Dear friends of the Mission, always rejoice! Your love for the Orthodox Mission in Malawi has been great so far. We are grateful and spontaneously ask God to have mercy on you manifold. For us, it is a great responsibility to do good stewardship of the offerings of our mission friends, but it is also a great joy, since we perceive your every support as a support from above in the work we are doing… In every work that we envision and set in execution, for the alleviation of the suffering of our Malayan brother, the desire of our heart and the request of our prayer always is, that God may bless and support our plans, only when they are for the good of His Church. Only in this way, our brethren, do we continue our humble work with the sure faith that every work here in Malawi is God’s work. Building on this, we often become more bold in asking for God’s work than we would dare to ask for our own works, and we are sure that God informs all of you accordingly… The needs of our mission here in Malawi are well known to you. Suffering, poverty, hunger, famine, disease, epidemics, death, lack of proper hospitable learning, exploitation of man by man, unemployment, despair in general, and the maintenance of a hopeless unorthodox establishment, are plagues great and deadly to the soul, affecting the whole country. Although hope is easily extinguished amidst the grim reality we experience here every day, the effort to stand by the side of each suffering brother and sister personally, and not as a “case” or a number, is now possible in our 35 Orthodox parishes.
The money that you offer us, brothers, to be used for our mission, is used to provide daily meals for 300 children in our parishes, help to poor or sick families, visits to prisons to support the prisoners, school fees for some cases of poor students. But above all, great effort, care, fatigue and expense is the struggle to support all these parishes, with visits, systematic catechisms, baptisms, production and distribution of printed material and much more, which also cost dearly. If one considers only the gasoline to go to our parishes, which are scattered throughout the country, one finds that the expenses that sustain our mission are very great indeed, and it is only by the intervention of God, who works in the hearts of His instruments, that all our activities so far can be collected and continued. So we thank you once again for your support, trust and help so far. May God bless and sanctify you always.
π. Hermolaus Iatrou
