Mala grew up on a small island in Africa’s vast Lake Malawi. Raised an Anglican, he neglected church and made basketball his idol in his college years, desiring a career in the NBA. Yet Mala’s dreams came to a screeching halt when he was stabbed by a gang of thugs and left for dead. No longer able to play ball due to his serious injuries, he grew bitter against God and turned to liquor.

Reflecting on his near-death experience, Mala realized that God had spared his life. Jesus’ words in John 3 pierced him. Confronted on his need for a new birth at a Bible study, he gave his life to Christ. Following his conversion, Mala met missionary Frank Maxson who discipled him in the faith and deepened his understanding of Scripture. Sensing a call to full-time ministry, Mala left his telecommunications job, founding Antioch Baptist Church in Blantyre, Malawi, where he has served as pastor since 2008.

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture, and we're here to talk about how a sufficient word of truth fell upon a man's soul and saved him. Recently we have been doing podcasts where the speakers who come and preach at our conferences tell their stories, their life stories, their testimonies. They're so encouraging, they're so helpful. We do lots of theologically-oriented things, but these are so blessed.

Aren't they, Jason, to just hear the testimonies? It's wonderful. We have a brother that we know very well today, so there'll be no fooling us today, man. We've known you for a long time now. Yes, this is Malamulo Chinndongo, better known as Mala, or the Abusa, as we often call him.

Mala, what does Abusa mean in Chichewa? It means pastor. Pastor, there you go. A better translation would be shepherd. Be shepherd, yes.

In Greek It's the bottomless pit, but we won't talk about that. So Mollye, you are the pastor at Eniak Bible Church in Baptist Church in Blantyre, Malawi, and we've worked together for years. It's been so sweet. Mala also represents church and family life in his region there in Malawi and is very hardly at work to plant churches that are biblically ordered churches where the church and the family are bowing to the sufficiency of scripture. So we want to hear the story of your life and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ through it all.

Man, yeah, I love to share my testimony and also just, you know, hear others share their testimony, how the Lord brought them to himself. I came to faith when I was in college, but before that I do believe that you know the Lord had started working in my life at a very young age. I grew up in a family with five boys and one sister. She was the last born. My dad was a firm disciplinarian, so going to church was not an option.

Very early years, he himself, my dad didn't go to church at first but eventually he said going to church. I come from a small island on Lake Malawa. We call it a lake here but for most Americans probably they see it would be like an ocean but It's quite big, it's vast. I come from a small island that's pretty much predominantly Anglican. And so we went to an Anglican church and growing up served in that church a little bit as a young boy.

But eventually went into boarding school late, you know, my late primary years and in high school, in boarding school and fell in love with basketball. So that became like a big thing in my life. By the time I went to university, I was already playing in the junior sort of national team and eventually went to play for the national team. So that became like a big thing for me. From many years, I convinced myself that I could make a career out of this, probably.

Play, the goal was to actually play in the NBA in America. So put everything into basketball. So when I was in college, it was always school, basketball, and then of course other things, creeping, you start living a life that was very, probably beyond what you used to be like at home, religious. Now you're in college and you're pretty much throwing away your life. So that went on for quite a while.

And also the attention that, you know, basketball is quite, quite, there's a big, you know, sort of tournament in Malawi that goes on every year. So it's quite a big deal. And even at the time, I was like maybe 20 years ago, over 20 years ago, that was still happening, was a good league. And so I spent a lot of time really just idolizing sports, idolizing myself, really neglected church, didn't go to church for many years while in college. Mollah, what college did you go to?

You've taken us to several universities in Malawi. Which one? I went to Polytechnic, which is part of the University of Malawi. I was studying engineering there, little engineering. So yeah, I mean, the Lord slowly, I would still here and there go to church, but mainly spent most of my time on weekends, either places, drinking places or studies, or else at the basketball court playing basketball.

