Personnel

At present, the International Mission Board (Southern Baptist Convention) has only one family unit assigned to the nearly 4 million Lomwe people in Mozambique and Malawi. Bob and Pam Brownfield are career missionaries who have worked in this area since 1999, and their assignment is to plant new churches and develop reproducing leadership. They have until recently been joined in the work by career missionaries Stephen and Karis Ward and 2-year International Service Corps missionaries Billy and Sara Turner. However, the Wards have recently transferred due to health problems, and the Turners' assignment ended in October 2006.

The Brownfields are the only Lomweland missionaries (from any agency) whose assignment is to facilitate a church planting movement (God's hand bringing about an exponential growth of new churches starting new churches, free from missionary subsidy). The Brownfields are currently based in Thyolo, Malawi. Their young adult daughters are both students at Auburn University, and their teenage sons are homeschooled. Pam is involved in teaching Sunday School in the local village, and also teaches women's groups throughout the district. When possible, the children and Pam accompany Bob, who teaches in the bush days at a time. All teaching in the area is done in the local language, and whenever possible the teaching is story-based. Bob and Pam use chronological Bible storytelling to train leaders and teach lay people.

Missionaries Stuart and Sindia Foster serve as translation missionaries with SIM. They live in Gurue, and have recently completed translation of the Old Testament, which has never before been available in the Lomwe language. The Fosters have also been instrumental in translating Bible stories and local folk tales to be used as literacy books. Stuart and Sindia are now working with other translation missionaries in neighboring people groups to use computer software that will ease translation from existing manuscripts into closely related languages. For more information about the Fosters' ministry with SIM, please visit their website -
Stuart and Sindia Foster

There are a couple of European and South African missionaries in Lomweland who pastor local churches. We hope to get more information on these other evangelical assets in the area posted to this site in the future.