January 2023: 2022 Year-end Letter to our Iris Family & Friends

January 2023

David Morrison, Director of the Iris base in Bangula, Malawi shares:

Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. Isaiah 43:1 (ESV)

When Jesus took the disciples out in the boat and a great windstorm arose, the disciples were filled with fear. Who wouldn’t be? They woke Jesus who had fallen asleep, and He calmed the storm with the words, Be still, and then said to them, Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith? Storms can serve to produce in us both fear and faith.

Malawi has endured two cyclones and a tropical storm this year. Many people lost 3 crops in a row and fear is the natural response. What will we do? Where will we find food? Where shall we live? Wake up Jesus!

God has made provisions to feed the poor. Days before the only road was severed by a cyclone, we received a 40-foot container of MannaPack rice meals, designed to provide optimum nutrition.  We were able to deliver much of this food to those displaced by the cyclones. We also were given money to dig a new borehole which meant we were able to provide clean water to others. No other aid could get to Bangula, and so God made provision.

Upriver from Bangula, Pastor Boston from Nchalo Island, together with his wife and six children, were suddenly alerted that the flood water was rising. They took refuge on the roof of their church. When the walls collapsed, Boston’s wife and children were carried away on the roof, while Boston himself struggled to stay above water in the rising river. After hours apart, Boston and his wife and children were miraculously reunited at a camp for displaced people.

We are grateful for your outpouring of love in the form of money to buy lots of maize and beans for distribution and seed when all hope of raising a crop had failed. Containers arrived with clothes, tools, and building supplies. Churches were helped with roofs and reconstruction.  Families who lost everything were assisted in rebuilding. Thank you for participating with us to bring hope.