Nora Martin

We are still here in the apartment in Toronto, waiting out the last days of quarantine. We really look forward to getting out of the apartment, even just for a quick run to the grocery store!

We have prepared our online presentation for Leaside Church (April 5). We have been asked to share our experiences as volunteers appointed to Malawi which was supported by Presbyterians Sharing. We will speak during the “coffee hour”. I hope they will find it as interesting as we did putting it together. How to condense several months of life changing experience into fifteen minutes! It made me think about what would best represent the total experience, rather than trying to get all the details in.

I also spend some of my time praying for all of you and for our friends in Malawi. We heard just the other day that they had three confirmed Coronavirus cases, all from the same household. Of course, we believe that there must be more than just those three. We continue to pray that our dear friends there will be safe and remain healthy. They have shut the prisons now to all visitors, which must be very hard on the inmates and their families and friends, but it’s definitely a necessary step. We were expecting them to do that already when we were still there. The government has recently announced it will release those guilty of petty crimes and those who have served most of their sentence.

We also heard that there is a confirmed case in Blantyre now, the city where we were living. Also just heard from my friend Lyca Mhone, one of the Friends of Prison volunteers. She says that transport has jumped from 600 kwacha to 1500, but instead of four people per seat, there are now two–with only eight people in a minibus. That says more than you can imagine about how seriously they are taking this situation. Lyca says they continue to pray for God’s intervention.