Malawi - where the Nazarene Famine funds are used
Malawi, described as the “warm heart of Africa,” is a small country in southern Africa that sits west of Mozambique. More than 90 percent of Malawi’s population is rural subsistence farmers. The population suffers from extensive deforestation and over-cultivation. Serious health problems such as tuberculosis, malaria, cholera, malnutrition, and respiratory infections are widespread in Malawi, which also has one of the world’s highest rates of HIV/AIDS infection. Issues such as these are only 
perpetuated by the fact that Malawi fights every year to feed its people.
Through Nazarene Compassionate Ministries' partnership with World Vision through the 30 Hour Famine, people in the Mzimba district of Malawi will receive training in sustainable agricultural practices, which will in turn increase the food security of their families and their children. People in this area have known the effects of extreme poverty. They watch as their family members and neighbors die every year from starvation. The graveyard of children who have starved sits approximately 300 yards from their small brick Nazarene church.
These families and children have names, faces, personalities, hobbies, dreams, and fears. NCM, together with Nazarene Youth International and World Vision, gave five students the opportunity to meet people in Malawi. Like most journeys, this one begins with a long way to travel. Five students from all over the USA/Canada region flew into Washington, D.C. to begin a 38+ hour journey to the rural areas of Mzimba.
The purpose of the trip was simple - to get a brief glimpse into the lives of the people of Mzimba. The students traveled to the very villages that the Mzimba Food Security Project is targeting. In essence, the students shared life with the same people who will be fed by the funds raised from the 2008 Nazarene 30 Hour Famine.
Village after village warmly received the students in a similar fashion - with a shower of music, dancing, and waving branches. The celebrations continued with countless hugs, handshakes, and smiles. It was a pure expression of immeasurable, selfless hospitality.
Such obvious, undeserved love is rare. Jennifer Guerra, a 16-year-old student who traveled to Malawi, shared: "I know that my parents love me. I know that my friends love me. But I have never before experienced such selfless love from complete strangers."
Other students resounded, "We have done nothing to deserve this, but yet they give of themselves to us."
John 15:13 says, "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends" (NRSV). The people in the villages indeed loved the visitors as friends. The people of Chamlowa asked the group of students to worship in their Nazarene church on Sunday morning. They invited the students into their lives as they shared in singing, dancing, and reading Scripture.
After church, the community expressed their hospitality to the visitors in a very tangible way—by presenting a male goat as a gift to the students. For the people in this area, a goat is not simply a goat. It is a means of living, a means of providing so that their children have something to eat through the winter. It is an invaluable resource to their community. This goat could be equivalent to giving away up to one third of a family’s annual income. The goat represents life for this community in Mzimba.
Those who hosted us loved with reckless abandonment. They extended their life for their friends. They welcomed the group not as strangers or foreigners, but as brothers and sisters. Because of their generous hospitality, the students returned with the powerful living memory of this new family. Impressed on their minds is the reality that children in Mzimba will continue to starve unless they learn to love the way they were shown love by the church in Mzimba, the way that Christ loves…with reckless abandonment.
As a Nazarene congregation participating in the Nazarene 30 Hour Famine, your donations go directly to this project that benefits not only the lives of people in Nazarene congregations in Mzimba, but the whole community.
