Skip to main content

Letters from Sarah

Dear friends & family,

We made it safe and sound to Malawi! The flights were wonderful – no time wasted waiting around on layovers, as we pretty much were able to walk off one plane and onto the next. We made it very smoothly through customs. Our few complaints were that Rob got a migraine and Sarah visited the restroom eleven times on the flight from Rome to Ethiopia. They are both feeling much better.

Please continue to pray for our health, as a handful of people have experienced some yucky side effects of the malaria medicine we are taking.


Dear friends and family:

We enjoyed a very warm welcome from Gabriel & Dennis from CitiHope in the Malawi airport at 12:30pm (6:30a at home), as they greeted us all with a bunch of colorful flowers. From there, they drove us to Ilala Lodge in Mzuzu, Malawi, arriving at 6:45pm, making our total travel time from Greensboro to Malawi 32 hours! A delicious three-course dinner was waiting for us at the lodge including mushroom soup, braided rolls, chicken, rice, potatoes, and fresh fruit. Our rooms were comfortable, so most of us got the good night’s rest we had prayed for.

This morning we met for breakfast at the CitiHope office – it was also delicious! It included bacon sandwiches, tuna sandwiches, apples, avocado, corn flakes, homemade French fries (fried potatoes), and scrambled eggs with coffee & juices.

After a briefing on recent CitiHope work and a review of our itineraries, the medical team will head up the plateau to Livingstonia, where they will stay until next Thursday. The local skills team will visit FOMCO orphanage, and the construction team will begin their work project—repairing one of the buildings where the orphans are fed.


Dear friends and family:

We are alive and well in Livingstonia! Life is very primitive and hard here-so the people are thankful for anything American we give them. Most homes do not have electricity or running water.

Jay watched 3 hysterectomies by a Dutch doctor on Friday (he would have watched 4, but almost passed out after #1). These surgeries are performed because of the uterine cancer rampant here from HPV. Today, he helped deliver a tiny baby! She only weighed 2 pounds. Karen has also been helping at the hospital.

Sarah and Pete have been traveling with 3 teenagers to churches and schools to teach about first aid and HIV/AIDS.

Thankfully, none of us have been sick since we arrived---keep praying please!

We miss you and hope you are well and healthy.

Love,

Sarah & Jay

Popular posts from this blog

Mother Shalom

South Central, Los Angeles, was the neighborhood in the city where Communities of Shalom began in 1992. I met Marx Gutierrez from El Salvador who was there attending High School at the time. He remembers what happened at the corner of Florence and Normandy Streets in South Central, LA, when Reginald Denny was pulled out of his truck and beaten while the crowd looked on and the police did nothing; and how the Rodney King beating resulted in a not-guilty verdict for the police and resulted in a major, 3-day uprising in the neighborhood, until the National Guard came in and finally imposed law and order. He can still remember the fires, the bright orange night sky, the mass looting, 45 unsolved killings, the social chaos...And how the United Methodist Churches responded by creating a zone of shalom in 7 neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Today, Marx is a community organizer, and married to Jennifer Gutierrez, Conference Shalom Coordinator in the Calif-Pacific Annual Conference, and Rev. Vilma

First Generation Lambs Club Reunion

Fifteen of us gathered Saturday night at the Lambs Club for a 35 th year reunion of those who helped start the Lamb’s Church in Times Square in the mid to late 1970’s, including: Rev. Paul S. Moore , Founder of the Lamb’s Church of the Nazarene, and his wife, Tamara Dr. Michael J. Christensen , charter member and former associate pastor, and his wife Dr. Rebecca Laird Fr. William (BJ) Webe r, former Associate Pastor and Director of the Lamb’s Residency, and his wife Sheila who lived at the Lamb’s Jim and Dustee Hullinger, who were on staff together and made the Lamb’s their home for over 25 years Effie Canepa , who was the church pianist under 3 pastors, and her husband Peter Shirley Close, who attended the Lamb’s in the late 1970’s while studying, performing  and teaching music and voice Carl "Chappy" Valente , former associate pastor Rev. Bob DiQuatto , lead singer of the Church’s “Manhattan Project” and staff member of the Lamb’s, and his son Jason Rev. Gabriel

Liberation Spirituality: Henri Nouwen and Gustavo Gutierrez in Dialogue

Liberation Spirituality: Henri Nouwen and Gustavo Gutierrez in Dialogue Lecture Notes: Presented by Michael J. Christensen, Ph.D.,  Associate Professor in the Practice of Spirituality and Ministry,  Drew University;  and  International Director, Communities of Shalom, The United Methodist Church Introduction “There is a little man in Peru, a man without any power, who lives in a barrio with poor people and who wrote a book.   In this book he simply reclaimed the basic Christian truth that God became human to bring good news to the poor, new light to the blind, and liberty to the captives.   Then years later this book and movement it started is considered a danger by [the USA, or Rome], the greatest power on earth.   When I look at this little man, Gustavo, and think about [the President of the US, or the Pope], I see David standing before Goliath, again with no more weapon than a little stone, a stone called A Theology of Liberation (Henri Nouwen