A Full Tank!

This may seem like a strange thing to mention, but I assure you it is no small matter! Yesterday, I received my car back with likely not enough fuel to make it home from the repair shop. (When I had dropped it off it had a 1/4 tank???) The first gas station I came to had petrol and I only had to wait about 40 minutes to get it! They also were allowing people to "top up" or get as much as there vehicle could hold. Some stations had been only selling a certain number of litres or MK10,000 for each customer. We are very thankful to have our car back and have fuel in it!

Malawi Update Vol. 6

Notice of Hotmail Account Down

We just want to let folks know that we are still alive and ok! Something happened to our personal email account(the Hotmail one) that has blocked us out of it. We have not had access to it since New Years Eve. If anyone knows of a way that I can email MSN/Windows Live/Hotmail to explain my situation, please let me know. I have not been able to successfully comply with anything they have asked due to my limitations here.

We have had many days where the power is only on long enough to cook meals and keep food in the refrigerator from going bad. Thankfully we got a gas/electric stove installed over the break. We had bought it in July bite things take a while sometimes:) The oven is electric but the range is gas. That has definitely been a big help recently.

We are trying to get a new letter out and hope to do it before we go back to school on Tuesday.

One thing that you can pray for us about is that we have been quite discouraged as of late. We have been longing for home and the familiar and the financial, political and social scene in Malawi is getting more tense and difficult. So, please pray for encouragement as the busyness is about to begin and we do not feel at all ready for it!

We appreciate your prayers and know that the Lord works through them.

If you would like to email us you can reach us here at brian.carlisle1@gmail.com or Scharlie at scharlie.carlisle@gmail.com .

We will give notice when our Hotmail account is back and running.

Letters from Malawi

I hope that all of the letters we sent have reached their recipients by now. A brief word of explanation is due though, so that you do not think too poorly of the Malawi Post Corporation. Many of the letters that were sent on 20 October, were written in mid-July. On the inside of the card there is the date when we wrote them, but they did not get sent until mid- October. We were wanting to get them all written before we sent them. We did not finish before school started and progress was quite slow thereafter until the mid-term break.

Mailing them from the Post Office was an interesting process that took over an hour. Each letter was weighed individually and then the stamps were counted off for each. Then they had to be licked and stuck on.  (Missed those sticker stamps and the fact that even if I had a stack of mail to send it would be taken care of in 10 minutes at the McConnells PO). We did not think the stamps would stay on well enough, so we added the extra step of covering them in clear tape. Aren't they pretty?:) So, sorry if what we said was a bit out of date. We love you all. Take care.

The Rains Have Begun

This has been a most unusual beginning to the rainy season. People have said that it has been decades since there has been rain as early as this year. Throughout mid-late October, there were many isolated hard rains. Last year, we had a brief 30 minute shower in October, but then the "real rains" started in late November or early December.

It is so beautiful when it rains. The temperature drops afterwards and everything begins to green up again. It really is a completely different landscape.  It is also lovely to be under a tin roof when it begins! I have posted a clip of the first hard rain during a school day while the Academy is in session. This is looking out the front doors of the Admin Bldg. This happened on Tuesday 15 November. (It took about 45 minutes a piece for these clips to load. I could have used a different format, but looking at it on my computer it was so grainy that it did not seem worth posting. I am not able to tell if this will be any better. If someone with a "real" internet connection can look at this and tell me if it was worth posting, I would appreciate it. If it is not, I will probably give up trying to post videos and just stay with pictures. [I could not get the second one to load at all!] )

Please pray for the people of Malawi. Pray that the rains will be what they need for their maize crops to do well. In the last six months fuel has gone from MK256/ liter to MK380/liter ($1.46-$2.17) for petrol and about the same percentage increase  for diesel. Now most Malawians of course do not have vehicles, but many in the city use the mini-bus to get to work and they are significantly affected by the rise in the price of food due to the increase in transportation costs. During this same time Kwacha has been devalued some, not as much as the IMF and World Bank would like, but that has also had an affect on the rise of prices here recently.

Then, this past week the Parliament unanimously voted themselves an increase in their overall monthly compensation package from MK390,000 to MK 1,000,000 ($2,228-$5714)! The President said that he would only sign it if the MP's impeached his VP!

Things are getting increasingly difficult for the average Malawian. Please pray for their leaders to place the needs of their people ahead of their own personal and financial gain. This problem is not unique to Malawi, but it seems much more egregious here.

Children

A couple of weeks ago, I was able to help host a baby shower for one of the ladies who cleans for our school. Jean Mpata, with whom I taught last year, knows Esnart  well and wanted to give her a shower and asked if she could have it here. Showers here are usually only for first babies. Esnart got married at the beginning of last year and this year she’s welcomed little Miriam. Jean spent some of the time translating so that the ladies who teach, clean, and work in various other capacities at the school would better understand each other. I appreciate Jean.

Esnart was surprised, I think, really appreciative, and a little overwhelmed maybe. I was reminded of the blessings of the body of Christ as Jean prayed for Esnart, gave her good advice on mothering, and reminded all of us who were mothers that it is not only the physical needs, but also the spiritual needs of our children we need to see to. Jean, after all, has the wisdom of the mother of near-grown children and the close memory of a mother of a three year old. Pray for Esnart, her husband, and little Miriam.

Pray for us too. Balance is hard. We are busy and though we also spend time with Gwen and Samuel, we sometimes find it hard to just sit and talk with them. Pray for our family relationships and also, you parents who’ve been here, feel free to send along some good advice. We want to love these children in ways that build and train, bless, and point them to the Savior.

Also, will you please be in prayer for several families who are in various stages of the adoption process. It is very complicated here and, as anywhere it is hard to wait and not know what will come next, even as their hearts are already committed. I know some of you know about this first hand. Thanks for remembering them.