Dear friends in Christ,

We wish you a belated Happy New Year! It is surprising how fast time passes. We give thanks to our Lord for His mercies that are new every morning; great is His faithfulness which has led us this far.

We cannot recount all His mercies upon us throughout last year; they are manifold. We can only but thank Him and rededicate ourselves for His use this year. We want to share with you a few matters for praise and prayer since our last Prayer Letter of late 2009.

The A.'s went back to UK for their most needed holiday. They deserved some rest after much work through harrowing experience of their house being burgled in August last year. We have missed them but are thankful that they are due back to us this week.

During the A.'s time away, Les & Ann B. have been among us for one month. They had earlier been missionaries in Kenya and have now returned to encourage us in the work. Their ministry has been of immense value to all in the church. To crown it all, Les spoke at the Reformed Fraternal of Western Kenya Ministers, which gathered in Kisumu on 12th January. They have since returned to UK. We are grateful to God for them.

GRACE BAPTIST CHURCH, ZOMBA, MALAWI

JANUARY 2010 NEWS LETTER

By Percy C.

The LORD has done great things for us; we are glad (Psalm 126:3 NASB)

Dear praying friends and partners in the work of extending the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ,

We end the year 2009 rejoicing and giving glory to Him who works all things after the counsel of His will. As we look back we can see the outworking of His hand to fulfil His gracious purposes in this part of His vineyard.

Evangelism

In our door-to-door and street outreach efforts we found that people in Zomba are generally thirsty for biblical truth. When they are invited to come and hear the preaching of the gospel on the Lord's Day they ask the big question, "Where do you meet?" Most people find it below their dignity to meet in a classroom for worship. Many people we invited promised to come, but they never did. Among the few that visited us from time to time God granted us to see some remarkable conversions.

Another challenge we faced in our outreach was having suitable gospel tracts. The majority of people here prefer to be spoken to in Chichewa and to read Chichewa tracts. Our English tracts were not very effective in reaching the hearts of many.

We ended the year with great hope that our challenges in outreach will soon be overcome. The Lord led us to launch two projects by which we trust that our present obstacles will become history. The first project is that of developing bilingual Gospel tracts. These are tracts bear the same message in English and in Chichewa on either side of the same sheet of paper. The second project is that of construction of a Church building for which more details are given below.

We begin our Prayer Letter this time by quoting the following passage as it means so much to us in our situation:

Zechariah 13:9 "I will bring the one-third through the fire, will refine them as silver is refined, and test them as gold is tested. They will call on My name, and I will answer them. I will say, 'This is My people'; and each one will say, 'The Lord is my God.'"

Health:
Elida has had health challenges yet again. She has battled with headaches and lack of sleep, which have necessitated her hospitalization for six days. Upon discharge, we took one week away for rest in the village. It was such a great encouragement to have Pastor Sam O. of Grace Baptist Church - Kisumu and his family come to visit us in the village. We have just returned back to Eldoret.

The whole experience has been difficult and made us feel like we are silver going through refiner's furnace. However, joy and comfort come from the consideration that The LORD Himself is the Refiner and His eyes do not move a way even for a second from watching over our situation. The moment His face is clearly reflected upon us is the very moment we are withdrawn from His fire. So, to this we say 'Amen!'

Grace Baptist Church, Zomba, Malawi
November 2009 News Update
By Percy C.

Looking Four Months Back
The past four months seem to have flown away as on the wings of the wind. It feels like yesterday when in August I was privileged to take with me five Malawian brethren from Grace Baptist Church to the Reformed Conference in Lusaka Zambia. We came back challenged with the need to balance our church activities between evangelizing the lost and edifying believers if we are to be fully obedient to the Great Commission.

The month of September was my annual leave. My wife and I were able to take two weeks away from our mission station to visit relatives back home at the lake of Malawi and to see a little more of Malawi. It was quite refreshing for both of us. October and November were rather unsettling for us. My landlord died early this year. While he was alive one of his sons was responsible for collecting rentals, but he never shared the money with any of his relatives. After their father's death, his siblings wanted to take over the house and gave us notice to vacate by the end of October. So we spent the whole of October in search for a house to rent. By God's mercy we managed to find a house on the last day of October in the area where the church plot is. The new house is more expensive than the one we have left and it needed a few renovations before we could move in. We finally shifted to the new house by the middle of November.