the tongues of men and angels, i speak but lack

fear not people, my silence for the past week has been because i've been traveling up north with the sunday school training team and haven't had access to internet or phone signal for my of my trip.

my trip started with a night at the African Bible College compound half way between blantyre and my final destination - and it felt like i had travelled across the atlantic rather than a few hundred km through africa.  the compound was so westernized it felt like being in little america.  it had a school, a gym, tennis courts, a swimming pool, loads of western housing, a radio station , a church and a college.  i honestly couldn't believe i was still in africa.

after my night there i traveled up to Kasungu to meet the sunday school training team and swap over with kaitlyn who had been with the team the week before me. then we drove for another hour or so to the place where tuesdays meeting would be and stayed in a 'luxury motel' which consisted of concrete rooms and hole in the ground for the toilet (i felt like a real life missionary!)

each day the meeting was in a different place so we traveled from town to town and motel to motel (i don't think i could ever get used to life of the move like that, sleeping in a different bed every night)

the meeting were great, they were all in chichewa so i didn't understand exactly what was being taught, although Velegeta (one of the team) gave me a basic overview.  my lesson was on prayer each day and looking at helping children to build up their prayer lives and creative ways of praying with them (i chose the topic because it's something i've been really challenged about personally lately) and i think it went well each day, some of the people even offered me land so i would stay in malawi.

every lunch and dinner during the week was nsima - which is the traditional malawian dish made from maize.  it's sort of like the consistency of play-doh and you roll a bit in your hand and dip it in a relish and it's served with vegetables and sometimes chicken or beef - without the sauce it tastes like nothing so you need to ration the sauce so you dont run out before the end - by the end of the week i started to like it but i ate so much of it that if i see another stalk of maize while i'm here i might cry lol

i also got to try sugar cane which was strange because you buy the whole cane and bite off the outside layer, chew the inside bit then spit out all the wood. it tasted like a mixture of a spoonful of sugar and a box of matchsticks.  with the amount of this that they eat and the amount of treacle sugar they put in their tea i'm surprised the malawians have any teeth left.

i'm sure there's loads more that i can tell you but at the moment my mind is blank so i'm gonna sign off for now and update again soon

matty :)