our every single trip so as to maximize fuel efficiency (and then having to redraw all our plans when the much hoped for tanker doesn’t roll into town). I miss what I simply took for granted in Canada: gas stations that are regularly and reliably supplied with gas.

Malawi has been in the throes of a fuel shortage since we arrived in March. It is worsening. In the past month I’ve spent well over ten hours in lineups waiting for gas. We’ve cancelled trips, including some holidays, because while we had enough petrol in the tank to get us to the destination, had no guarantee that we’d find enough there to bring us back! We plan our excursions down the mountain into town for school, work, and shopping very deliberately. We learned a lesson in early June when we didn’t plan so carefully, ran out of fuel, and were forced to scrounge up a paltry ten litres in the black market—at three times the pump price, of course. All this is the height of annoyance and highly stressful. Not being the patient sort, I caught myself a few times in church changing the words of the Lord’s Prayer to “give us this day our daily petrol” as the congregation recited the prayer.

On our way to Malawi: the Statham family at Hamburg Airport, February 2011, with all that we couldn't leave behind. Little did we know that know that petrol was the one thing we'd left behind that we'd miss most!

The fuel crisis is a great bother, to be sure, but it took me a little time to realize that for many Malawians—most in fact—it wasn’t just a bother but a true crisis. No fuel means no imports come into the country. No fuel means no exports leave the country. The economy is collapsing. Prices are rising fast. Malawi’s decent transportation infrastructure of buses and minibuses is literally drying up, leaving people and goods immobile. Wealthy folk like us can ride out this crisis but the poor sure can’t.

In Zomba Market with the kids. Even local fruits and veggies are becoming more expensive

And things went from bad to worse. In the past weeks donor nations of the first world like Britain and Germany and aid/development organizations (forty percent of Malawi’s GDP is donated from outside!) began to retract funds and renege on promises of aid. Can’t blame them, really. They’re dealing with an increasingly autocratic and capricious government that has many observers very worried about the very future of democracy in Malawi. A crackdown on freedom of speech, media, and political assembly, among other things, has spooked donor countries and organizations into playing “hardball” with Malawi’s president. But he’s not budging. Now imagine if forty percent of Canada’s budget simply evaporated. What would the government do to make ends meet? Right: taxes. But in a country with no upper or middle class to speak of, tax monies have to be squeezed from the average citizen. And the average Malawian is already living hand to mouth. So now even the absolute basics of life for the poor like flour, meat offal, oil, and salt are groaning under heavy tax. The fuel shortage is a small symptom of this greater problem. Without any foreign currency in the coffers, the government can’t afford to import oil and gas through ports in Tanzania and Mozambique. But in the light of more pressing needs of great majority of the population, my complaints about lineups at the gas station seem trifling and selfish.

Almost there! Now I'm getting really close to the pumps...

In 21-22 July the worsening economic situation provoked nationwide protests, including isolated pockets of rioting and violence in the larger cities of Lilongwe, Blantyre, and Mzuzu. The government responded with a hard hand: to date eighteen people are counted dead from police bullets.  A large street protest also occurred in Zomba, although the town remained relatively quiet, thank God, probably due to a heavy army presence. A day after the protests I drove down the main street. Shop windows were boarded up, soldiers armed with machine guns ambled along the sidewalks. People were subdued and quiet. Waiting in line outside the grocery store to return some empty coke bottles, the President’s motorcade roared by us: a fleet of sleek black armored cars, army lorries bristling with soldiers (the fuel crisis doesn’t seem to affect them!), and a few flat bed trucks crammed full of dancing, singing thugs clad in party blue. He was on his way to the police academy to deliver a speech in which he vowed to “smoke out” those who opposed his government. What surprised me most was the response of the several hundred onlookers around me on the street. They did nothing. They said nothing. Eyes narrowed they watched the motorcade pass, mouths clamped shout. Not a peep. It was a silent spite of a browbeaten people who are biding their time.

