By Deogratias Mmana:
It is Sunday 8am and children from the neighbourhood of the Daeyang mission complex where Daeyang Luke Hospital and Daeyang University are located have already gathered for a church service which usually starts at 9am.
The children get into the chapel in a queue.
Doctor HaSoo Hwang, deputy director of Daeyang Luke Hospital, leads a team of his colleagues in directing the children where to sit.
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The service starts with hymns followed by an opening prayer then praise and worship session.
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After these, activities that include choirs and spiritual dances follow and then the reading of the scriptures followed by a homily.
A benediction follows marking the end of the worship.
This Sunday, the benediction is given by pastor Attlee M’buka who is the university chaplain.
He says bringing the children together for prayers at the university is part of corporate social responsibility for the communities around the college.
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“The villages around the university are disadvantaged in many areas and so we want the children to be shaped to make a difference in their community,” M’buka says.
The climax of the church service comes after the benediction. It is the sharing of the bread. Yes, loaves of bread.
Smiles register on the faces of the children as they receive the bread and go back home. Almost all the children do not eat the bread right there but rather keep it for home.
The bread is one of the factors that motivate them to walk all the way to the chapel for prayers.
Blessings Kafansiyanji,15, who comes from Mayenje village and is in Standard 4 at Chatata Primary School, says he goes to Daeyang Mission chapel to pray and receive the bread.
But his original church is New Life Church.
It is the same story with Adalini Howard, 11. Her traditional church is New Life Church but says prefers the Daeyang chapel because of the bread and the environment made up of children congregation.
She adds that during festivities like Christmas and Easter, the children receive special gifts like shoes.
The Children’s Ministry leader Feston Nkhoma justifies the offerings made by the children despite coming from poor families.
“We want to inculcate the church spirit in them. They should develop the spirit of giving to God,” Nkhoma says.
Nkhoma leads the praise and worship, the most important part of the children’s worship service and serves as a teacher at the weekend study programme.
The ministry has gone beyond the usual Sunday service and bread distribution. The children from 15 years undergo a training on Christian theology and discipline.
According to one youth group teacher Jennifer Chon, the first cohort had 25 learners and the training took 52 weeks.
“It was a catechism training and they graduated in May. We are planning for another cohort,” says Chon who is also a Korean-American dentist and self-supporting missionary.
She is also the head of the dental clinic at Daeyang Luke Hospital.
Daeyang Luke Hospital deputy director Doctor Hasoo Hwang, a family medicine physician, has been leading the Children’s Sunday Worship as part of his mission work since September 2020.
Hwang says during the early days in September 2020, about 500 children would come and on other Sundays, the figure could rise to 800.
But according to Hwang, the children’s ministry has been in existence since the chapel was built in July 2009. However, it is only recently that it has become so active. He took over the ministry after a Korean pastor returned to Korea.
“Nearly five years later, we now see between 1,000 and 1,200 children every week. During special seasons like Easter and Christmas that number can reach as high as 2,000,” Hwang says.
He plays three critical roles: maintaining order in children’s worship; securing the bread that is distributed to the children after the service and taking sick children to the hospital for treatment.
Hwang’s love for the children in the surrounding villages continues even after Sunday worship.
He selects students who face financial hardships but show a strong passion for learning and runs an after-school study programme for them on weekdays.
On Saturdays, he distributes milk, bread and daily necessities to the children encouraging their studies and sharing warm support to help them grow into the future leaders of Malawi.
He says the ultimate goal of the Children’s Sunday Worship of Daeyang Church is to raise up future leaders of Malawi.
In the long term, the hope is to establish a resident Korean missionary who can run specialized programmes for children.
Overall, he says he is happy to see the children sing and dance with enthusiasm “in our weekly worship service and I think to myself that this is the kind of worship that pleases God. I believe that children’s faith grows through these services.”