One of my brothers had been arrested. And so, you know, my family was trying to bail him out, trying to help him while he was in there. And I decided, because I knew a lot of people at the time playing for the national team, I knew a lot of people, I thought, you know what, I would travel totally long way, which is about four hours away from Blantyre where I live where I went to school and and when I went there I had quite a terrible accident I was actually mugged by like 14-15 guys I was starved, beaten up, took away everything I had So I came back after that trip. I was in hospital for like two weeks, recovered, went back home. But during that time, my parents would bring people to pray for me.

And I think I just grew very bitter, even though I was wasting my life in college, idolizing sports, really disregarding anything I learned as a young boy at home about God. The Lord, all these people would come to pray for me in hospital and at home, but somehow I just felt like, wow, if there is God, why would he let me go through something like this and I just became very bitter very angry people would come to pray for me and that would just made me more angry you know because I was in pain I couldn't eat it was just a very difficult time And so I went back to school, lost like half a semester, went back to school, back in college, couldn't play basketball, couldn't do, go to places or going for parties and all of that. And so I got to a place where I began to feel like, you know, there is no God, if there is God, if there was a God, he wouldn't let a good person like me go through something like that. I mean, with all this stuff I was doing, I still felt I was a good person because you're giving here, you're giving there.

Once in a while you attend church, you still think you're a good person. And so, yeah, I just became very entertained a little bit, theistic thoughts, dismiss the idea of God That went on for a year. I was just a very fearful, depressed person around 2002 at the time. And that went on for like a year. But the Lord was basically using the same thing, the same question as well, the same ideas to say, you know, those people could have killed me, could have taken my life.

Cause actually when they left me, they left me convinced that this person is probably dead. You know, They left me in a pool of blood, it was really bad. But I started looking back and I believe that the Lord was just helping me to think through and process all that I've gone through. And I started thinking, you know, maybe there is God, maybe that's why I, you know, I survived. Maybe he's giving me a second chance.

Maybe, you know, maybe I was wrong in the way I was thinking through all this, you know, maybe this God saved me that day from, you know, getting killed, you know, so that went on. I used to, I was also quite, you know, listening to a lot of rap music, you know, really evil stuff. I just began that time making changes in my life. I didn't know anything about the new birth and what being a Christian looks like. I thought being a Christian meant I needed to stop listening to that kind of music.

I needed to stop drinking. I needed to cut down a little bit on basketball, I needed to cut down and just, you know, stop certain things, clean up my life a little bit, and so I started doing that. And a lot of my friends at the time who had come to faith, including my young brother, probably most of them thought, wow, what a Christian, you know, because I'd stopped doing all those things. I started going to church, back to the church. But then as time went by, I still felt there was something missing in my life.

I still felt like if I had died that day, there is no way I was going to see God because I was his enemy. I was looking back at my life, the way I lived my life, that I didn't know who God was, even though I had cleaned up real good. And so I went to a Bible study. It was just a group of young guys doing a Bible study. How old were you at that time?

I must have been like 21, I believe, or 22, somewhere there. I went to that Bible study, really, and the people who were doing that Bible study, their focus was not me, because they thought, oh, this guy is really, he's religious, he's clean, he's really made changes. And most people that knew me at the time, I guess maybe if they had seen the changes in my life, they could have been convinced that I was a Christian. But I was sitting there listening to this guy reading John chapter three. I don't really remember who this person was.

Reading John chapter three, talking about the new birth. And they were just reading the text, focusing on this one girl that was there in the room. You know, really just talking to her, like evangelizing to her, even though there were other people in the room. And I was sitting there thinking, well, that's what I need. I'm a sinner.

I need to be born again. I need a new life. I need, I need God to change me. I need Christ to save me. And I'm listening to all these.

I'm like, this is for me. And I never said a word in that meeting. I left that meeting convicted. And I believe that's the day the Lord served me as I cried out to him and pleaded that he would save me. And so that's how I came to faith.

