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Submitted by Jim Mattison,

Guthrie Grove Church of God, Pelzer, South Carolina

June 22, 2002

For the 6th time God has made it possible to go to Malawi and Mozambique to share the gospel of the coming Kingdom of God and the things of Jesus, to encourage our brothers and sisters over there, to give out Bibles and tracts in Chichewa to those who can read, and to show them our love.

Dates were June 6 through 20. Trip members were: Barbara and Anthony Buzzard, Jim Mattison, his daughter Rebekah Martin, and her daughter Jenny Tolbert. Don Smith was already over there.

We were greeted at the Blantyre, Malawi airport by Margaret Sakala, Coordinator for the African Churches of God Abrahamic Faith; Don Smith, who has been working in Malawi for the last several months; and our friend Diston Makuta, driver of our rented 15-passenger van. Diston drove us last year. We asked for him this trip. Diston drove us to Don's rented house north of Blantyre, which served as our home base.

The next day was Sunday and we had part in the services at headquarters church in Milonde. It was good to be there again.

Our first two-day Bible teaching seminar was at Pastor Frazer Nauliya's main church which is about 50 miles north of Blantyre at Chiringa. Frazer oversees 8 churches. This main church is the church Margaret's sister attended. Through her Margaret met Frazer and his wife, invited them down to her house to discuss Bible teachings for a week. This led to them believing our Church of God AF teachings. Frazer and his wife are good leaders and fine examples of husband/wife love. He is a very mature faithful pastor and a powerful speaker (also a good accordion and guitar player). Pastors Daud Chiwaya (translator) and Goodson Mijeri accompanied us to Frazer's. Around 200 were in attendance there both days. These churches are about 130 miles from Margaret's house. Our main emphasis in all these meetings was Jesus' Kingdom of God gospel message and the things about Jesus our Lord.

The next day we traveled to our newly purchased 200 by 200 foot piece of land at Bvumbwe, where a shelter had been erected of poles and a tarp so that we teachers and some of the pastors could be out of the sun. Although it was winter there in the southern hemisphere, the sun was hot. Behind this large lot is the little church where Pastor Kenneth Katena preaches. He was converted to our teachings by Margaret and baptized by Pastor Rabson Namaona. Twelve of our pastors attended this several-hours-long service. A new larger church building will be built here later this year, when the people make and fire the brick.

Thursday, June 13, we left at 5:30 a.m. for Pastor Fabiano Bango's Nansadi church in Mozambique for another two-day seminar. This church is about 50 miles from Margaret's house over mountainous terrain. On the way we passed three different houses where someone had died. Greenery is put out in the road on each side of the property.

When we arrived, my old friends Pastors Bango, Chakha, and Namaona greeted me warmly with hugs, so glad to see me. And I was glad to see them again. Both days' services were about four hours each. The church was packed and not all could get in, so we had the service outside. This is one of the churches we helped build. Again, around 200 attended, including 30 pastors and their wives.

At each of the three conferences, Bibles and tracts explaining the Bible's main doctrines were given to the pastors to give to their people. Fifty Bibles were given here.

All together 13 boxes of Chichewa Bibles were given (20 Bibles to a box). So far we have 18 of the 65 major Bible teachings printed in Chichewa. Anthony and I write them, Margaret translates them, Sarah Buzzard puts them into tract form, and they are printed in Blantyre. So far 20,000 have been printed. We left an order for 22,000 more to be printed. They include God's Great Plan, One God, The Second coming of Christ, We Must be Born Again, Baptism, Husbands and Wives, and other main Bible teachings. At each of the seminars all six of us spoke at each service after the people sang and danced and prayed for about 45 minutes. These people are so eager to hear the Bible truths. They listen carefully. There is no talking or shift of interest. This warms our hearts. We think, how different this is to some services in the U.S. How many people here would sit four hours for a service?

