Michael Dant's Blog

04/30/08 - Wednesday
I WONDER…
The orphanage job-site is becoming home (in it’s own way) to me now. When I return from town in the afternoons my chicks are always glad to see me get home. The remaining black one I named Bob because of his erratic chicken-like head movement (Oh that’s right he’s supposed to do that.) Things at the site were moving well but I’m experiencing another slow-down, The word around the site is that if you slow down that you will be given a raise in order to speed you back up again. I will go to them in the morning with my walking stick (a worn out African hoe handle which looks something like a 3ft. long peace pipe) and I will give them the ‘walk-softly-but-carry-a-big-stick-speech’ and then I will tell them about my father’s mule who, before he would pull the wagon, had to be rapped soundly on the head with an axe-handle. Dad would say, “ The mule wasn’t really stubborn…you just had to get his attention. Other than that I think things are on task and I sent some pictures along with the last email to Randy so that you can see the progress.

One of the pastors, Emmanuel recently lost his young daughter and nearly lost his wife as well, in an auto accident that he believes was deliberate because he left the religion of Islam. He was a man under Jihad because he had been hand-picked to be one of three ruling Imams for the country of Malawi and this was not the first attempt to harm him and his family (a fascinating story for another time) and Randy found him dying, of what some diagnosed as possibly AIDS.

While Randy was doing street ministry with some of the pastors here, Emmanuel’s mother beckoned Randy to come and pray for him. The man was covered with sores and lesions. Randy did not want to touch him but the Holy Spirit kept telling him to ‘put your hands on him and pray’. When Randy obeyed, Emmanuel began to be healed immediately and was soon walking around; the sores disappearing as well.

This story seems, incredible and unbelievable but it is true! I prayed for a Hindu woman in India, in a crowd, at her request. She was on her knees in front of me when she asked me, as a hundred others did, to pray for her. I prayed, and then moved on. For some reason because I was a Christian from the US even the Hindus thought that I had some extra power…But I have no power nor is there any power at work in me other than at God’s choosing. When I was done praying my friends told me that the woman was a well-known cripple in the neighborhood… and that for the first time in her life she walked away unaided. I had no sense that anything had happened or that my prayer was particularly powerful the point is that this had far more to do with the woman and Jesus than it had much of anything to do with me, yet God moved according to this woman’s faith. Whether she accepted Christ that night or before or after I do not know. I only know that she was healed.

We have pastors here who have witnessed great healings but we have many who, though faithful in prayer, have not. Some live and some die, how does God decide? Who could possibly understand that in this lifetime? No one can, but the mystery

That can be understood is this: it is not how God decides, but how we decide. Case in point: this is the story of a man who came to this job-site for work, his name is Mr. Brown. He is from a village that takes 1.5 kwacha to travel to; I think that might be around 50 miles. He was lead by the lord to come and do children’s ministry with the pastor of a relatively new church in Ndrandi; the poor overpopulated township that borders the city of Blantyre. Ndrandi is where the orphanage is being built. Neither Mr. Brown nor the pastor is paid. He is working here to get enough money to move his family, meanwhile he is living off of the charity of people such as young pastor Bosco and Pastor Maini who have been giving him a place to sleep and food to eat.

Brown comes to visit me in the evenings, to be taught a new trick or technique. He has a great heart for children and desires to reach them with visual aids such as ‘Gospel Allusions’. Sometimes, it is after dark that I return from Blantyre and he is waiting to show me that he has practiced what I have given him the night before and is eager to learn the next part of the trick. We have become good friends.


Today as he dug the new hole for the overflow septic tank he did not say much, It was mid-morning when Frank M. told me that Brown’s wife called Frank’s phone earlier, to tell him that Brown’s 3 year-old daughter had died early that morning of Malaria. I brought him to the room and the 3 of us prayed for him, he wept, and I excused him from work until Monday and gave him transport and a little over to help with her burial. This is a man who loves children so much that to serve in a ministry for them he would leave his family in harm’s way. I wonder what Jesus will have to say about that? Jesus admonished his disciples because they were critical of the time he was spending with some children one afternoon. He said, “ Suffer not the little children to come unto me!” and then he told them that for them to enter the kingdom of heaven they must “enter as one of these (little children)”. I wonder why in so many churches today children’s ministry is last on the list. I wonder why it’s always hard to find dedicated workers? I wonder why it always has the smallest budget? I wonder why it is treated as a baby-sitting service so that the adults can ‘get fed’ without interruption. I wonder why we don’t delight in the fact that these little ones will more easily be won to Christ than someone who has led a life of sin. I wonder why we won’t rely on this closing line to this poem: Heed these words, for they are heaven-sent--- ‘Tis harder to straighten the tree…once it’s bent. I wonder…

