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Highlights of a summer in malawi

Conversations with Malawi

I come from Blantyre here.  I was born in a Christian family.  I grew up, I attended classes, got baptized, and I have since belonged to the same congregation up to now.

 

The purpose of the St. Michael’s All Angels Youth… because you know, youth are the future of the congregation.  And it is very important, that if we develop these youth in a Christian way, they are going to grow up as useful citizens.  And they contribute to the development of the church, particularly to the St. Michaels All Angels Church.  Because all of our activities here, like cleaning up – they do that.

 

It helps the church community because sometimes we have to hire people to clean the church, we pay money, but if we have the youth to do that, its for free.  Its part of their contribution to the development of the church.

 

Our youth here are also involved in evangelization.  What I mean is they don’t only preach the word of God to people around Blantyre here, they go to other places.  And when they go there, they also help work with the community, help the old people -  provide shelter for them, and sometimes fundraise, so they are able to give them blankets and things like that.

 

We should develop the youth because they are the future leaders of the country.  Every country depends on the youth, because the old people will go and the youth will remain.  These are the future leaders - of every country.  So Malawi is no exception, the church is no exception.  Because all the elderly people will go, the youth will remain to develop the church.

 

I think they need to develop their personality by way of training, its very important that we train the youth.  They should also not forget their culture.  Because they are developing within a cultural center, and they should not forget that, it is very important that we develop that aspect.

 

It is very important that the youth get sensitized in this pandemic, because it has not spared anybody.  It is affecting the youth, it is affecting the elderly people.  And therefore, I think if we train our youth about the dangers of this pandemic it is very important.  They should be sensitized.  They should also be able to go out and sensitize other people.  The church here is very much involved with that.  We have an arm that is dealing with HIV / AIDs and the youth are very much involved with that aspect.

 

We need to develop our youth.  We need to develop them mentally, socially, and spiritually.  We also want to develop that they should develop an attitude of helping others.  For example, here we have got things like they are involved in sports.  They go carry out sports activities.  They also evangelize, but they lack things like bibles, hymn books, materials that they can use to evangelize the word of God.  And it is very important here that the church puts emphasis on training the youth.

 

Naturally, when youth are idle, they haven’t anything to do – they go astray.  That’s why AIDs pandemic is striking these people.  But when we give them sports, they’re engaged in sports, they forget to do other things, like involving in activities which will result in AIDs pandemic.  So it’s very important that sports be encouraged.  And also sports helps people to get together, to unite as a unit.  So it’s very important that this be encouraged.

Augustine Salamu - Clerk

St. Michael’s Blantyre Mission

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