Dear friends of Kondanani,

Thank you so much for all the letters of comfort after my husband was promoted to Glory. There where so many, that, although I tried, it was impossible to answer each letter individually.
He is missed by me and all of us, but I know that the pain will go and memories of him will become sweet.
A new season has started and I am not going to miss it.
An enormous amount of work has been done in the last year and the new year is going to be busy too. He was so proud of Kondanani and I will continue the work as a memorial to him and unto The Lord.

Zambia

We have new challenges. Zambia is next on the program. For some month the Lord clearly laid it on my heart to start Kondanani in that country. The town of Chipata is where it will be, not far from Blantyre, 500 km.
Cherie and my self have already been there, we have met with some of the authorities, done some kind of visibility study and needs assessment, but not in depth. It is difficult to get any kind of statistics, they are not really available. The only proper figures we could obtain where from the local hospital, about those of the mothers who give birth and die in child birth. That is a staggering 11%. In our part of the world a child is considered orphaned when they loose their mother. The father most of the time disappears, the babies go back to the village and because of lack of money to feed them properly, they die. That makes me sad.
There is not one orphanage in Chipata, in the district are approximately 400. 000 people, about a third of the adults are HIV positive.
We will keep you up to date on the developments, we have no dates yet.

the Rory Alex Clinic

The new extension for the Rory Alex Clinic looks amazing, really beautiful, we are so proud of it. I am so grateful to Father God for enabling us to let our children be in nice surroundings and good buildings.
Although most of the babies go to Caring Hands when they are medically stable, the little ones who are HIV Positive and need their medication every day at the same time, they have to stay with us in the clinic until they three years old, to make sure they get the needed tablets. 1 day without can cause a big problem. We have also noticed that more babies stay alive until they are ready for the drugs.
There are 12 babies at present, but when we are ready we will be able to have 30 babies. Our capacity to take in more babies will greatly increase, we have been at a stand still for a while because of lack of space. We have at present 117 children in our care.
We had a baby coming in who was 6 months old and weight only 2, 5kg, her name is Cecilia, she is improving at present, we have her on a special diet and she will soon be a bouncing baby girl. At least she is smiling now, when she came we could not get a smile out of her. The grand mother was doing her best to care for the little one, but she could not continue, she was to poor.
Little Jessica came when she was about a day old, can you imagine a mother giving birth and leaving the baby under a bush, and besides that the placenta was still attached to the umbilical cord which was still attached to the baby. Baby is doing very well.

Caring Hands

Caring Hands will be sold, it is a beautiful building in a very up market area. From the proceeds we will build a bigger Caring Hands next to Kondanani Children's Village. That will solve our problem with the children who are on HIV treatment, they will go to Caring Hands and not stay in the clinic anymore. It will be close enough and can be attended to by the clinic staff on a daily basis .
Within the next month we will be moving an other 20 children from C H to the KCV Village. The nursery school will be ready to receive them.

Early learning centre

We have extended the nursery school at Kondanani Children's Village by two class rooms, and an office for the principle. It is a great place for the little ones to learn. The principles office is so big that I am tempted to make it into a music room, there are 3 keyboards in the container which is on it's way, and we have guitars for the children too, I think they are going to be great musicians.
The classrooms are painted in lovely bright colours. The children's art work is hanging on the walls, a wonderful place to be.
It is quite amazing how quickly they learn English. At C H they speak Chichewa only, it is very important for them to learn English, because of the primary school education, and if they want a good job English is a must.

An other two houses

An other two houses have been completed at KCV ready to receive 20 more children.
Right now as I sit in my office typing this letter, I can hear all of the children singing in their houses, but you can well imagine that they don't know from each other what songs they are singing , so I am listening to four houses with a different songs with the drums beating, but I love the sound of it, happy, healthy little blessings, what a joy.
The gardens look so beautiful, the trees are loaded with fruit especially mango's. The guava trees look just as good it will bring in kilos of fruit. The children are really loving the puddings we make for them from the fruit.
The vine of the passion fruit is full of flowers, we are already getting fruit from it on a regular basis, we are such a blessed bunch.

Madalo Children's Village

Madalo Children's Village has a beautiful home on it and the children will move there very shortly. The home which has been build there is called "Keesida Cottage" the finances for the house where raised by a very precious young couple Kees and Ida from Holland, besides raising the funds they spent 4 months here with us to help oversee the building.

