WORD & DEED IN AFRICA - by Dr. Timothy Monsma

While I was teaching at African Bible College in Lilongwe, Malawi, from 1996 to 1998, students told me of thousands of orphans in their home areas whose parents had died, many of them from AIDS.

My wife Dorothy, who was the school nurse at Africa Bible College, volunteered to visit the villages of the orphans and encourage other relatives (grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc.) to care for the children when both parents had died. She also gave provisions when needed. My time was occupied with teaching at Africa Bible College, but in addition to her medical work at the college, Dorothy visited one village after another. Various supporters in the U.S. contributed money to this project. We agreed with our students and some retired pastors that the orphans needed spiritual care as well as food and clothing.

The efforts to help the caregivers and the orphans continued to grow after we returned to California in 1998. By the time we had moved to Colorado in 2000, one or both of us returned to Malawi once a year to make sure that the funds for orphans were well used. We also required a quarterly report of how the funds had been used and what had been done to help the orphans. By 2003 we were serving over 6,000 orphans in six different locations. We were already past retirement age as the work continued to grow. Word & Deed came to the rescue with a strong organization committed to the Reformed faith and charity for those in need.

There is more. This past August, I accepted an invitation to attend and speak at a conference of Reformed Christians at Potchefstroom, South Africa. While we were staying in Pretoria, I was invited to speak in the chapel service at Mukhanyo Theological College and Community Development Center. Dr. Flip Buys, who is well known in South Africa for his loyalty to the Reformed confessions and his leadership among Reformed Christians in dismantling apartheid, began this work. It is a holistic work, ministering to orphans, HIV-AIDs patients and others in need. In 2007, Word & Deed began getting involved with the Community Development Center by supporting the HIV/AIDS project which is known as the Nakekela HIV/AIDS Care Center.

From South Africa, Dorothy and I flew to Lilongwe, Malawi, and drove to the Nkhoma Hospital and Mission Center established many years ago by missionaries of the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa. Here the Logos Ministries project of Word & Deed is cooperating with the Theological Seminary. I was asked to lecture to church pastors for two weeks. This work was well received by both the pastors and the leadership of the Nkhoma Synod of the Presbyterian Church of Malawi. (After David Livingstone died, the Presbyterian Churches of Scotland sent missionaries to Northern Malawi and Southern Malawi, while the Dutch Reformed of South Africa were invited to send missionaries to Central Malawi. Thus there are now three Synods in Malawi forming one denomination).

After the lectures, Dorothy and I toured the orphan facilities we had helped establish. We observed Christian instruction given to orphans as well as care for their physical needs. Manuel Kamnkhwani, a dedicated Malawi Christian, keeps an eye on the orphan centers and reports to Word & Deed headquarters in Ontario and Michigan. While at the Lizulu facility, we learned that one of their former orphans was now an adult and had become a policeman. He was also married in the Lord to a beautiful young lady. Also, two of the orphans at Lizulu had married each other when they became adults, and established a Christian home. These were two of the four young men whose secondary school fees we had paid for.

When we visited the caregivers at Chintheche (about 460 kilometers north of Lizulu near Lake Malawi), we encouraged the caregivers to prepare the teenage orphans for the day when they too would be “on their own.”

We are thankful that Word & Deed not only provides finances for this work; but also monitors the work so that the children are not only fed and clothed, but are raised in a Christian environment that will influence these children for the rest of their lives.

Dr. Timothy Monsma currently lives in Loveland, Colorado with his wife Dorothy and visits the developing world periodically. He is the author of, “Hope for the Southern World: Impacting Societal Problems in the Southern World”.