03/21/2026
For more than forty years, Bill and Sue Vinton have served in Africa on our GMI team. They have so many stories to share, and here is yet another, which Sue shares about day one of a Bible-teaching trip in mid-March.
On Wednesday afternoon, Bill and 2 pastors were on their way to teach a leadership seminar at the Nsenjere Grace Church, about a 7-8 hour drive from Lilongwe (home). When they got to Chikwawa (6h 15m from Lilongwe) they encountered flooding on the road and couldn’t proceed. They got rooms at Our Father’s lodge in Chikwawa. They were planning to leave the car at the lodge and cross the river in the morning in a canoe because they’d been told the bridge was underwater. But they knew they’d have to walk through water to get to the river and canoe. So, in the morning, they got a taxi to take them to the river. But about 1.5 km from the river, the water was too deep, so the taxi dropped them off. They then walked about 1.5 km in the water (not too deep or flowing), and they arrived at the bridge, and it was fine. It was not underwater, and after the bridge, there was some dry road that they walked on. Then they came to more water, which was fast flowing, and there were hundreds of people there, and they were told not to cross because it was too dangerous. So, they had people holding onto them. Pastor James had two people, Bill had three, and big Samson went alone. Bill, who is still recovering from Typhoid Fever (he’d been diagnosed Saturday), says he would have been taken downriver if not for the guys holding onto him. That walk in the deeper fast water was about 25 minutes.
After that, they got a minibus which took them 40 min to Nchalo and dropped them at the bus depot. They then found a privately owned car and paid the driver and his mom to help them find a place to stay that night. The first three lodges they tried were full, but then they found one that Bill, Joseph, and Brook had stayed in nine yrs earlier. They left their stuff at the lodge and put around $25 of fuel in the car so he could take them to the church, which Bill thought was maybe 30 km away. After going only about 3 or 4 km, the car had to drop them because of more flooding. So, they walked 55 minutes in water, and then they got in another minibus and spent 1 hr 20 mins to get to the church. The bus driver waited about 2 hours for them, while Bill taught. There were 32 people there.
They probably stayed too long at the church, and after that, they took the minibus that had been waiting for them back to the water. But after about 15 minutes, darkness fell, and they had to walk the last 30 minutes in the pitch black, but there were lots of people walking. They called the same privately owned car from earlier to come get them. They came and picked them up, but when taking them to the lodge for the night, they couldn’t get all the way because the road to the lodge, which was dry earlier in the day, was now underwater! So they had to walk again, another 10-12 minutes. They found that much of the lodge was in water, but their rooms were higher up, so their rooms are fine, but to get to the other parts of the lodge, they had to walk through water.