It was really through a reading of John chapter 3, understanding what the new birth was, God helping me to see that the changes I'd made were not enough, that I needed to be born again. I needed to be made anew. Mola, what effect did your going to the Anglican church have on you looking back from where you are now and your conversion? It's actually very difficult for me to tell because when I got converted that day, going back to the Anglican church, I began to see just a little things that were not helpful in my life. I was coming from a place where we were going out every weekend, you know, drinking, really just a lot of alcohol abuse.

When I went back to that Anglican church, There were like fundraising events where people were drinking, you know, deacons of the church, you know, they had like a fridge behind the church and people just go behind, come back looking like they're not okay, you know. And those of us who were with that kind of a background, we knew what was happening. And then eventually as the day go went by, they would bring out their bottles. And so I began to see what this is all good for me, looking at where I'm coming from. And it was also a time where people were telling me that, you know, we've done that before.

We've been, we've professed faith in Christ. I've been born again before, but you know what, you will come back. These were like our drinking buddies. They'll be like, you come back, you come back to us. And so it wasn't like we were saying, no, I'm not coming back.

I was just afraid, like, wow, I can't imagine going back to that life. What would that be like? I mean, that's like a place of death for me with all that I've gone through, feeling like God was giving me like a second chance, like a second life. That's how it felt, you know? So the thought of hearing someone say, oh don't worry, you'll come back was very scary, was a scary thought.

So, Malo, let me ask you about two people. Who is Frank Maxson and how did you meet him? And who is Rachel Matze and how did you meet her? So, well, when, you know, after that conversion, finishing school, started working for two companies. One was the sugar company in Malawi, it's the only sugar company in Malawi, and then I worked for a telecommunications company as well.

But during the same time I was also already, you know, going out, doing evangelism, and most of it was sharing my testimony like I'm doing right now, You know, just sharing my testimony. I didn't know any more about the Bible than what I knew then. So sharing my testimony with people, what gracious there was using whatever we were sharing with people to save some of our friends. And so we were making, you know, a little trips over on weekends to go to different places to preach. And so one time I got to where we are at a universe about an hour away from us in Zumba where we actually planting a church right now in that same area in that city.

I was there with my friends, and we see a group of people with literature, books, booklets. Now, at that point, one thing I forgot to mention was, during the same time I got served, I came across a book here I signed. It was Margin Luther's biography. That was the first book I read that really just transformed my life. The world really used it in my life.

So that was only book, physical copy, good book that I knew at the time that I had. And when I saw this group of people, here in Malawi if you see a group of white people doing evangelism, automatically you think Jehovah's Witnesses. So when I saw them, that's what I thought. But when I approached, I saw books I was familiar with, Luther, from Luther, later finding out about others like Thomas Watson and Jonathan Edwards. So here they have a book, they're selling these books and we got so excited, bought everything they had.

Now they had never seen that, you know, anything like that where people bought their books because these were no popular books at the time, even today. So that's how I met Frank. He was doing evangelism, we were doing evangelism over a book table, and here it was. The Lord just brought us together and eventually started working together that led to the planting of Antioch. And a lot of mentoring that went on in my life by Frank, huge blessing in my life, he's remained a good friend till today.

Rachel. No, no, no, hang on, hang on. I will tell you, I will tell you how he married Rachel. We were praying. We were praying.

That's how it happened. We were praying. We were praying. Ma was this lonely single pastor. We would bring him over to preach and stuff.

We'd go see him And there he was in his little single, you know, crash pad. But we started to pray and that's how he found Rachel. Go ahead. It's possibly true, possibly. No, so one of three of my brothers live in South Africa and my young brother was in a church, attending a church that Rachel was also attending at the time.

And I just kept on hearing all these good things about this woman, about Rachel. And sometimes the pastor of the church would say things like, hey, what are you doing? You need to be here. And like you're saying, I've been praying for many years and many others. You prayed with me many times.

