Development of Seventh-day Adventist Work
The first Seventh-day Adventist missionary to Malawi was George James of London, England, who attended Battle Creek College, came to Malawi in 1893, and worked as a self-supporting missionary.
He visited missions of other churches, talked freely of his faith, and entranced the Africans with his violin, playing the hymns they had learned to love. When he heard that a group of SDA workers were on their way to what became Solusi Mission, in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), he decided to visit them and tell them of the bright prospects in Malawi.
He never reached them. Aboard a steamer headed down the Zambezi River, he was stricken with malaria and after a short illness, died. He was buried at a lonely spot along the river.
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In 1902 the General Conference purchased from a group of Seventh Day Baptists the Plainfield Mission in Malawi, which Joseph Booth, a former Seventh Day Baptist, had established. Booth, who had become an SDA, was sent back to the mission, and with him was sent a black American minister, Thomas H. Branch, and his family.
These were the first Seventh-day Adventist missionaries to Malawi. Booth did not stay long, but Branch, an energetic gospel minister, opened a school on the station, and his daughter, Mabel, became the first Seventh-day Adventist teacher in Malawi.
On Sept. 30, 1905, the first baptism took place when seven boys joined the church. Prominent among Branch’s converts was Morrison Malinki, an African, who had worked as Branch’s translator. Going back to his home at Monekera, near Blantyre, he opened several self-supporting schools, which were later accepted into the SDA mission organization.
He gave a lifetime of service to the church as a teacher and later as a minister.
In 1907 J. C. Rogers arrived with his wife to take charge of the Plainfield Mission.
Shortly after his arrival he changed the name of the mission to Malamulo, a word meaning “commandments,” or “laws,” in the Chichewa dialect. Rogers and his wife worked diligently at building up the school, preparing charts and writing readers. In 1908 S. M. Konigmacher and his wife, trained nurses from the Battle Creek Sanitarium, arrived and were sent 70 miles (110 kilometers) west of Blantyre to pioneer the work at the Matandani Mission.
In November 1910 G. A. Ellingworth joined the staff at Malamulo. When he left the country in 1927 he had given many years to the upbuilding of the work.
In 1912 Rogers was succeeded at Malamulo by Christopher Robinson, who remained for eight years and introduced a number of innovations, which were copied in other fields. These included the holding of institutes for African teachers, organization of Africans into Young People’s Societies, development of work for women and girls, and most important of all, the annual camp meetings.
In the northern part of the country the Seventh Day Baptists had organized a strong work as early as 1911, but had failed to find men to care for their converts. Many of these converts then turned to the Seventh-day Adventists for help. Some had backslidden before finally help became available in the opening of Luwazi Station by R. G. Pearson and James Ngaiyaye in 1928, and the opening of the Mombera (now Lunjika) Station by James Malinki, a Malawian worker, in 1929. The Luwazi Station was 14 miles (22 kilometers) from Nkhata Bay, on Lake Nyasa (now Lake Malawi), and Mombera Station was 27 miles (43 kilometers) north of Mzimba. The work in the north grew steadily, and in 1929 five Malawian workers were ordained to the ministry and six churches were organized.
In the South Malawi (now South Lake) Field new centers were opened in 1934 at Zomba and Lake View as stations under Malawians.
In 1935 work was opened at the northern end of Lake Malawi at Ighembe near the
Tanganyika (now Tanzania) border by two African evangelists, B. Sapa and S. Kaundi, and from here the work spread into southern Tanganyika.
In 1946 two Malawian workers, A. Kambua and D. Nkolokosa, opened a school and a prayer house among the Yao tribe, mainly Muslims, at the south end of Lake Nyasa (now Lake Malawi).
In 1949 Chambo Mission, near Fort Hill (now Chitipa), was opened under Malawian leadership. Later it became known as the Chambo Station.
Institutions
Adventist Health Centre Lilongwe; Blantyre Adventist Hospital; Lake View Seminary and Training Centre; Lunjika Secondary School; Malamulo Hospital; Malamulo Publishing House; Malamulo Secondary School; Matandani Training School.