The village chief attended here at Nonsadi, listening carefully. I remembered him from last year. We show respect to the chiefs, to our pastors, and to the people. This is their work and we are only guests. At the close, the chief spoke a few words about the coming Kingdom, asked for a Bible, and with eye trouble, asked for glasses.

The night between these two Mozambique services we stayed in motels at the border. Ours was the Pensao Esplanada, at Milange, where we stayed last year. We encountered no dangerous situations during the entire trip. It was very tiring, and days were full, but God was with us as we honored Him, His Son, and His precious Word.

The last Saturday, Sunday, and Monday a three day seminar was conducted at the headquarter's church at Milonde. Again we stressed main salvation teachings, emphasizing the need to be ready for Christ's coming. I noticed here at Milonde that real mortar (river sand and cement) had replaced the mud mortar. This was an answer to our prayers. We had urged this because the heavy rains during rainy season would wash out the mud mortar and the buildings would fall and have to be replaced. This had happened many times. This repair will be done for 9 churches where mud was used.

As new churches are built we are urging the use of real mortar. This is one custom we wanted to changefor the preservation of the church buildings we assist them in building.

As a general rule we do not try to change any of their customs unless they are unbiblical. We are very aware that this is THEIR work that they have built up with fervent evangelism. We have no right to interfere with the way they do things. We cannot impose the U.S. standard of living upon them. This only causes trouble, and is not right. Our work here is in sharing God's Word, encouraging them in the ways of truth, and giving them our love and respect.

Three new churches were established this year, besides Frazer's 8. Two more are in the process. They are constantly building new churches. Margaret and Mijeri, especially, are great evangelists and have converted many of the pastors from other faiths and have established many new churches.

How many Church of God Abrahamic Faith members are there in Malawi/Mozambique? We do not know, as they pay no attention to numbers. But this may help. In 1994, when there were 20 churches, we asked each pastor how many people attended his service (most of them were members). Added up, the number was between 5500 and 6000. Now, 8 years later and 78 churches, there are thousands of baptized members. Their system is working marvelously well. We have no right to change it, nor do we want to.

None of our work would have been possible without our faithful translators: Margaret Sakala, Daud Chiwaya, and Maxwell Henderson. These three worked hard to correctly translate the English message into Chichewa. We appreciated them very much.

As this work increases so do the needs: repairs for churches, buying land and building new churches, printing many thousands of tracts, giving of hundreds of Bibles, helping with metal roofs. We see a need for a building behind the Milonde church to house pastors and wives who come to the seminars, with a kitchen in between. My estimate of the cost is $450. Another need exists for Margaret. She needs to have hospital testing. She is troubled with stomach pain.

As our work ended, and Barbara came home with Rebekah, Jenny, and me, Anthony and Don have driven to Zambia to meet a man in prison who has heard Anthony's sermons and teaches Bible classes in prison. He knows English well and, from his letter, has his heart in the right place. They will also spend time in Tanzania, where the son of the king has heard Anthony's worldwide radio preaching and believes. He has established a network of churches with 12,000 people. I am interested to hear their report of this trip.

So we see how the gospel message of the Kingdom and Jesus is being preached in many parts of the world, as Jesus said it would just before He came. I am happy to be a part of this work. And we thank each one of you who has prayed for us and helped make this trip possible. May God's richest blessing be yours. We are laborers together for God. May God, His Son, and His Word be exalted! And may there be many more precious lives to enter God's Kingdom because of these combined efforts. Please continue to pray for the work in Africa. They are praying for us.

Love in Christ,

Jim Mattison

Addenda

by Anthony Buzzard,

Restoration Church of God (Abrahamic Faith), Fayetteville, Georgia,

July 1, 2002

Don Smith and I traveled on from Malawi to Tanzania. Don is our Abrahamic faith colleague who now lives in Blantyre, Malawi.