And yeah, through those visits to South Africa, I got to hear more about Rachel and of course, eventually meeting and courtship and the rest is history. And by the grace of God, she married me. Yeah. Sweet. Okay, so how long you've been married?

How many kids do you have? So we have two girls who've been married for nine and a half years. We're celebrating our 10th anniversary next year It's been wonderful. It's been sweet We have two girls Emily and Claire seven and five great blessing Praise the Lord. What a joy it's been.

So let's talk about things that have influenced you since your conversion. What are some of the maybe books or principles or people who've affected you since as a father, as a husband, as a pastor? This is very interesting broad question, of course. I have a lot of things to say but in the interest of time. So when I came to faith, there were others who had come to faith around the same time including my younger brother.

And we were, like I said, we discovered Luther and through the internet discovered many other faithful men who are long gone right now. Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Watson, Calvin, who's probably the one who's influenced me the most. I just wish he was Baptist, but anyway. So we were reading online. Well, He became a Baptist when he died.

It all got straightened out when he saw the Lord's face. That's right. Yeah, so those were the early years really was just reading the Puritans and really being affected by the Minister of Chapel Library. So those are the only had copies as far as books are concerned we had and that's the only access to books we had. Chapel Library through the Maxons, they shipped lots of books to us and we just devolved the literature over a period of years.

And those really were the first few resources that in our lives. But also to be honest, Frank was not just a theologian, he was a practical Christian. And so being around him, spending time with him. And to me, honestly, You could say, if you saw Frank and I, I was young, he had been in ministry for many years as well, we already had older children. One could say, he is a father and a son, but between us really was a lot of mentoring, but also just a great friendship that we had.

And so, you know, at that point, another age, to have someone of his age and really someone who was open with me, someone who shared his life with me, he had a great, great influence on my life. I was actually through Franklin I came up I came to meet you Scott and Jason and began to see what the Lord was doing. I mean at that point we didn't know that there were other Christians who believed like us at the time. And then when we met Frank and beginning to see the literature they had and to read some of those resources and then to be to find out there were other Christians out there who believe the same things we had believed. That just really changed our whole world.

It was such an encouragement because you're coming from a place where you feel so lonely spiritually, you feel like you're the only one and you begin to doubt yourself. But then to find out what God was doing across the globe really, Really just changed the direction, changed the way we thought about the Christian faith, changed about how we approached evangelism, dealing with prosperity gospel. On the other hand, trying to see disciple men and women and to see if faith in the church is being planted in our country. Mala, how long has Antioch Baptist been in existence and what are you all up to now? It's been around for about 13 years, this is our 13th year.

And the goal really has been to see other churches, apart from strengthening our church and enjoying the sweet fellowship of what is given us at this point, has been to see other churches like us planted in our country because what is known as Christianity, so you can't always face faith in Christ in our country, but you know what that is. It's just easy polygamy, cultural Christianity and all of that. But, you know, there are very few faithful churches in Malawi, churches that believe the Bible, preach the gospel, very few. So, Antioch has been busy trying to do our part, be faithful, find churches, train leaders, send them out. That's what we're doing.

That's thrilling. It's been thrilling to watch, watch how God has worked over the years. Wow. We're just so thankful for all of what's happening. You have a big conference coming up just in a couple of weeks here, and Jason's going to go and be there and preach.

But the Lord has so blessed your work on the university campuses. And you know, when we first were started going to your church, it was all single men. And now, and the whole demographic has shifted. You still have a lot of single men, but you have lots of families and babies running around. It's really, what a blessing it is to see how God has worked through you there and in the region as well.

So thank you so much, Mala, for joining us. It's been a blessing. Thank you for having me. Yeah. And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast.

Hope you can join us next time. Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up. Hope you can join us. Go to churchandfamilylife.com.

See you next Monday for our next broadcast of the Church and Family Life podcast.