The next day’s newspapers announced that opposition political parties and pro-democracy advocacy groups set 16 August as a deadline for Malawi’s president Bingu zu Mutharika to sit down with them to collectively address the crippling reality Malawi finds itself in. If not, a new spate of protests are planned for that very day. *To date, the government has rejected the notion of joint discussions of the country’s problems; moreover, it has already indicated that it will declare the planned protest marches illegal, thereby justifying brute force to prevent or hamper the marches.

Please, Malawi desperately needs your prayers and concerned action. Malawi is a wonderful country with people who fulfill the tourist cliché of Malawi as the “Warm heart of Africa”. But something is sick at heart in this troubled land and it might get worse before it gets better. Pray for peace, pray for change, pray that God’s righteous will rule in Malawi.

The kids taking shelter from the rains under what they call 'Banana-brellas'.

The storm started as I was sitting on my very first faculty meeting at Zomba Theological College. At first a gentle tap of water drops on tin. Then drumming—louder, louder, louder. My ears, already straining through the course of the meeting to catch the unfamiliar nuance of Malawian-accented English, gave up completely. Professors were shouting to each other to make themselves heard above the din.

After the meeting, I made the short sprint to my vehicle and then carefully drove home—upstream as it were: a flood of water, red from the soil, was rushing down the steep mountain road. The Toyota waded through the creek by our house that had already burst its banks. Still the rain didn’t let up. Though not quite the forty days and nights of Noah, it poured for the next six hours, pounding our tin roof (springing at least ten leaks!), knocking out electricity, and washing out the road between our house and town.

It’s the rainy season in Malawi. The air is thick and damp. Our kids’ faces are always glazed in sweat. In Zomba, this season brings rain almost everyday (it’s different in Blantyre, which is only hour’s drive away). And rain here falls in a deluge. Clouds build up in late afternoon sky, towering dark and ominous. Then it pours with a power I’ve never witnessed in Canada.

Gathering storm over Zomba in the late afternoon

But as I’ve come to experience in my short time in Malawi, weather in central Africa is always violent: the sun will crisp you in minutes; the rain will drench you in seconds—and both could happen within moments of each other!

Until the rain drowned out our faculty meeting, I had been enjoying sitting in on it. Many of the ZTC professors I met then for the first time; many of the key issues facing the College at this critical juncture in its history I was learning about for the first time too. ZTC was opened in 1977 to serve Malawi’s mainline Protestant churches, of which the Presbyterians are the largest by far. The Anglicans have since moved out to erect their own seminary, although cordial relations still exist between the two denominations, and a few neglected books about musty liturgical practices on the library shelves testify to their former presence. Today, ZTC belongs to the CCAP, training up its ministers and their spouses for pastoral service in Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. As the premier theological school in Malawi, students from other churches, including charismatic and independent congregations, also study at ZTC, and a close relationship is maintained with the department of religion at the University of Malawi (also in Zomba).

The College is in time of restructuring and revisioning. Money is short, resources are stretched, funding from outside is drying up. Most of the professors lack the cash to pursue post-graduate study—one of the reasons why I, as a PhD, was invited to ZTC. But classrooms are crammed with students! Professors are enthusiastic and devoted! The CCAP is growing and vibrant! What does the future hold? What does God want for ZTC?

My next post will give you a visual tour of the ZTC, by way of bringing to into picture the busy, beautiful campus, its mission, ministries and many prayer needs.

As a postscript: during the faculty meeting, the rain clouds weren’t the only things casting shadow over ZTC. A few days before, a fourth-year seminarian was hit and killed by one of the contagion of minibuses crowding Malawi’s roadway. A few months shy of graduating, he left behind a wife and seven children. Please–the College community, and especially his family, need prayer.

Malawi wakes up early. Very early. The nighttime symphony of barking dogs, chirping crickets, and wind rustling through palm fronds has only just drawn final breath when Malawi wakes up. Birds singing, young children shouting as they begin a long walk down the mountain to school, and the rhythmic slash of machete on tall grass drifts in through open windows. It is 5:30 am. Like it or not, the Statham family is awake.

