Furlough

We left Lilongwe on Nov. 29th, arrived in San Francisco on Nov. 30th from Malawi, getting up at 5:30AM Malawi time, & getting into the condo here in Salinas, Ca,we clocked 39 hours. Tired, but we had great flights all the way. God has been so good to us and we praise His Holy Name!

We began the very next day with a Board of Directors meeting at 9AM PDT & we have been on the run since. We have spoken at the following churches since our arrival:

Sanctuary Bible Church in Carmel Valley Ca.
Grace Christian Chapel of Seaside, Ca.
Calvary Chapel Foresthill, Ca.
Lighthouse Fellowship in Pacific Grove, Ca.
Calvary Chapel Monterey Bay, Monterey, Ca.

To come:

Cornerstone Fellowship in Napa, Ca 12/23/12
Calvary Chapel Hollister,Ca. on 12/30/12
Calvary Chapel Visalia, Ca. on 1/6/13
Calvary Chapel Annual Missions Conference in Murrieta, Ca. 1/7/to 1/11/13
The Cross Church in Shell Beach, Ca. on 1/13/13
Stockdale Christian School in Bakersfield, Ca. 1/24/13
Trinity High School in Monterey, Ca. on 1/25/13
Calvary Chapel Salinas, Ca. on 1/27/13


We have also attended to our annual Medical check-ups such as :

Chiropractic Exam
Eye Exams
Hearing Aid Exam
Annual Check up with our Doctor of Internal Medicine
Dermatologists
Dentist
Allergist

and all of them with wonderful good reports!!!!

This week we are enjoying our time with our daughter & family in Vacaville, Ca. near Sacramento. Natalie is our oldest child, married to Greg Locastro, their two boys are Domenic & Sam. Natalie loves to cook & bake, & Greg also loves to cook the best Italian food you have ever tasted!! It has been in the 20's at night & high 50's during the day. Burrrrr! Tomorrow we will get to be with my older brother & wife, as well as several of their grown children & families. So blessed to be able to spend time with family!!!!!!

We have the blessing of spending Christmas week with our son Tom, his wife Mayra, & three of their children, Kayla, Jaeden, & Quinn in Salinas Ca. It is so good to be with some of our children & grandchildren. We will also be able to see most of our great grandchildren and we met recently for the first tme our newest great grandchild, Addison Mae, who was born this last May. She is a beauty, even if I say so myself! Her father is Ty Matthew Hurlbirt (1st grandson) & mother is Savannah.

Then the first week of January 2013 with our daughter Erin & family in Bakersfield, Ca. Erin is our youngest child & is married to Todd Brendlin, their children are Trevor Alan & Keely Grace. It is always a wonderful time to spend with them as well as getting the opportunity to speak at their Christian School in January. We might also get to see Trevor & Keely to play some of the sports activity.

Then the week of 1/14/13, we fly to Washington State to be with our daughter Kelly & her husband Lewis along with their daughters, Avery & Delaney. It will be really cold in Washington, but we also have the best time with Kelly & family. Really looking forward to Lew's B-B-Q pizza! Our daughter Kelly & both of their daughters love to bake, so probably will gain a few pounds, but with a smile on my face!

We will then return to Salinas in time to speak at Calvary Chapel Salinas on 1/27/13 and then wrap up our visiting in & around Monterey/Salinas before we head back to Malawi. Please be praying for us to enjoy all of our time with our family as well as be good ambassadors for Christ as we share at each of the venues described above. We love & appreciate each one of you for your love, prayers, & support!

Merry Chrstmas one & all, remembering whom we are celebrating, Jesus Christ, our Lord & Savior!! To Him be all the glory & honor! Amen.











This is what the ministry it is all about, teaching, training, & discipling in the villages of Malawi along with the young men & women who assist us in every element of the ministry!

