Dear praying friends,
Elly and I believe that our job as Christ-followers is to disciple people, both believers and unbelievers. Jesus Christ said, “I will build my Church….” (Matthew 16:18).
Jesus commanded us, His disciples, to,
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you….” (Matthew 29:19-20)
That is what we taught our DCI Team of three men, John Singinie, George Chipeta and Caleb Chirambo, to begin making disciples of all who would come and teach church leaders how to train leaders. We understood that this strategy would bring unity among Christ-followers from the various denominational churches in the villages.
We had learned to appreciate John Singinie during our visits to Malawi. His love for the Lord and his desire to serve Him with his life were evident to us. He became the leader of what we called the DCI Team (Discipling Christ-followers Intentionally).
Modern technology has helped us keep in touch with the DCI Team from Canada. We train, answer questions, talk via WhatsApp, and Zoom, email, and keep in touch almost daily.
Every other week the team travels to villages throughout the north and Central Region to encourage, train further or simply hear testimonies of people saved through the Good News of salvation.
As the DCI Team prayerfully considers going to a village to train local leaders, they begin looking for a person of peace (This principle is found in Matthew 10:11-13 as Jesus sends the 12 out). This local leader is then asked to invite 11 other local leaders to attend a training that would benefit their local church and community. Some pastors that come to these trainings are not believers. Some belong to African churches that don’t know God. Amazing conversions are seen as these pastors believe the Good News and are saved. Pastor Laswell is one of those men. He was a pastor of a church but did not believe in the Lord Jesus and did not preach the Gospel to his people. As he went through the first lesson of the Dynamic Discipling, God touched his heart and he was wonderfully saved. He was very anxious to get to his congregation and tell them the Good News. He told us that he needed to get back, because his flock was a congregation of the walking dead. How true! Today Laswell is the coach for his area and a man of God. (You can read and hear testimonies here http://www.dcimalawi.com).
After pastors are taken through the Dynamic Basics they are taught, using the Apprentice Leadership manual, how to train leaders to start reproducing Life Groups with the people they are discipling. (https://dynamicchurches.org/resources/life-group-disciple-making-model/learning-to-lead-course/).
This process has seen tens of thousands come to salvation as well as many believers being established in their faith, learning to live a life of faith through trusting in the Lord Jesus and the promises of God’s Word.
John Singinie, our team leader, is a Malawian and very familiar with the culture. He is an evangelist and noticed how other organizations are working. He taught us that, going to the villages with simply the Word of God will help the local people to hear the Word of God. People are not side tracked by the things being distributed but rather listen to the Word of God and take it deep into their hearts. Their lives are changed dramatically as a result.
Even though the Malawi villages are extremely poor, finding the God of the Bible and salvation through Jesus Christ His Son changes everything. The little money available to the family gets used for the benefit of the family as the husband learns to love his wife and children. The changed life they begin living in the village becomes a witness to the power of God to those who trust Him. Others ask what happened and the discipling process continues.
We are thankful for The Gideons (Now ShareWord International). They supplied us with New Testaments for many years. Because there are so many needs for Bibles in the world and we had already received so many, they stopped supplying us with New Testaments. This is hampering the work of discipling. The growing reach of the discipling process in this very poor is increasing in the meantime. Through one Christ-follower telling his friend or neighbour or relative about Christ the work has spread from the north of Malawi to the villages in Central and South Malawi and to Zambia and Mozambique. The DCI Team has trained leaders who became coaches as they in turn trained leaders. Some of these coaches, at their own expense, travel long distances to spread the Good News and train more leaders and disciples.
Brian Mkandaweri (a coach) lives in Jenda. He came to the first training conference we had in Mzuzu in 2012 and has become a great servant of God, travelling from his home in the Central Region to Lilongwe and Mzuzu to pursue people for Jesus and disciple them. He has dozens of Life Groups in Zambia and hundreds in the Central Region. He has trained many other leaders who have become sub-coaches to help him keep up with the training of new leaders. These new leaders train more leaders and disciple more people. We don’t help Brian (or any of the other coaches or leaders) financially; they do this work because they love the Lord and want to see people saved. For many years he went about discipling people and training leaders without the support of his wife; she was not a believer. She hung around with the wrong crowd and had a reputation to match. When pastor Brian started a Life Group in his house with believers from different churches, she didn’t attend. Lately, after many years, she began attending the Life Group and came to faith in Christ as she was discipled one-on-one. This changed her life and now she is a help to her husband and now she loves her family. Her community also has seen her changed life. She has begun to disciple people in her village.
· The three full time workers, John Singinie, George Chipeta and Caleb Chirambo are given an allowance to support their families.
· The Team has a 4×4 diesel truck, a 2010 Toyota Hilux that helps get the men safely to the villages with their supplies. The team also has two motorcycles they use to get around during their week at home, running errands and reaching people in Mzuzu they are personally discipling.
· DCI materials needed for the discipling process are available in the local trade languages, Tumbuka for the north and Chichewa for the rest of Malawi and the areas across the borders of Zambia and Mozambique. These materials are printed locally so the local economy benefits.
· We have been able to buy some New Testaments the last few years as God provided funds, but really need many thousands more as the work expands.
· John Singinie is working with the Malawian office of Awana to bring Awana to the DCI network and the thousands of children who need to know Jesus. Some local churches have a children’s work already, but Awana will bring the discipling process to this age group as well.
· John Singinie participated in a conference in Kenya, this year was a speaker at a Baptist Pastor’s Conference in Cameroon in August 2023 and is invited to participate in a conference in Tanzania in November 2023. The work of DCI Malawi is being noticed across Africa.
Our needs:
· Our budget needs help due to inflation.
· In December we need to order New Testaments. The cost of one New Testament has gone from US$ 2.95 to US$ 5.00 each as of last December. We can use 10,000 for the expanding needs as the Good News keeps spreading to new areas. The north has a population of about 1.7 million. The south, where the work is just beginning to reach the villages, has a population of 14 million, plus the Chichewa areas of Zambia and Mozambique that are being reached.
· Printing training materials in the Tumbuka and Chichewa languages.
· Finances for the Awana program to be added to the trainings and the cost of translating their material into Tumbuka (It is already available in Chichewa).
· Inflation is rampant in Malawi; fuel has gone from CAN$ 2.00/litre to CAN$ 5.00/litre. Malawi is a landlocked country, everything not produced locally must be imported.
· The cost of living has increased dramatically. The Team needs an increase to their allowances.
· Elly and I are Associate Missionaries with Dynamic Churches International since 2002, we don’t receive a salary from DCI.
Yours in His service,
Hans and Elly Timmermans
Malawi Discipleship Outreach 