Meetings/Lusaka Church/Malawi/Pringles -- Victor Kubik

January 10, 2013

It was a full day.....lots of valuable talk about the future of the churches in these areas. We held  a church meeting with the Lusaka brethren.  Then, I was able to talk with Gracious Mpilangwe who came over Malawi and finally a dinner full of good talk and happy laughter with Derrick and Cherry Pringle.

We have the pastors from Malawi and Zambia gathered here and I thought I'd take a few hours to go over some important reporting and financial accounting procedures.  At the home office I'd like a better idea about what's happening in these churches on a month to month basis.  Zambia is doing just great.   There are eight functioning churches with more than 430 in attendance.  Wilson Nkhoma oversees six of them and Derrick Pringle two.  More people are added every month and leaders are becoming identified.  Zambia is huge--the size of Texas.  Its roads are atrocious, but people gather to worship, praise God and change their lives.  We also talked about new buildings. We are so thankful that people who were previously turned off by an abusive leader who bullied and offended people is gone and we are able to move forward and do what a church is supposed to do:  be helpers of people's joy of salvation.  In the meetings were so thankful to be with each other in person and share our experiences and discuss how we can serve the people whom God has called.  I can't tell you enough about how enjoyable this has been.

At the meetings I gave everyone CD's with lots of the reporting forms.  We look to ordaining more as elders in March   We can't say spring because it confuses people. The seasons are opposite the season in the northern hemisphere. We just call events by their name and the season.  We had lots of talk about procedure, speaking content, finances.  Being here face to face was so valuable.
The ministers are hearing about our online training courses for elders and are asking how they can get this information. They also mentioned about how hard it is to easily get into the ministerial website and would like a lot of that material on CD or DVD that they could access locally.

In the early afternoon we held a budget meeting and prioritized and approved an annual budget for the running of the Zambian congregations for the next fiscal year that would fit into the subsidy amount that we send from the home office.

At 3 pm we went to the church's meeting location and held an afternoon Bible study....actually I gave a sermon.  Almost 40 people came on a Thursday afternoon.  I was able to meet with our two star scholarship students who study and live together at Zambia University.  They are two young ladies who are taking their studies very seriously and LifeNets is giving them scholarships for studying medicine and social work.

Then I spent about two hours with Gracious Mpilangwe going through a list of questions and concerns about his pastorship of the Malawi congregations.  He is really taking the ministry of Malawi seriously.  Gracious is taking back a number of items back to Malawi such as a computer cameras, tripods etc. 

Then Derrick, Cherry and I had dinner at the guest house again. Always a great time...