In Tanzania we found no doctrinal differences at all. Andambike in the city of Mbeya is an excellent Bible student. After coming out of Catholicism, he searched for many years for a clear view of God and Jesus. The Nazarenes and Pentecostals were not of much help to him. Andambike does not think women should be in leadership in the capacity of pastors/elders, in view of what is stated in 1 Timothy 2 and 3. Having been twice in the US, he is able to deal easily with such issues that some in Malawi have found difficult. During our visit, the Tanzanian friends were very keen to follow the Abrahamic story from Genesis onwards. Physical conditions in Tanzania are very poor, but the general level of biblical education is high by contrast.

On this trip, we met up with Andambike in an amazing way. We were supposed to go to the Post Office in Mbozi, but there is no PO there! So I asked Don to stop in front of a little shack with the sign "copyshop" in the midst of a row of hundreds of "shops." I went in to ask the lady behind the counter where the PO was. However, Swahili is the national language and she was unable to understand my English. Amazingly, Andambike was standing in that very shop as the only customer! What were the odds of finding him there?

Andambike is leader of a large number - some 12,000 - and they are in various parts of Tanzania as well as in Malawi and Zambia. Don plans to work with him. A year or so ago, John Lynn and Mark Graeser of Christian Educational Services (CES) spent a month with him, and he was utterly unconvinced by their no-baptism and no-Kingdom gospel. So where else is there for fellowship but with Abrahamic faith? He lost members when he earlier became a unitarian (small 'u'), having since earlier days (he is now 62) found the orthodox account of the Godhead impossible.

Andambike has a good man in Karonga, in the northern part of Malawi. Don will be able to work with him too. They did not ask for money, but we gave a few shillings to help pay for the food for the visitors. We had excellent Bible discussions in his home (with no lights or plumbing) and in his church building (also without electricity). We avoided the local food, rice and chicken, not quite as safe for Westerners as the popular steamed nsima cornmeal of Malawi. Music was different from Malawi though similar. They had a beat-up electric guitar attached to a car battery, did not pray in a chaotic unison altogether, and were very friendly. We gave rather long addresses on the basics and left tracts for translation into Swahili. They want to do the shorter books also. There were excellent question and answer periods after the sermons. We plan to supply Swahili Bibles to leaders, since some they had did not contain the Old Testament. There is a thirst for truth in the midst of so much denominational fragmentation.

We were not allowed to go to the High Security Prison in Kabwe, Zambia to see a radio contact and his group who have been learning. Arrangements have to be made in writing with the prison officials about a month in advance. So Don will be able to go there.

We next headed up to Ndola and found Andy Patching, brother of my sister in law, and his wife. They have a beautiful house. The youngest of their four daughters is living at home, and she is a gifted young musician who had just taken that morning her Associated board piano exam. She has a keyboard of two octaves and no piano to practice on. Andy gave us the best meal we had had in days, and we had an animated discussion. He seems to be the founder of a type of charismatic Plymouth Brethren style of church. The Patchings were most welcoming, as were the four or five African workers in his house. There was much coming and going.

Then we drove back all the way from Ndola to Kabwe and spent the night in the same motel as previously. The next day we drove to Lusaka and on to Blantyre. We gave a ride to two ladies traveling to Blantyre from Lusaka whom we met at the Malawi border. They were en route for the Agricultural Show in London! When going from Tanzania into Zambia earlier we gave a ride to a Danish girl and a German girl who were completing a year's service as tutors in a private family and a Bible College belonging to the Moravians. They were interested in what we were teaching on the Kingdom. For the entire year, the German had not only to learn but also to speak Swahili! They both spoke excellent English. They went to the motel in Kabwe with us and then left on the bus for Livingstone the next day. The minibus - which should have taken them from the Tanzanian border - had failed to show up. So they were overwhelmed to have our truck as transport. The truck worked beautifully throughout our entire trip.

Late in the evening of June 26th Don Smith and I arrived safely back in Blantyre, Malawi.

In hope, with an eye on Africa and the Gospel of the Kingdom,

Anthony Buzzard