Tomorrow a man will bury his three-year old daughter, and if he could see the lack of dedication for children in our churches then I believe, with tears in his eyes, he would wonder too!

I am sorry dear reader because, as usual, I set out to make a point and have strayed to another. My original point was to understand how we decide who lives and who dies. There are so many times when these things are purely in God’s hands, but what about all the nearly infinite number of times that God puts the fate of others in our hands. Cain wrongfully killed his brother Abel than defiantly asked God “Am I my brother’s keeper?”. Do we secretly ask the same question when we feel the tug of God’s spirit to ‘give to’ or ‘spend time with’ or sacrifice some small portion of our blessings. If we want to know what God really thinks of the church of this age we have only to go to the book of Revelation, to the end of chapter 3 and read about the church at Laodicea. This is the church of today, which God is not particularly pleased with.

Mr. Brown’s daughter could be Malaria-free for 6 months for less than 2 cents, for 2 cents Mr. Brown could be tucking her in tonight instead of buying her coffin.

I did not know Mr. Brown in time to do anything about it, but I do know many children (children and the elderly are least likely to survive this disease) that I can protect. There are thousands just across the river from where I write this. I will be there distributing medicine as we’ve done so many times in the past. We know where there are two large suitcases with medicine that are currently tied up and we could use your prayers to have them released or you could contact Randy at randy@acts3.org to see if there is some other way that you could actually save a life.

I wonder if anyone will? I wonder…

Today I did ‘Gospel Allusions’ at the church in Nkolokoti, and then I spoke about healing in the church. This church fell apart for a time due to an indiscretion on the part of their leadership. A pastor did wrong to an elder and in turn that elder or some other, I’m not sure, took off with the church funds. While trying to recover from this they are thrown into confusion because the Nzungu’s that have been nurturing them have left.

Shawn and Heather’s ministry here has been a blessing to many and it is hard to understand how and why God will change a calling. One thing that we should try to understand about Him is that we will never fully understand Him, though we can fully trust Him. The people of this village needed, I think to hear this. I think that we should remember it, as well, when we see people, who we know are following God, suddenly change direction. Our first response is ‘Well I thought they should be working that ministry for the next 10 or 15 years. It’s been less than a year and they are already packing it in’.

There are some things that I know about my God and this is one of them; He will not stay in my ‘box’ for long. He cannot be predicted to the next moment or much less to the next decade. He will so often get us to a certain place for one reason and then change the reason because He knows he could not move us if we knew all that we had to face.

Maribeth came to Malawi, she thought, to look into working with another ministry; she did not know that the Lord was sending her to Acts III. I as a young man thought that I was moving, for a few months, from the Washington D.C. area for a temporary job in Georgia., until I moved back to Las Vegas. I had no idea, and probably would have changed direction, if at that time of such great personal immaturity, some one had told me that Georgia would be the land of my wife, the land where my children and grandchildren would be born and the land of my Salvation.

It is believed by the people of Ethiopia that, when Candace their Queen visited the court of Solomon, she returned with a son. It is tradition that this child was from the union between she and Solomon. That very blood line existed through to the days of the last king of Ethiopia; Haile Salasie. He and all of their kings were called the ‘Lion of Judah’ and to this day a lion, the ‘Lion of Judah’ is still found on their flag.

Ethiopia has an unusually large number of both Jews and Christians which for many generations have lived in this African nation. It may be that, because of an ancient tradition and heritage, on a particular day there happened to be returning from the temple in Jerusalem a certain Ethiopian eunuch who had a chance encounter with a disciple named Phillip. This eunuch was a man of influence in the court. Following tradition, he came many miles to worship in the temple of his forefathers. He thought that he was there to learn, study and worship in the way of ancient observance. Little did he know that he would kindle a flame for Christ in his faraway land. Thank God that He has a plan better than our own and that plan may change not according to our desire but his.