Month of October Update Report

Here we are again, another month gone again already! Time sure seems to be flying by us all. We had a good month in October, Bible Study each Monday with the staff at Water Missions International, a lot of activity with the land purchase, meetings with the sellers, getting all the necessary paper work done with the Malawi Ministry of Lands, finally recieving the final Land Certificate (Trust Deed) from the Ministry of Lands, then meeting with an Architect Firm who had been referred to us to start the drawings of the Ruth's Shawl Pavilion Training Center, (Nora is their Program Manager in Malawi), along with all the regular duties & activities!













Then on October 25th, Pastor Demitri, Ruan, & Edme arrived for a ten day ministry stay here in Malawi. We had active right away, going first to Area 44 at the Nsambeta Primary School, to share at the Special Needs class of 30 disabled children. Then later at the school, they participated in the weekly Bible Club Ministry with about 1400 students attending. The next day we had them at one of the widows house that Gary Guthrie of CC Napa rebuilt back in April/May, painting the inside of the house with a lime coating to protect it from rain deterioation & crawling bugs that are very common
in Malawi.









On October 29 we took off for the Village of Chisanja for a two day Pastors Conference & then the next two days in the village of Msambiamfa for an additional two day Pastors Conference. The next day we headed to Lake Malawi for a half day of relaxation & a good non-village meal. On the way home on Friday afernoon, our Toyota Prado began making a noise which did not sound good at all! The engine died on us 4 times before we made it back to Lilongwe. I had called our mechanic after the first time the engine died, described what the sound was making, but he said to try to make it back, if possible, which we did, but with a lot of frustration! We have subsequently learned that it was the crankshaft, & the vehicle has been in the garage since then. Oh Lord have mercy upon the final cost of repairs!

Saturday was spent cleaning up all our equipment, our bodies & taking care of the all the dirty clothes we had accumulated over the week. Village life is spent in living in & around dirt as most houses & buildings have dirt floors & there is no asphalt roads. Sunday we took the team from South Africa to the airport and we came home & collapsed. We have been totally blessed of God again in 2012 with all the teams/individuals who have come to Malawi to minister here! We have had co-laborers here with us from the Month of April straight through to 11/4/12. Praise His Holy Name! All this activity was a direct result of answered prayer!! So, please join us as we continue to ask the Lord to send even more of His called people in 2013.

We & our team will be leaving on 11/19 for a week long outreach to a village named Chapulapula that is 2 1/2 hour drive from Lilongwe, and this will be our(Nora & I) last outreach for 2012 as we will be leaving for our furlough on 11/29. Please be praying for a safe journey back to the States, wonderful holidays with our 4 grown children, 13 grandchildren, & 7 great grandchildren, & for the Holy Spirit's anointing as we share with a number of churches & other speaking venues about what God is doing in Malawi.

May the Lord of the Harvest raise up His called people to share the gospel worldwide,as His soon return is quickly approaching!! We pray for all of you a Happy Thanksgiving & Christ filled Christmas! Remember, keep looking up, for our redemption draws nigh!!!!!!

September 2012 Update Report

Wow, where do I start to try to share with all of you what we have seen God do since our last update August 5th. With all the wonderful activity & the teams that have come to minister with us since April, in whom we have been so blessed, Nora & I took off 6 days for some R & R. We did not truly realize how very tired we were until we got to the Safari Beach Lodge at Lake Malawi & started to relax. It was a beautiful location above the lake on a large hill overlooking so much of the Senga Bay. It was so restful & relaxing, doing a whole lot of nothing except for praying, reading & eating. It was exactly what we needed & what the good Lord provided for us! Except for the attack of a very large Baboon, who decided he wanted one of our coffee mugs. I started to chase him, then quickly realized that was not really the smartest thing I could do, so decided to allow him to keep the mug, so he can proudly show all his fans how smart & clever he was to outfox an old “Asungu”! (White skinned person) But the time there it was perfect for us as we celebrated our 53rd wedding anniversary! (July 24, 1959)
We then proceeded to leave the lodge on Monday the 20th, for a four day outreach to a village named Mlesi, not too far from where we were staying at the Lodge. We were blessed with another great opportunity of being able to teach pastors, elders, youth leaders, women, & of course, all the multitude of children. In Malawi, 51% of the entire population of Malawi is under the age of 14. So, there are literally hundreds of children in every village, with little, to no supervision! They flock to our activities, for many have never seen a white person, never seen a movie of any kind, & the puppet ministry by the Guthrie family was a total new experience for them!!
We then return home to Lilongwe and the next evening had our monthly UNO Championship card game night, along with some outstandingly good food, with our team of volunteers & helpers. Great evening of fun, food, & relaxation! We are totally blessed with the team God has surrounded us with here in Malawi. Smart, trainable, dedicated, easy to work with, hard workers, and the best part, is that each one of them loves our Lord Jesus with their whole heart! Thank you Jesus for your goodness!!!!

