There almost aren’t words to describe how excited we are about what the Lord has accomplished. Our last blog post related some pretty amazing events – after 2 years of trying to get International Bible Fellowship registered with the Malawian government, and 9 months of waiting and holding on to our visa paperwork, the Lord orchestrated the accomplishment of both of these in just a few hours. Wow! What an amazing work the Lord did to get all that taken care of in the perfect time. In the back of our minds though, we knew there was one more hurdle that we were facing – the container. It had arrived in Lilongwe, but the process of clearing a container can be long and arduous. I’ve heard of people waiting 8 months for their container to clear. On top of that, we’d been counseled to hold $2,000-$3,000 to pay duty fees.

As much as the Lord has stretched and grown our faith and we have seen Him faithful so many times, I do have to confess that this thought passed through my mind: “We’ve already used up our miracle on the paperwork.” Oh ye of little faith! And so the Lord proved Himself faithful and gracious far beyond my small understanding…

Brian Biedebach went right to work on getting the container cleared. He talked to people on the phone, went to see other people, waited, called the people back… he worked really hard. And the Lord paved the way with every step. The answers that at first were “absolutely not,” became “call me back at 2pm,” and ended up being “no problem, we’ll be there at 3pm.” The crane operator just happened to be available, the men working for Brian stayed late to unload, and our container was entirely unloaded the day after our visa paperwork was processed. The container had been in the city only 2 days, and it was cleared and finished, with no bribes and no delays.

This is a miracle in and of itself, but even more amazing – they charged no duty. We were granted an exception. We didn’t ask why, and we don’t know exactly why. Everything in the container is a personal item, and technically we are allowed to bring in personal items duty-free for the first year we live in Malawi, but this never actually happens. All we know is that the Lord has been very kind to us. We are so amazed at God’s wonderful grace to us!

So everything is there! It’s all unloaded into Brian’s office, just waiting for us! We’re the only thing that’s missing at this point. We’re still waiting on monthly support, but after such great miracles in Malawi and God’s demonstration of care and kindness towards us, we know God can provide that too. Our God is much bigger than the small things that I worry about. I’ve been reminded that our lives (and possessions) are in His hands and God chooses to be kind to us in His own time. I’m willing to wait for that.

Everything was packed up in our apartment on January 19th….

… just waiting to be packed in the container on January 20th.

The man who packed the container joked that he qualified for this job because he didn’t go to college but spent all day playing Tetras. Let me tell you, he was REALLY good at his job!

Who knows if we would ever see it all again? Between pirates and stormy seas, we didn’t know what our chances really were.

While driving through Seattle on The Great Floreen Roadtrips, we spotted container ships in the harbor. There are millions of containers! Somewhere out there in the great wide ocean was our little container.

We tracked the container online from Houston, to the Bahamas, to South Africa, all the way to Beira, Mozambique. From there it was trucked to Lilongwe, Malawi. Click on the map to see all the details in a Google map we created.

We’ve almost forgotten what we shipped. Wow! Bookshelves! I forgot we had those! And books! =) And the Lord has provided for it all to arrive. Praise the Lord! His kindness to us is far beyond our understanding!

The picture below is a screen capture of our Skype conversation with Brian Biedebach this morning, and is an answer to prayer that we’ve been waiting on for a long time. We have our official paperwork to be in Malawi!

More than that, this paperwork represents other things that God has accomplished on our behalf and on behalf of International Bible Fellowship. In order to get our Temporary Employment Permit (TEP), seen above!, the church had to first be registered as an official entity in Malawi. Brian and Kondwani had been working to get the church registered with the government for the past year and a half. They made dozens of trips, resubmitting lost paperwork, tracked down officials, and worked really hard at this! It wasn’t until THIS MORNING that the church was finally recognized as an official entity in Malawi. Brian went straight to the immigration office and file for our TEP. Yay!

And there’s more! Our container arrived in Lilongwe yesterday! In order to clear the container, Brian had to have all our paperwork in order – including our TEP. Praise the Lord for His excellent timing! More on the container and its ride on the wild seas soon!

We are 10 weeks away from departure! Our tickets to leave LAX are for Friday, March 20, so the clock is ticking! And a lot is happening around here.

We received a lot of counsel both from people here and in Malawi that our best option by far would be to pack and send a container of our items to Malawi. We soon realized why – it’s difficult/impossible to purchase many home items in Malawi (like a couch, a mattress, a filing cabinet, etc.). With this in mind as we set up our home here in California over the past 10 months, we tried to strategically purchase only items that we would take to Malawi. We budgeted and searched and have finally come to the place where we think we have almost everything we need.

And just in time, because we’re moving! Yesterday a representative from an international moving company came to do a survey of everything we want to ship to Malawi. That meant we had to have everything we want to ship to Malawi – and only those items – present and visible in our apartment. We got everything out of storage, we pulled things out of closets, we sorted out items that aren’t going with us and hid them in a closet, and we stacked everything else all around our apartment…

Items from storage (Thanks again for the truck, Gary!):

Items pulled out of the closet:

Stacking up around the house!

