On 21 October 2023, Stanley’s life was changed forever. A former prisoner, Stanley heard the gospel thanks to the Lilongwe Adziwe Yesu mission’s Serve the City cleaning exercise in Malawi.
Often, AE missions will begin with a component of serving the city, where teams will clean streets or feed the hungry, in order to demonstrate Christ’s love and build goodwill. In Lilongwe, the team embarked on street cleaning, which is where they met Stanley, who came to ask why this big group of people were so joyfully completing such an unpleasant task.
After hearing why they were there, Stanley shared his life story with the mission team.
“After finishing secondary school, I managed to undertake a short course that landed me a decent office job. I began to accumulate wealth for myself from the money that I saved up. In spite of the progress I made in acquiring assets, I was involved in financial malpractice at work which led to my being arrested. Because I did not have disposable income, I ended up selling all of my assets in order to make bail. After the case was closed, I realized that I had nothing, no job, and no money to sustain myself”, he shared.
After this, Stanley had to restart his life and became a vendor at Lilongwe Bus Depot to make ends meet. He has since struggled a lot coming to terms with the decisions he’s made in the past and was convinced that nothing good could come from him.
But on 21 October, after the the Lilongwe mission team had put down their cleaning tools, a preacher got up and publicly shared the gospel – and Stanley was immediately captivated.
“The preacher talked about God’s mercy and how everyone qualifies for it. It was hard to believe that I could ever be forgiven for all the wrongs I did,” he told the team after the sermon. “That prompted me to surrender my life to Christ. It was the first time after my arrest that I felt forgiven. I am grateful to God for His mercy and the clean slate He has provided me”, Stanley said joyfully.
As we read in Mark 8, For what shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? Stanley is glad that he was saved from losing his own soul and he believes that he has found all that he needs in Christ. Praise the Lord!