Looking down at Zomba town at dawn

I would rather not wake up so very early. So in the short gray minutes between sleep and sun I keep my eyes closed tight. But thoughts are already spinning around in my head: Where am I? What am I doing here? Was it fair—was it safe!—to bring my wife and two small kids with me to southern Africa? What does God have in store for us over the next three plus years? I start thinking about the life we left behind. It was a long journey—physically, spiritually, mentally—from our home outside Hamburg, Germany to Zomba, Malawi. I am appointed by International Ministries as a lecturer in church history and theology at Zomba Theological College (www.zombatc.org), the seminary serving the Church of Central Africa Presybterian (CCAP). Was it only one year ago that Rick Fee, general secretary of the Life and Mission Agency, visited our home in northern Germany on his way back from an AIDS conference in Amsterdam, to discuss the possibility of our appointment as PCC international missionaries? I was wrapping up my PhD dissertation as a stay-at-home dad to our two kids, Sophia (5) and Mio (22 months); my German wife, Annika, was teaching equestrian and working with mentally and physically challenged persons as a horse-riding therapist. The CCAP had appealed to its partner churches (e.g. The Presbyterian Church in Canada) for a doctorate-holding professor to teach at its cash-strapped, under-manned seminary. One short year later (inclusive of much prayer, soul-searching, thought, and not a few interviews) the Statham family arrives in Zomba!

Once the plaintive calls of our kids to come and free them from the entrapment of their mosquito netted beds can no longer be ignored, there will be scarce little time for these thoughts or nostalgia of any kind. I will get up. The day will accelerate in a blur of activities, errands, exciting new experiences and ulcerous frustrations. Sophia will be hurried out the door and into our jeep for the short drive down the mountain to her private school in Zomba, keeping her eyes peeled for roadside monkeys; Annika will be processing bills and invoices from the many start-up costs of keeping a house in Malawi, all the while praying that God will give us this day our daily electricity and internet; the carpenter will be unsuccessfully solicited to come and repair the termite-chewed kitchen counters; the plumber will come yet again to try to connect us to some hot water. And I’ll be driving around Zomba buying provisions, waiting in line-ups, settling accounts, trying desperately to keep our wheezy Toyota from stalling at every intersection…and keeping myself on the left hand side of the road!

Sophia and Mio playing around on our Toyota

We are only a few weeks into a brand new life in Malawi. But as our “boss” at the PCC’s International Ministries office in Toronto warned us on a few occasions, for those moving to Africa from so-called “first” world countries like Canada, simply living is a full-time job. Throughout the stress and exhaustion, we’re excited about reaching the point when our lives will include more than just surviving and settling! Amidst the chaos of these first few weeks, I catch glimpses of God’s greater purpose for our life here in Malawi beyond the frantic pace, pesky problems and myriad annoyances. Like when I was sitting stalled at the (only) stop light in Zomba. Coaxing the engine back to life, I noticed the jeep that pulled angrily around me had a bumper sticker of Malawi’s old flag plastered on its back window. Malawi’s president has just replaced Malawi’s post independence flag, a rising sun on a background of black, red, and green with a fully risen sun on a background of red, black, and green (see below)—what cynics read as an overly optimistic assessment of the nation’s development under his tutelage!

Malawi's flag 1964-2010

Malawi's present flag

Despite my stalled engine, honking cars and the choice words thrown by other motorists at Zomba’s newest “asungu” (white man), I couldn’t suppress a smile at the bumper sticker.  Not only did the rising sun remind me of my very early morning, the words of the prophet Isaiah–a favourite passage–jumped to mind:

Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you (Isaiah 60:1).

For a long time, my wife and I have wanted to use our gifts and training in the service of the kingdom of God;  in other words, to shine the glory of the Lord as best we can, in place where the light needs to be seen. Our hope and prayer over the next years is that we will be a blessing to the kingdom of God here in Malawi. And through this PCC web-blog, we invite Presbyterians and other Christians from around Canada to vicariously share in our experience! Over the next months, you’ll find out more about us, life in Malawi, mission and ministry needs and opportunities, Zomba Theological College, and the church in Malawi. So until the next post, here’s hoping for a few smoother paths!