These are the activities we have the least experience with, but I’ll talk about them anyway.   It seems like the medical team was very popular.  We brought a lot of medicine with us to restock the supplies in the village.  Plus we brought a doctor and two PAs.  There was a big team that could manage triage, take vitals, and prioritize patients.  The villages must have known we were coming since there were so many people that showed up each day.  They treated as many as they could.  Of course the interns helped translate.  The team was efficient and saw a lot of patients. 

Justice was multiple things.  There was a lawyer on our team who helped review cases.  In Malawi there are a lot of poor people, which can lead to theft and debt.  Theft is actually pretty rare, but either of these can end them up in jail if they aren’t able to repay what is owed.  If there are cases of minor offenses or if the person simple can’t pay the fine then our team can pretty easily pay it for then to return them to their family.  The second part was just visiting the prisoners and praying with them.  They sign and give testimonies.  In many cases the people from the US go first with their testimony translated to Chichewa.  Most the participants expected to spend their time afterwards praying for the prisoners.  However what was more common is that the prisoners started praying for them.  In Malawi the love of Jesus is strong, especially in the prisons. 

Before the trip I was donating to the new women’s health center in the village.  Paul, our leader, shared a photo of what it looked like last year.  It was still under construction so I expected some construction work.  However, when I arrived I got a tour instead! The building is now complete and painted.  It will be the new maternity ward.  We raised enough to pay for construction.  Now they just need money to buy the furnishings.  You can see the pictures and link to donate below. 

Here’s the maternity ward from one year ago:

Here’s the maternity ward when we were there:

Paul knew I like to build things and work on projects.  There was one solar project going on at the clinic.  They were putting in another battery, power controller, and more panels.  The clinic is one of the few places in the village with electricity, but it is still expensive and unreliable.  Solar power is much more stable.  He invited me to join that small team, but I couldn’t the first day since I needed to meet up with the orphan we sponsor at Children of the Nations.  I saw them finish up the next day.  I could have jumped in and helped, but I felt like that wasn’t my place this trip.  They got everything installed and working just fine. 

https://whatislivelove.app.neoncrm.com/forms/malawi-donations

The medical clinic is in the foreground and the maternity ward is in the background. You can see the power lines. The teams installed an additional battery, battery controller, and more solar panels to increase the overall power capacity of the system.