The next week we returned to the village of Nsambiafa for a one day follow up visit to see how they were doing with the Word they had been taught as well as how they are applying the Word to their daily lives. We were pleased to find them doing well, happy, & encouraged by the things they had learned from us on our earlier week long outreach. Then the following week we traveled to the village of Chisanja to meet with Pastor Mphatso to set up a meeting to begin Adult Literacy Classes in this village for those widows & other women who cannot read or write. Nora will be hiring a Credentialed school teacher from that area to teach the class for 12 week Pilot Program, then RS will evaluate the progress of the attendee’s & if things are progressing well, RS will rewrite a contract for an additional 12 weeks. We also discussed setting dates to hold a Youth Conference, Pastors Conference, & a Women’s Conference in the months of October and November. Pastor Mphatso is the lead Pastor for 14 other churches in the region and is well known & respected by all the other churches in the Ntcihsi area.

We were so excited to welcome the Guthrie family on September 11th from CC Foresthill, Ca. The family consisted of Pastor Mike, his wife Stephanie, & their three daughters, Michaela, Jenna, & Rebecca. And we left no moss growing under their feet as we had them out the very next morning at 6AM setting up for the Chapel Service at the African Bible College, where I taught & they need a mini presentation of their outstanding puppet ministry. These are college age men & women, but they were so impressed with the ministry using puppets! We then had them ministering at the ABC campus for the purpose of training any interested students at the college for the puppet ministry; they taught at the ABC Primary Academy on campus; recorded 5 shows for the new ABC T.V. station, taught at Nsambeta Primary School with a student population of 5110 students & on another date taught at the Special Needs class at Nsambeta School with about 30 students who went wild with the puppets! We also took them to three remote villages, having them ministering with their gifts using their puppet ministry. All in all, we were totally blessed with their hearts to go anywhere at any time,, being flexible, & being the servants God has called them to be. All of us say to the Guthrie family, Zikomo Kwambiri, & may the good Lord continue to bless & use you all for His kingdom purposes! Come back soon to Malawi & follow up on what you have planted here, we will water, & tend the garden in your absence! Until then, Dovajana! (Until we meet again) We love and appreciate all five of you mucho!

The month of October is scheduled to be a catch up time on all the projects we have not been able to get to during the last few months. We will see how that goes, as in Malawi, the phrase, blessed are the flexible, is an often used phrase here! In the later part of October, Pastor Demitri from CC Cape Town, South Africa, is coming to minister with us along with one other pastor. Our plans are to conduct a Pastors Conference in Chisanja, which will allow approximately 20 churches with their pastors & church leaders to be taught over a three day time period. We are very excited to see this come into fruition, Lord willing, of course!
Ruth’s Shawl has just signed the legal papers and had them recorded in Blantyre, to allow them to purchase 3.308 hectares of land where the Ruth’s Shawl Pavilion Training Centre will be built. This Centre will provide a place where special training can be administered, and allow expanded knowledge of God’s Word to be taught as well as to disciple & mentor Malawians. Malawi Outreach, Ruth’s Shawl, & Water Missions International ministries continue to work in concert with three different focused ministries, but yet able to complement one another.
These three separate ministries, with different Board Members, & supporters, yet, working well in meeting the very many & diverse needs found in Malawi. The Body of Christ working together for the benefit & wellbeing of others!
Please be praying for all areas of ministries, that we may accomplish what our Lord desires us to complete before we head back to Ca. for our annual furlough in December. There are so many areas of needs that exist and we need your prayers for our Jehovah Jireh to provide all the necessary funding for the projects at hand as well as those we know not of as yet! He has been so faithful to provide for all our needs, and we will trust Him to continue to do so. So, please pray with us, so that the people here in Malawi may grow stronger in their faith & their knowledge of God’s Word.
Thank you one and all for your faithful support in love, prayers, & financially. We cannot do this ministry God has called us to without each of you doing that which God places on your heart to be co-laborers here in Malawi! The Lord bless & keep you all in His loving arms!