We are still in the process of renovating the "Lewis Chikhwaza Christian Academy" the primary school.
Two class rooms are ready and we are delighted by the looks of it. We have been given 12 computers and a precious young man called Martin, from my mother church in South Africa is coming in February to teach the children computer technology. We look forward to having him with us.

We decided that our children will not live in a poverty stricken orphanage, with derelict houses and schools. Eating beans and rice only. We want the best for them. If we want them to have a future , we are obliged to provide that for them, the very fact that we accepted them to come to Kondanani put us under an obligation to do unto them as we did or would for our own children. We believe God to provide our every need, and no doubt He will.
The education system is expensive, but our God is bigger than the expenses we face, He has never yet let us down and never will.
12 children are in their 2nd year now, and 16 have started school for the first year at primary school. They are very clever and we rejoice every day at their progress.
A primary school in Leiden Holland, called the "Juliana School" (this is where my sister lives and works from on behalf of Kondanani)has raised funds for the play ground at LCCA, it is really beautiful, we have 11 pieces of equipment for the children to play on.

Fila Farm

Our farm "Fila Farm" is great fun, Felix our farmer is doing a sterling job.
We are doing projects for the local supermarket. We build a small green house with celery, the amount of celery that came from 16 sq. meters was amazing and we got enough money out of it to build an other two green houses of 100 sq meters each.
The gardens are very fertile, one of the reasons are that Father God is giving the increase as we are determent to be faithful to Him.
My brother in Holland has been working very hard at getting us a tractor. We really need it and, the container with it, full of other goods aswell is at present in Durban South Africa. It should be with us in the next couple of weeks. We are rejoicing
Please look at the website for Felix, his newsletter and the photos of the animals, he can tell you the best stories about the farm, even I enjoy reading his newsletters because they make me laugh. Our bananas look a 100% better than six month ago and in a few more month there will be a great harvest.
We have fish in the lake, and we got 52 kg out of it the other day, our plan is to link up with some organisation to start fish farming.
Our cattle is increasing we now have seven cows, one is pregnant and an other one will be inseminated in a month time.
We have 25 pigs, with two of them about to give birth, on average there are at least 8 piglets. We are now selling pork, people buy a whole pig, we get it slaughtered, cut up and delivered, again all self sustainable projects.
The turkeys are delicious but a bit lazy, I think we need to find a new boy because the girls don't seem to like the only boy turkey we have, with the result that we are not getting any chicks. The guinea fowls are in the process of increasing the family. Some more animals to sell. I have been making butter, cream cheese and cream, from the milk of our cow.
Very delicious, much better than your local super market.

Golden Age Club

Our Golden Oldies are doing well but they need more attention than what web can give them at present.
They need regular visits to asses the needs they have, many of them have orphans to look after, increasing the burdens they carry.
God has provided a couple from Holland, Richard will be our pastor and work with Charles our Malawian pastor. Richard will be involved in the visiting program. Him and his wife Wilma have spent 3 weeks with us already and we are delighted with them, they have the anointing of God on their lives and we know that they will compliment the work at Kondanani.

some other things

We have started to minister again in the local prison, we where approached by the authorities to please come back. It is now a juvenile prison. At present we are only having services 2 times a week until I feel in my spirit that we need to look at assisting them in other areas.

I have had to make a decision to be more faithful in my letter writing, I have been rubbed over the knuckles a few times lately and I have to agree that I have not been faithful in that area. I also realise though that some people are not even interested in getting this letter. In future the newsletter will appear on the website and on a far more regular basis.
That way I know that anyone who is really interested will look it up on the website.
If you do not have access to the website or you do want to receive this letter by E Mail, please let me know by return mail and I will be glad to send it to you.
The same for the people who get this letter by post, if you want to receive this letter, please let me know by return post. If I don't hear from you, I presume that you do not want to receive this letter. Postage is very expensive and we do not want to waste money.

Life at Kondanani is never boring, we are enjoying every moment of it. We have some needs though. If you know of anyone who is a trained teacher, self supporting, and wants to serve the Lord on the mission field please ask them to get in touch with me. He or she must be a professing Christian.
We also need a maintenance man, builder, a jack of all trades. Self supporting and a professing Christian.

Please continue to keep us on your pray list, we value your prayers.

Yours for Him alone, Annie Chikhwaza.