A Few Prayer Items

I just returned from Kachere Prison. Let's just say that Amnesty International knows about it. It's a small holding cell for teenage boys in Lilongwe, overcrowded, stench-laden, frightening, desparing. Thursday, we took Dr. Henry Krabbendam (evangelist, exhorter, scholar) there to share with the young men willing to gather. We were locked inside with the prisoners only a few moments when I began to notice a common trend that I had not seen before here in Malawi: living? skeletons. There were a number of them wearing only a torn rag for a loin cloth huddled in a corner. I assumed they were refugees from Congo who had been found and detained for illegal entry into Malawi. But we found out they were Malawian. They were thin beyond description, every bone exposed in their body, the look of exhaustion (maybe, death) on their face. I cannot assume they have very long left. I'm just asking that you help us pray for them. I plan on taking some of our students to help procure blankets and clothes, and some food. But we also pray as we give these things that they will throw their hope on the only one who can deliver them from this body of death.

I am preaching in the local churches again. It is exciting because the many are so eager. But their hearts are far from the Lord. Please pray for continued opportunities and for clarity of the message, and more importantly for the exposing of hearts, false religious motives, and torn motives that they will be melted by the gospel.

The Lord has really been opening opportunities for our college to minister into the Presbyterian church here recently, especially among its leadership. We ask prayer that a trusting relationship develop. We also ask for the conversions of many of its ministers. Without converted ministers, we can hardly expect converted laity. But we are expecting nothing less than reformation and revival.

Please also pray for our many students who continue (and always will) struggle financially.

Praise God for our lives, the service he has called us to, his equipping (especially the hardships which clarify our relationship with him), the support of our financially struggling churches and friends, and our family communion.