Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.

(Matthew 19: 14)

Ruth MacBean, zm’s Representative and Children for Christ Ministry (CFCM) Specialist, returned to Malawi for a short visit last November. Her main aim was to work with and support CFCM, but she also wanted to help safeguarding training”. Here, Ruth shares some highlights:

The CFCM team in their new office at ECOM’s headquarters (left to right Elevate Mizinga, Lackson Makawa and Joseph Jeke)

Sunday school teacher training

I joined CFCM at the Mchinji teacher training seminar in western Malawi. Two new CFCM trainers had met with the local pastors’ fraternal to raise interest in the seminar. They had also planned all the logistics. 40 people, including the trainers, attended. One person had travelled across the border from Mozambique. Both of the new trainers were involved in the teaching sessions. They were good communicators, well capable of carrying on the work of training Sunday school teachers in Mchinji district. If this is the standard of the new trainers that CFCM has developed, their programme of Training the Trainers is proving successful.

Sunday school teacher training seminar at Mchinji

CFCM Bible Clubs

I also visited two Bible clubs with the team, at Namisu Aquaid and Chitakale Primary School. These are both established clubs that I knew well. I was encouraged by some of the new ideas the team are coming up with. Instead of the usual Christmas holiday club/party, they are taking some of the children from Chitakale Primary School to visit sick children in hospital. They were training the children to use the wordless book to share the Gospel message. They are also seeing the potential to start a new Bible club at ECOM’s headquarters (Evangelical Church of Malawi), where the new CFCM office is. They have observed lots of children hanging around after school waiting for their parents, so they are going to ask permission to gather the children for a club one day each week.

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Safeguarding

The staff team were joined by three trustees and one Executive Committee member at the safeguarding training. There were some excellent contributions that helped me to understand the Malawian situation much better. They made me aware of the issues that might arise once they start adding safeguarding into their training. We worked on reshaping module one of the Sunday school teacher training seminars to include safeguarding. Elevate Mizinga is translating everything into Chichewa and CFCM hope to start including in their seminars from January 2020 onwards.

Ruth with the Safeguarding Training delegates

Did you know?

CFCM produces its own quarterly newsletter that provides more information about CFCM’s work – it is distributed by zm and is free of charge. If you would like a copy please contact us on 01904 674748, or by email at office@zambesimission.org.

Please pray:

• Give thanks for CFCM’s work. Many children are being saved through CFCM’s Bible clubs or through the Sunday school teachers that CFCM train.
• Pray for the Sunday school teacher training seminars. The CFCM workers are planning to use their new volunteer trainers to help them complete two per month in 2020.
• Pray for a new Bible club to be established near CFCM’s new office at ECOM’s headquarters.
• Pray for the introduction of safeguarding as a topic within CFCM’s Sunday school teacher training programme and that it would lead to increased awareness of safeguarding issues and greater levels of protection for children.