Power-Packed Potential
Standing before you is the Class of 2023, the school’s very first graduates! For at least 1,500 hours, the men have been immersed in the Word of God… searching, studying, and seeking to grasp its true meaning. For over 350 hours, the women have done the same while also cooking, cleaning, and caring for their families. They will never be the same! Prayerfully, with the addition of seven more families in ministry, Malawi will never be the same!
Every Rose has a Thorn
The rose was in full-bloom as the students sat for final exams, took class pictures, and walked through the graduation ceremony. Relationships were being knit together more and more tightly as everyone realized our time together was coming to an end.
Dale’s final chapel talk was about building a R.A.F.T. This acronym that stands for Reconciliation, Affirmation, Farewell, and Think Destination is a healthy way to leave. It makes sure any hard feelings can be mended, those embarking on new territory as well as those who would remain behind could be encouraged, the painful goodbyes would be said, and all could look forward to being together in heaven again once our work on earth is done.
Immediately following graduation (Saturday), one family needed to leave. In order to register their child for school, they had to be back in their home village the very next day.
The largest group of 5 families left together early Monday morning on a private bus that would take them to the largest city in the North. It was a mass exodus of 22 people who had come as strangers but left with part of our hearts.
The final family stayed until Friday morning. After receiving public school grades, they too packed up their things and left.
This was the goal. Students would come, grow as individual Christians, make life-long friends they could lean on in ministry, and then go home. All of that has happened.
What we didn’t fully anticipate is that with the curtains gone in the 10 houses, the lights that don’t come on, the jungle gym unoccupied, and no one meeting under the mango tree, we feel not only a sense of accomplishment but also a sense of loss in many areas of our lives. We belonged in a village, as part of other people’s lives, and a part of something much bigger than we could have ever done.
Please pray for our family as we feel the thorns that come with every rose. We will need to grieve the loss of the departure of these 33 people in our daily lives in a healthy way so that when the next group of students comes another rose will bloom and fill our lives with its beauty.
Supporting the Students
As we are between groups of students, we have two sets of people on our minds. One set includes those we know dearly, have walked beside, and are waiting to hear how God is going to use them to grow His kingdom. The other set is the next student body whose names are unfamiliar and the mere mention of them doesn’t bring a flood of memories because we have yet to meet them. Both need our support.
The recent graduates have returned to their homes and planted their farms and/or started back up the businesses they had before coming to the preaching school. Every man had a job before he came to the school and was providing for his family so financial support is not what we mean when we say “supporting the students”.
Prayer is the best way to support the recent graduates. These families are doing something even Jesus struggled to do… be effective in their own hometowns (Mark 6:4). They have moved back to the same places they came from initially. They are working among people who have known them in some cases since birth. They need our prayers to keep studying and to keep growing spiritually so they can accurately handle the word of truth in each situation that presents itself (II Timothy 2:15). The graduates also need our prayers as they strive to be the pillar and support of the truth as we learn the church should be from I Timothy 3:15.
The student applicants also need our support. They have taken the first step by submitting an application which expresses their interest in being a student at the preaching school. Like all of us, they don’t know what the future holds. They don’t know the sacrifices it may take to transition well or what it will require of them to stay for the duration of the program.
Next month we will begin student interviews. We will be looking for the ones who are already working in the kingdom, have hearts characteristic of a servant, and seem most able to thrive despite whatever obstacles may arise.
Please pray for the student applicants in these ways:
Honesty - telling the truth during the interview process
Transparency - identifying the foundational reasons they want to attend the school
Pliability - being able to adapt to a new culture (both physically and spiritually)
Humility - willing to put others before themselves
Teachability - accepting the truth even if it differs from their original understanding
Competency - showing whether they understand English (men) or Chichewa (women), respectively
Thanks for joining us in prayer on behalf of both types of students: those who have just graduated and those who will be the next graduates from the Bear Valley Extension School - Lilongwe.
Dale Kastner