Mission Moments: Malawi
‘Keep on asking’
By Gary Fallesen, Climbing For Christ
NOTE: We made an important request to our global Prayer Team on Feb.10. Please read this update and then do as Matthew 7:7 and Luke 11:9 instruct – “keep on asking.”
MATCHING CHALLENGE: Today (Feb.11), a generous Climbing For Christ supporter has offered to match $10,000 in donations for this relief effort. Please read about the hunger in Malawi – and other areas of pressing need – and how you can GIVE in this story below. We ask that you continue to pray with us, too.
Africa coordinator Damson Samson met with his 38 mobile preachers, the ones whose bicycles Climbing For Christ purchased so they can visit the 22 villages that are home to the widows we serve over a wide, remote area in southern Malawi. Damson gathered the group to fast and pray.
“I asked them to bring reports from their areas,” Damson said on Feb. 9. “All I read was ‘njala.’”
Njala is Chichewa for “hunger.”
Letters to God: prayer requests from hungry widows in southern Malawi. (Photo by Damson Samson)
The week of Feb. 9 began at Climbing For Christ’s Home Office in the United States with an email from long-time ministry partner Pastor Duncan Nyozani. Duncan wrote to the senior pastor at our home church, which I connected to Duncan several years ago. He reported that it hasn’t rained in four weeks, “causing our crops to dry up.”
Maize prices are rising. The situation is dire enough that the Malawi government (usually slow or unable to act) introduced an irrigation project in, they claimed, “all the Southern Region districts to boost food security and support affected communities.” According to a press release from Malawi’s Chief Secretary last Thursday, “The Ministry of Agriculture will provide seeds and fertilizer to beneficiaries, while Blantyre Water Board will ensure water supply from the Shire River and other reservoirs. … This initiative aims to ease the drought’s impact and promote sustainable farming practices in the region.”
Except this project was not including most of the Southern Region district of Phalombe where Damson, Duncan, and all the people we know and love are living.
“I have just heard from an agricultural advisor that only the Nkhulambe and Sombani places [west of them] have been chosen for this program,” Duncan told me.
It all adds up to even more njala.
Damson leading mobile preachers in prayer for starving people in a screenshot from one of several videos he sent to me.
“I remember one time you asked me, ‘How does it feel to be with the people there?’” Damson recalled. “I remember saying, ‘It is a blessing living with these people and feeling the way they feel.’
“But now I feel different. It is like a mother holding a starving baby, but she cannot bread feed. It is almost killing her inside. I can feel the pain beyond and it is not a blessing anymore. It is like how Hagar left the child to die (in Genesis 21) because she did not want to watch.”
God rescued that child because He heard him crying.
The people of southern Malawi – the widows, and the guides and porters of Climbing For Christ’s fruitful Mulanje Massif Chapter – are crying now. The same prayer requests by the widows were made by the chapter members when Damson was making house visits to teach and encourage their Bible studies in late January and early February. (See the Mission Moments: Malawi story, “Visiting houses growing into churches.”[ Climbing For Christ > Postings])
He told the small groups, “I should be visiting you with food, but our (God in) heaven was quiet. There has been no answer until now.” And he told them “to keep on praying.”
Damson said to me: “We are praying to see God provide for His people. It is very pathetic seeing how things are here at home.”
“And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for…” (Luke 11:9a).
Answered prayer.
At a house visit in the village of Mnesa, a woman in one of the Mulanje chapter’s small groups testified to God’s goodness. The day before she had no food and was she was praying, asking God to help.
“Someone came with maize flour and gave it to her,” Damson said, retelling the woman’s story. “She said, ‘Today, I will have nsima (the staple meal in Malawi) from the given maize flour.’”
My prayer is that we can deliver maize flour to those in need so they may eat nsima. This burden was placed on my heart as our daily Bible study included Matthew 25:34-46 and Jesus saying what we do for the least of these, we do for Him.
The feeding of these hungry people in Malawi was one of the four prioritized projects I listed in the Feb. 9 E-Newsletter 557: “The Sowing Club” (log-in required). Those four compelled me to once again fast and pray.
I will keep on asking for:
- Food for these widows as well as guides and porters in our ministry’s care. Water from rain and irrigation to grow crops in Malawi.
- Funding to complete construction on the schools in Kalimette and Majon, Haiti.
- Funding to put down flooring to cover the dirt area under a partially enclosed extension to the C4C Manipur Grief Center in northeastern India where 59 children orphaned by Hindu attacks eat meals and study (school work as well as the Word of God).
- The green light (and greenbacks) to GO to Malawi for a mission trip that wasn’t on our original 2026 expedition schedule. This trip, hoped for in late April and early May, would include more DMD training (disciples making disciples) and another outreach expedition and training session on the mountain with Mulanje chapter guides and porters. We also will meet with the Mulanje Bible study group leaders to teach and encourage them and conduct a program for the 650 or so widows C4C helps.
Pray on! And on! 
Helping hands
Prayerfully consider giving to assist us in feeding the hungry in Malawi. Or support the work at the C4C Manipur Grief Center in India, school construction in Haiti, or sending staff into the mission field. Mail checks or money orders to Climbing For Christ. Box 16290, Rochester, NY 14616. Or CLICK HERE and give through PayPal. In Canada, make cheques payable to The Great Commission Foundation, and on the memo line add Climbing For Christ CANADA c/o Mission: Haiti. Mail your support to: The Great Commission Foundation, P.O. Box 14006, Abbotsford, BC V2T 0B4. Or CLICK HERE to give online. Email info@ClimbingForChrist.org to give us a head’s up that you are contributing and where those funds should be directed.
The final Word
“Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you..” – Matthew 7:7 (NLT)
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