Zikomo Kwambiri,
Steve & Nora Braselton
Malawi Outreach Ministry
www.theroadtomalawi.blogspot.com
Ruth’s Shawl Ministry
www.ruthsshawl.org

Malawi Outreach Ministries

It has been much too long since we have posted to our blog, but wait until you read this blog posting to have a better understanding of why! Gary Guthrie from CC Napa & SF arrived April 12th to begin work on some of Ruth's Shawl widows houses in Area 44. Gary was with us for two months doing reconstruction of mad & brick house that was ready to fall down before his arrival.This project alone took almost 5 weeks of hard work. He also travel with us as we went out to remote villages to do week long outreaches with a team of 7-10 people where I ministered to Pastors, Elders, church leaders, Nora ministered to the women & widows of the villages, Timothy ministered to the Children & Youth leaders from the villages, & the rest of the team ministered to the children with games, activities & the Word of God. These villages included:

* Chisanja, Chipolopolo, Chipahzi, Tembwe, Mlesi, Nsambiamfa,& Nsambeta Primary School Special Needs Classes with severely handicapped children.

These outreaches are for a week a a time where we stay in the area the length of the outreach. Our initial visit is to lay a foundation based upon we find the depth of their Biblical knowledge. Then we teach on subjects that we find where their biggest needs may exist. If the village(s) are cooperative, well attended & we find that they truly interested in growing more, then we make a date to come back to build upon this foundation that has been laid.

Then a team from North Carolina led by Pastor Brad Wright of the Glennview Baptist Church arrived on May 15th for 10 days where we ministered at:

Nsambeta Primary School at the Special Needs Classes as well as the Bible Club Ministry we conduct every Friday at this school with a student population now at 5110 students. Pastor Brad also spoke at the African Bible College at the Evangelism Explosion Building to a large group of students & he also conducted the morning devotion for the entire student body along with the ABC staff & faculty. On the next Saturday this team went to minister to the Ruth's Shawl widows & orphans in Area 44. On Sunday following church services at Flood Church Malawi, we & the entire team headed to Tembwe, a village near Lake Malawi to do a four day outreach, using the same format as described above. The outreach was a total success as Pastor Brad & I shared teaching, & one of the team was a medical assistant, who was able to treat men, women & children everyday we were there as there is always medical needs that so evident in each village we get to visit! The rest of the team conducted a VBS for the all the children from 12 villages that attended the conference. Nora, Timothy & the remainder of our Malawian team ministered to the same type of audience as noted earlier.

On June 7th, Gary Guthrie left after spending two months with us & Robin Hughes, Chair of the Ruth's Shawl Ministry arrived that same day. Robin was here for 20 days on her first visit to Malawi in person. Her visit was to see the ministry in operation and to coordinate with Nora the ongoing ministry of Ruth's Shawl here in Malawi On June 12th Professor Judith Canner of Cal State University Monterey Bay & CC Monterey Bay, our home church, arrive for a 5 week visit. Judith's time with us with filled to the brim as the day she arrived, we had her out in Area 44 to minister & the following day we made a 1 day Preliminary trip to the village of Mlesi to set up the week long conference later that month. One of the Ruth's Shawl widows has had a medical condition, two days later, Judith was on her way with us to take our widow to a Hospital that is located 2 hours from Lilongwe to have a Biopsy performed. That next Sunday, we were off to teach at a church location about 45 minutes from our house at one of the Pastor's Church who attended my first School of Ministry classes in 2010. Great little church & a wonderful group of believers.

