Malawi is one of the most impoverished nations on earth, there are a few larger cities but the majority of the country is villages given over to agriculture, little power and no running water. Every year a group of people travel to Malawi to visit the churches there. Many of us know people in Malawi and it is great to catch up with old friends and meet new ones as we travel most of the length of Malawi, from Nsanje in the far south to Mzuzu in the north.

Our aim is outreach and encouragement for the 217 assemblies throughout Malawi. They derive great benefit from our grasp on doctrine and knowledge of the Word and we are blessed to meet a people who rely and trust in the Lord every day of their lives. We travel in a mini bus which is optimistically labelled across the windscreen “I will go,” 22 people crammed in, some on folding seats and we watch Malawi roll by outside our windows.

We talk a lot and of course we sing. The contrast of the 2 dimensional Western chorus compared with Christina leading an acapella symphony; the girls providing beautiful harmonies while the blokes incorporate rhythms that confound the mind – it’s an experience. Sometimes singers meet us on the road, some distance from the hall.

They walk with us, all around the van, singing a song of welcome, it is incredibly beautiful. At one place Gilbert said they were singing the song the Zulus sing to welcome their warriors home and indeed these people were from the south, pushed out by the Zulus.

Maybe Gilbert is telling us what we want to hear, my Chichewa is improving and I know for a fact one group was singing as a welcome song, “Here come the white people.” There may have been something about a cooking pot mentioned. Graeme is attempting to clothe Africa one child at a time. He gives a talk that involves picking a terrified child from the crowd and clothing them with the sports shirt and shorts of some significant sportsmen – Harry Kane, Lionel Messi, etc. He makes the point that to look the part does not mean we are the part.

This works remarkably well and is very easy for them all to understand. The quaking child who is being held prisoner by the huge white man is then allowed to keep the clothes. What Graeme does not account for is the child now has something that everyone else wants and will live a life of terror protecting this precious thing from all comers.

The altar call is simple but straightforward, “Come forward if you want to receive the Spirit.” The tone is different from home; at one meeting no one was stepping forward as no one wanted to be first. Pastor Nelson said, “If you don’t step forward now I’m closing the meeting.” Immediately a number of people stepped forward. The first ones to come are the women, always the women. You choose a person, one of the girls stand behind to interpret, you lean in and learn their reality – tooth abscess, fever, malaria, sick child, bad dreams, sometimes the Spirit. Their face is immobile but they convey suffering, hope – in this moment they seem a lot like children, even the old women, wizened and wrinkled. There is little or none of the self possession of the west, it’s all on the table here. So you pray together.

You believe in a God that can heal and deliver this sister, this brother of something you don’t understand, don’t want to understand, you just want victory for them, and you want to see it in their face, their eyes. Sometimes they receive the Holy Spirit. There was a young girl seeking for the Spirit. Celia said: “I knew when she received the Holy Spirit, I was sitting behind her and I could see it in her body, in her stance. One minute she was rigid, all her attention on her tongue and then as it changed… her shoulders dropped, a change in her focus, her head came up – I totally knew it.”

The trip is over. Many people have received the Spirit and we are happy but tired. 2 weeks is not that long but each trip seems a lifetime, the days packed with travel and events. It is hard to leave the Malawian team, the journey is an intense experience that bonds all of us in a way that is hard to define.

In his closing prayer on the final meeting Gilbert said, “Our time in Malawi is drawing to an end but this is just another page we turn,” and indeed it is. Another chapter, another rich time of learning about the Lord and each other, another step along the road until the Lord’s return.