An international move is a funny thing. Apparently you can’t pack the boxes or the container yourself. So all those wonderful friends who keep volunteering to help us move – you’re off the hook. =) There are homeland security laws and customs regulations now about who packs the items and how they’re packed, so the moving company does it all. Hypothetically this will minimize customs and quarantine time too, but who are we kidding – we’re just planning on it taking up to 6 months to reach Lilongwe.

With the moving company survey done now, we’re waiting for their estimate before we book a time to pack and load. Likely it will be the end of next week, or Monday/Tuesday of the following week. Our goal is to have it packed and out of the apartment by the 21st when we leave for The Great Floreen Roadtrip, Part 1. More on that to come soon!

As I look around this apartment that I’ve grown to love as our first home together, I can’t help but think that this is just the beginning. We leave our home here in the States, but we look forward to setting up our next home, our home for years to come, in Malawi!

During our trip last month, one of the things that I was able to satisfy my curiosity about was the grocery shopping situation. Anita gave us a great opportunity to check out the grocery scene. She’d gotten a phone call, and was very excited about it. Apparently the word was being passed around that Foodworth’s, a local grocery store, had just received a shipment of sour cream! There hadn’t been any sour cream in the city for over a month, so this was BIG NEWS! She asked if Matt and I could take their van (which in Africa is called a “combi”) and go to the grocery store for her, as she had a group of homeschool kids arriving shortly. We thought that would be a great opportunity to drive around and get a feel for the city, and of course we were delighted to help her. So we were off on the sour cream adventure.

First we needed a good map. We had a tourist magazine that covered the basics, so we set off with that. You’ll notice from this picture that I’m sitting in the front seat, on the left side, and I’m definitely not driving. I was more than happy to let Matt show off his excellent right-hand driving skills.

On our tour of the three grocery stories in the city, we ran into something familiar to anyone who has lived overseas: bagged milk. They make nifty pitchers that are designed to hold these bags. You just set the bag in the pitcher, clip off a corner of the bag, and pour.

Looks like a pretty regular grocery store, doesn’t it? This is in the international section of Shop Rite, and if you have really good eyes, or a great sense of logo recognition, you’ll notice the Old El Paso brand in the sparsely stocked section of the shelves. A pack of 10 tortillas was about $10, so I think we’ll be using the tortilla press that my mother-in-law gave us.

Fresh produce is readily abundant, fairly inexpensive, and will likely make up a majority of what we eat. Things like mangoes and papayas are easy to find. Celery: not so easy. This picture makes me laugh, because if I didn’t know it was Malawi, I’d guess it was a Wal-Mart here in California!

Meat is a bit more expensive than the fruits and vegetables. One of these packages of frozen chicken breasts contains 4-5 pieces and costs about $6. That doesn’t mean we won’t be eating meat; it just means I’ll try to make it stretch a bit farther.

And finally, we found the sour cream (top shelf). We bought plenty to last Anita for a while, and I realized that I’d learned a lot about shopping in Malawi during this trip. 1) There’s plenty of food and variety available. 2) Cooking from scratch is the way to go – they have almost all of the basics, and with a little creativity you can come up with a lot. 3) Shopping is an adventure. You never know what will be in stock, but it just might be sour cream!

We got back to the States on Monday evening… just a couple days after we thought we would be getting back. For tonight, I’ll just say that it was a GREAT trip. The Lord blessed us with so many opportunities – with people, housing situations, vehicles, and great ministry conversations.

At the moment, we’re exhausted. Jet lag always hits me harder coming back west. I was up at 4:15 this morning, so 8:15pm right now is feeling very late. I’ll give you a few teasers here, and promise to share some of the great details in the next couple days…

Yep, those are “mice on a stick.” I have a lot more to say about those in the days to come…

Life is slower in Malawi. Sometimes that’s just because you need to jump your car battery.

The Biedebach family was so much fun!

And we’re so excited to jump in and be involved with this church!

More to come soon!

Matt and I have traveled to and from a lot of places, but the trip we begin tomorrow is unique. We’re going to Malawi for a week – to get to meet the church we’ll be working with, to let me see Malawi for the first time (Africa for the first time!), and to do some scouting so that we know better what we need to do before we move there permanently. Please pray for us as we travel, and praise the Lord with us for the great opportunity to make this pre-move trip.

In some senses, it’s round 1 of moving. I keep thinking – what can I take now that I would really want to take next time but probably won’t have room for? Q-tips? Contact solution for Matt? Some things made the cut, and others just didn’t. With 4 heavy bags, we’ll be taking plenty of our things and a few things for other people. (I heard the Biedebach kids like fruit leather!)

And anything that doesn’t make the cut this time or next, we’ll be fine without. Because I married Mr. Ingenious and we’re all caught up on everything we need to know from The Swiss Family Robinson.

In case you’re trying to interpret the look on his face, it’s “she made me do this.” Ah, he’s so sweet. =)