Judith was also privileged to to be able to speak at the African Bible College Campus to students on the role of a "Christian student in Academics", at the Evangelism Explosion Building on the ABC Campus & a wonderful response from those students in attendance. Then then conducted a series of classes at the Nsambeta Primary School for all the teachers on how to teach Math to primary students here in Malawi. Math is a much neglected subject here, & this is a subject that they requested assistance which Judith was able to provide for them! She also accompanied the team to another week long outreach to the village of Mlesi, where she assisted Nora in the teaching of the women & the widows.

On June 28th, Dr. Chris Hansen arrived from Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula to work at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Blantyre for two weeks & then here in Lilongwe for 10 days. We were able to visit a number of hospitals together & we also gather the doctors for evening at our home for dinner & a round table of discussions of what the major needs are in each of the medical sites and how we might work together to assist one another in accessing more meds & equipment for the very needy hospitals & medical clinics here in Malawi. A very fruitful time together & with a basic plan to move forward on the plan of action.

Then we were excited to see Lana Lynn & Sarah LeWarne arrive for the dedication of the Elizabeth Tolhurst Library for Hope Home Ministry. This was both a glorious time & yet, a very sad occasion. The glorious time of seeing a special event being dedicated to the life of a very special young woman, Elizabeth Tolhurst, who went home to be with our Lord in 2011, but the extremely tragic & completely unexpected death of Elizabeth's father, Mark Tolhurst, just before he & his wife Robyn were to depart for Malawi for this occasion. I was able to attend this very special event, as both Nora & I were extremely close to Elizabeth & her parents!! It will a day of great remembrance in my life to have been there & see this dedication of a special library in honor of a extremely godly young woman who lived her entire life praising her Lord & Savior Jesus Christ!

Then to cap all this off, our Malawian son Timothy & his bride to be, Maureen, exchanged wedding vows on July 28th, followed by a reception attended by 300+ people. If you have never attended a Malawian Reception, you have not experienced an event like no other you have ever seen. We have seen many unusual celebrations, including being in a number of foreign countries over the past 36 years. Absolutely nothing compares to this event, it is a wild experience to say the very least!! We were blessed also to have John & Pam Lane form the U.K. here with us for a week so they could attend Timothy's wedding. Great to getting to know them in person as they have been friends of Timothy's since 2007.

So, this last week, we have try to calm down the running around, get paper work done that has been left undone, & at the same time re-cooperate our very tired bodies & minds! On August 13th, Nora & I are taking off a week to go get some real R & R as well as celebrate our 53rd wedding anniversary which was on July 24th. We are really looking forward to getting away for a short time!!

Prayer requests:


Please pray for our get away, that we can truly experience some restful days & enjoy the beauty of Lake Malawi, a gorgeous lake, 365 miles long & 50 miles wide, with one of the largest species of fresh water fish, over 400 species of birds, and abundance of wild life in & around the lake.

Funds needed to assist a wonderful Malawian young woman to finish her college this coming school year as there has been a 50% devaluation the currency here & school fees are now prohibitive for so many students. ($800 per semester)

Funds needed to purchase Bibles for the village outreaches.(Bibles are $9.00 per)

Funds needed to purchase the Proclaimer, a unit manufactured by "Faith Comes By Hearing" in the USA, that has the audible Bible, solar powered, in the Chichewa language, as so many of the villagers cannot read or write. It has proven to be wonderful addition to the work we do in the villages. Each unit is $100.

Prayer for our next team arriving on September 11th from cc Forest Hill Ca., Pastor Mike, his wife Stephanie, & their three children. They have had a ministry of puppets for many years & they have been encouraged of God to come to Malawi to minister & to train our Malawian team of the ministry of puppets, which will be so valuable to village ministry!!!!

Our heartfelt thanks to all of you who love us, pray for the work in Malawi & those who help support the work here financially. Without each of you, there would be no ministry here in Malawi. God bless & keep you all in His loving arms!

In Him,

Steve & Nora