ENUKWENI FIRST LEADERS TRAINING

This report was sent by Andrew Makwakwa regarding the first training from 21-24/01/18 and edited by Hans.

We (John, George, Andrew, Hans and Elly) had a successful trip to Enukweni for the first leaders’ training.  We left on Sunday, using the Nissan X-trail. We took everything we needed including all books and bibles. We were welcomed at the house of Rev. Andrew Bipa of the Presbyterian Church.  We were supposed to stay at his, but soon after Hans and Elly left to go back to Mzuzu, we were told that the accommodation had been changed and we wound up sleeping in the church. Hans and Elly went to Lilongwe to pick up a friend from Kenya.

Some local men helped us to carry all the books and our bags to the church. We pitched our tent in a room. Then we went to the restaurant for our supper. We slept well till the next morning. There were a lot of mosquitoes but since we slept inside the tent then we had no problem. The next morning we had a bath and took breakfast, and then pastors from different denominations came to this church to begin our training.

We had a very good interaction with the leaders who came to attend the trainings. At first they had trouble catching on to the teaching and did not participate much. But we thank God that towards the end of the three sessions they were very free to interact and to participate as a result they began to catch the vision. We thank God that 3 pastors from local Traditional African Churches accepted Christ and they were happy to have found new life in Christ. Pastor Harfacs Gondwe of Chipangano Church said that the teachings were eye opening. He added that through these teachings he had come to understand what salvation is all about. This understanding caused him to receive Christ into my life.

As we continued interacting with them during the last day of training, pastor Harfacs said, “I feel like I’m being delayed to go out and testify what the Lord has done in my life.  I now realize I have been leading a church of the walking dead and now I am going to teach the living word to these people so that they get life too by the grace of our God”. Rev. Andrew Bipa of the Presbyterian Church mentioned he understood now that he had a church full of Christians, but not disciples.

The leaders gave thanks for the teaching we brought, it came at a time as they were making the plans to reach out and multiply their churches as a pastor’s fraternity of Enukweni.

Enukweni is located along the M1 highway.  The people here are exposed to all kinds of bad behavior due to the mobility of the people resulting in immorality and drunkenness. People spent their time drinking beer instead of going to work.  Men are found in pubs drinking in the morning hours instead of going to work on their farms. Many of the pastors said after the three days of training that through the one to one disciple making they can see that their community will soon be transformed .

Some more interesting details:

On the large Presbyterian Church property is also a primary school that belongs to this church.  The school is called Enukweni Primary School. There are 18 well trained teachers and 1378 school pupils, which means that every teacher is responsible for 76.5 pupils a day. This is a very unhealthy situation according to the standard of learning environment; the class size is too big by any standard.

The school does not have enough class rooms to accommodate all the pupils.  So the old church building is used as a classroom. The new Presbyterian Church that we used is a big church that was built with the help from their member of parliament Honorable Goodall Gondwe. The community of Enukweni is very happy for the help that this man gives them as their MP. He has also helped with the building of the market place and the stadium. He also initiated the clean water project that supplies water to the community from the surrounding mountains. This water is treated before going to the community and everyone pays a small amount of money for the maintenances of this system.

Enukweni is a small trading centre located along M1 road from Karonga. This trading centre population is a mixture of various tribes who have migrated from different areas in Malawi. Some people are from Burundi and most of these Burundis are business men. Other tribes in this area are Tumbuka, Ngoni, Chewa, and Yao from southern region of Malawi. Most of the people are small scale farmers who grow crops like maize, cassava, sweet potatoes, ground (pea)nuts and bananas. Most of them use fertilizers on their crops, especially on maize. They also have different types of livestock: cattle, goats, sheep, chickens and pigs. Most of the livestock is used for food, but sometimes they sell some to pay for school fees for their children and to buy fertilizer for their crops in their gardens.