Moni!

Hi all. I'm Ian. People call me Ian, Iano, Yanobas, Mr President, Mr Thomson, sir, fatty, lazy and various other things. Feel free to call me whatever you like, just post how you're doing.

Welcome to my mission blog. This summer, on June 21st, I'm going to be flying out to Malawi to go and work for City Pentecostal Church in Blantyre (henceforth denoted 'CPC') and this site will be one of the main ways I try and keep in touch with people back in Cardiff, the UK and the rest of the broadband world. Don't expect me to phone. My facebook account is highly likely to become a barren wasteland strewn with ageing photographs and out-of-date posts, an eerie warm wind whispering through... MSN will likewise be a luxury I won't have much time for. If you have Skype, I may be lucky enough to catch you (I'm Asaphite, Cardiff, UK) now and then. Post and email (ianomore@yahoo.co.uk) will be continued sporadically. You can call me for 5p a minute if you get time and inclination, and I'll love hearing from you...phone numbers will be posted here when I learn 'em.

11% of Malawi has AIDS. There are more orphans there than you can shake a stick at, and it's been rated in the top 10 poverty-afflicted countries in the world. Loads of villages have no clean running water, no basic healthcare, no public transport and no access to educational resources. Blantyre, where I'm going, has all of the above, so I'm going to get it reasonably easy, but I'm seriously praying my work takes me into the bush villages time to time. Because I want to take in as much of Malawi as I can while I'm there - city and country, orphanages, safaris and financial institutions. I'm not really there to solve the problems. Hopefully I'll be able to help in some way, but the deeper motivation for me going is much more selfish. I want to learn how people in different, often diabolically difficult, circumstances to my own survive and thrive. Because they do. The Malawians I have met, in Blantyre last summer and in the UK, are generally happy, hopeful people. Those of you who know me can back me up when I say I'm not always either of those things ;) So if I discover anything, I'll be posting it here ____

Anyway, cheers for reading, cheers more for posting, and remember: never swing chipmunks around your head by their tails. That's just cruel.