Though this entry is for Saturday it is really the evening of Wednesday the 23rd. I am racing to catch up with the blog, keep costs down, keep everyone working, provide materials, track finances, have an answer for every question, make meals, clean “the cave”, hand-launder, keep a daily job log, wash dishes, do ministry, say “no” a hundred times and tuck my chicken in at night. How does my wife do it? (By the way, honey, I now wash every dish as I use it.) What I really don’t get is how did Whitney do it and work in the ditches digging with the best of them. I am trying to follow his good example and to earn everyone’s respect by working beside all of the workers, as much as possible. I think I am doing that, but perhaps not, as I have not yet been offered roast rat; a delicacy, I am told, that he is certain never to pass-up.

We were taken to the airport today to see Randy off, driven by Pio, a tall extremely thin and grizzled faced older man who is one of Mahesh’s drivers. He is a simple and kind man like so many of the few remaining older generation. I was thankful to Mahesh who, although he is second generation Malawian, still has the gift of hospitality that we saw displayed toward us so many times in India. That culture has so many things right, they are so close to living a righteous life but still depend upon their own works for salvation.


Mahesh is a truly kind and loving man, not just to friends and family but to strangers in the street as well. As many beggars occupy the streets of Blantyre as any third-world nation and no one ever gives them anything. The reason is many are professionals and as soon as you give to one they are on you quicker than a seagull on a french-fry in a McDonald’s parking lot. What is unique is that Mahesh seems to have some unspoken rule about those who come in to his hardware supply store who are actually needy and those who are not and there is a slow and orderly stream throughout the day of the needy which he gives to, though he doesn’t give a great deal to each it certainly adds over the years. The book of Isaiah proclaims that our righteous deeds are like filthy rags to God without a right relationship with him first. There was time for me and perhaps also for you when I thought it was enough to please God through the righteousness of my filthy rags.

Later I will tell you about how in 1922 at the age of 11, Mahesh’s father left India to come to the ‘land of opportunity’. No not the U.S.—Malawi! And seeing where Shawn and Heather planted… fruit is ripening.

L.G.
Julie’s blog the other day and what I saw today gave me something to reflect on. The messages are on a similar theme but different perspectives. Julie talked about the difficulties in serving Christ and that the trials of life are, in part at least, “the good life”. So what is the different perspective?

I recently discovered on this, my third trip here, that there is more going on than is at first obvious. I pointed to this when I mentioned the luxuriant lifestyles of people ranging from “retired corrupt government officials” to white missionaries. I know that there is and always have been a separation between the rich and the poor, Jesus said that ‘the poor you will always have’. I don’t know why it bothers me more here than at home, it maybe that I just never saw it coming. In my previous visits I had seen a smattering of large estates behind brick walls and reasoned that there must be a very small percentage of elitists per capita. But what has smacked me right upside my head is this entire culture that is separated, and that I was too ignorant to see. There is much more here than a mid twentieth-century city and it’s nineteenth-century suburbs trying to catch up to the present. There are two such distinct socio-economic structures that they could almost be described as being in two different dimensions. This is apparent to me now wherever I go.

I go to a vendor in the street who is set up next to a half-naked beggar and I can buy oranges or bananas picked fresh and wild from the mountainside and at the same dusty table I can buy a cell phone and have my minutes toped off. The streets are filthy with an unpleasant potpourri as I turn a corner to go to the Internet café to download this blog and see a four-year-old girl pull down her pants, squat and urinate in the street. The thing that I was missing, the thing that I had to discover is that I can hop on a crowded sweat and chicken-stinkin’ mini-bus and for 60 kwacha (about 39 cents) I can go to the Game store shopping center. I can shop at the game store (it’s almost half a Wal-Mart) or buy groceries at the Shop-Rite, but best of all I have found one of the places where the “nzungu” (whites) congregate. These are the ones who never cross the line except to collect a bill, and I am discovering day-by-day more such oases. But is it any different than where I come from? It might be, I’ll write some on that tomorrow.
The point that struck me is this…L.G.; it’s a brand name. They make all sorts of electronic stuff; chances are you’ve had one of their phones.

Well as I stood outside of the GAME store two black employees escorted a brand-new large-screen plasma T.V. to it’s excited and flushed owner (do you know how I know that he was flushed?) I watched as it floated heavenly by seeming almost to transcend the wobble-wheeled cart that bore its feather-like weight. I read the packaging. It continued to float. I noticed the brand name and their catch phrase…L.G.----Life’s Good! And I wondered is life good?

Webster’s says that when applying the word good as a value judgment then to be good is to be perfect. So, is life perfect? When using the word good as a moral judgment then to be good would be to be morally perfect. I put it to you again, is your life morally perfect. No of course not. But there was one life that was. Do you know who that is? Do you truly know Him and his good life?

L.G. has it wrong but it’s not really their fault, life is good for those who seek the good life in Malawi or anywhere else. It is just how you define the word. You must encounter, as one of our former presidents had to, just exactly what “is, is”. If we think that the good life consists of the things of this world then, we are missing the real life that God has for us.

In Matthew 19, the rich young ruler came to Jesus and said “Good master what must I do to receive eternal life?” Jesus did not answer that question until he first corrected the young man. The man had tried to flatter Jesus. He was calling him good or morally perfect but should have realized that Jesus could have been like so many teachers of his day, full of corruption—this man did not know he was standing in front of the Son of God, yet he called him good. Jesus said that there is no one but God that is good! (You are looking at God in the flesh, you just don’t know it.) Next Jesus told the man to obey the Law (commandments). The man now proved himself to be a liar by answering that he had obeyed them all since his youth. (Have you ever gone a day or a week without breaking even one?) For the final blow Jesus exposed this man’s idol, that thing which kept him from seeing God and truly knowing Christ. His money was not the problem as money and possessions are not our problems. God can bless a man with great wealth, He did it with David and Solomon and Abraham and so many others. The problem is our attitude to it. Do we desire it, do we lust for it, does it drive us…then it is an idol and it keeps us from God. The bible tells us to “seek the kingdom of heaven first and all these things will be added unto you”.

There is no problem with what we own as long as it does not own us, there is no problem in seeking the “Good Life” as long as it is the perfect life of our savior that we seek first. Jesus finally told him to do what was impossible for the young ruler—to sell everything that he had and give it to the poor! But he does not ask us all to do that, only those of us for whom it is an idol.

All that we have we may keep as long as we have no brother who goes cold and without food tonight and as long as no child goes hungry and unprotected. Then we are allowed to covet this “good life”.

The mortar mixers are now coming in at 7:30am to have the mortar mixed so that the masons can begin, without delay at 8:00am. They use shovels not large pitchforks contrary to what some believe. For 5 to 10 minutes every morning Grey Mnunka gives job assignments for the day. The masons are now on quota. They must point one section of the perimeter wall every day or plaster the foundation of five sections of the wall to receive a day’s wages. The drainage channels for the exterior of the building have been sloped, plumbed and dug and will double as sidewalks when the weather is dry. Everyone is doing their part to keep costs down and we’ve brokered some discounts due to Randy’s refusal to allow Grey and Bosco to accept anyone’s first price. The Lord has really opened doors for people to help us and we are saving so much of the project money, ( admin. money is separate and raised through the thrift stores so that no contribution for the home is used for anything else) that we will come very close to completing enough of the construction with the $30,000 that we brought with us so as to make it livable for Maribeth when she comes in June!

We now have a price on a water tank and tower,which will increase the pressure from the weak trickle of ‘city water’ and will supply a surplus when the water is cut off. Yesterday the water went off for 24 hours and the power is shut off now for several hours almost daily.

The Senior Pastor Frank Maini and his wife Ester, after saving for a number of years to buy a small tract of land and on it build a three room brick house have decided, after seeing us camping out at the site, that they should do more to help their own. They are no different than anyone, they want a piece of land and a house to call their own but they were broken by the Lord and now are giving away their children’s inheritance. Today I go with them to have their property transferred to ACTS III. What an example of selflessness. If I wasn’t so awestruck I’d be ashamed.

This parcel of land is adjacent to but not located in a very exclusive neighborhood. I did not know that such places exist with such rampant poverty all around, though I should have known better. These are the kind of places where the walls are so high that you have no idea what is behind them as you drive by. This is a neighborhood with houses larger than a typical U.S. neighborhood. A neighborhood with dish antennae, air-conditioners, a golf course, manicured lawns, doctors, lawyers, retired corrupt government officials, and of course… white missionaries with two- and three-story homes and swimming pools.

(Hey, I got a swimming pool too, but then I wasn’t called to live amongst the impoverished of Malawi or was I? Maybe before I try removing the speck from my brother’s eye etc.).The point is that I asked Frank who, exactly, these people minister to. He didn’t know, and I certainly had not seen them anywhere around ( though, they might have been those folks that I see in the new Range Rover dropping off their kids at that fine new private school every morning). It made me realize that I did not fully understand what Pastor Kingsley meant (he was the chief that asked us to lead a revival at his village of 250, and 500 to 600 got saved, Praise Jesus!) when he told us on our first trip here that we were unique in coming to the rural villages because missionaries “just don’t do that”. Most places we went told us we were the first whites to step foot in their village in their lifetime.

Anyway I think I was about to tell you about the land transfer. Frank and Ester Maini, myself and Pastor Frank Gama, who came as a witness, walked to the village- whose name is on the transfer deed though I can’t make it out. We walked for about a mile and a half through the most beautiful hill country around to the backside of Mt. Nyambadwe (Nee-ahm-bod-way) the mountain just west of the orphanage site. We visited the Maini’s property and took a few pictures, then headed to the chief’s house not more than a hundred yard’s away. The chief was holding court over some minor dispute, the government officially recognized their power to do so as late as 1990. The chief was not what you’d expect. He was a slightly rounded man, what some might call healthy, in his mid 40’s wearing a clean horizontally stripped t-shirt. He was jovial and good natured. He invited us to sit. There was only one chair in sight and he insisted that I sit there next to him. He sat only a few feet away from his concrete walled front porch as a silent man sitting across from him eyed us, then him, then returned his concentration to the Bawo board. Bawo is a board game that as far as I could tell is a cross between backgammon, chess, and marbles. It is played on a thick wooden game board about 2’x3’ with 4 rows of spaces, 8 spaces in each row and two home spaces near the center. The spaces are carved out of the board in bowl shapes giving it the appearance of a large wooden muffin pan. I gathered by the look on the chief’s opponent’s face that the loser might get struck upside the head with the Bawo board.

I joked with him about having to divide his attention between his game and official business and asked if he would blame us if he lost. He asserted that losing was not going to be a problem. I asked if he would like to see some I.D. and joked that I would first like to see his credentials. He jumped up ran inside an produced a picture I.D. showing me that, beside his chiefly duties, he was also employed as a cook for one of the local private schools. I guess chief’s tribute is not what it used to be either.

As Frank Maini borrowed a piece of lined notebook paper to inscribe the official document, I inquired to exactly how one becomes a chief ( just in case the market picks up for chiefs pay and I run out of ministry work). He told me how in his grandfather’s day men would challenge the old chief to fight, sometimes to the death, and the winner kept his title or became the new chief. As things worked out, once his grandfather had won, the fighting was outlawed and the title of chieftain was handed down through generations.

It was then that I realized that I was the only one to notice a large black hen pounce upon and capture a small wriggling ten-inch black snake. She quickly ran into the cornfield with it, as her rooster also noticed her catch and was in hot pursuit!

This was the third time I’ve seen this type of small black snake this trip and I know that in the hills there are some Black Mambas but I know that there are other varieties of snakes as well. I asked Frank what kind of snake it was. “Mamba” was his reply. Thinking that he might be pulling this old “nzungu’s” leg I checked into it. I found that if you want to see a large Mamba you must go into the mountains but they are quite plentiful in their infancy around the city. The difference is that they don’t get very large before something or somebody gets to them first. They are not tolerated by man or beast. (O.K. here comes the biblical parallel) They are like sin in that they when left to mature are deadly and dangerous. They are aggressive and venomous. Their poison rots our flesh until it is lifeless and useless. From the time that the Mamba slithers its first yard it is pursued and destroyed. Man nor beast will not abide it’s presence.----- Kill and destroy the sin that is growing in me Lord Jesus, while it is young and before it’s poison overtakes me.