We stayed at the Kiboko Hotel in Old Town Lilongwe. I assumed a minimal breakfast and no coffee, but I was pleasantly surprised with the food!
Today we visited five locations where CCODE has commenced operations either directly or in several cases only indirectly (i.e. training the trainer). The response blew me away. Every village greeted us with a parade of song and dance. The incredibly warm welcomes choked me up every single time. The success stories from the CCODE training border on shocking. Over the years I have taught numerous MBA classes in entrepreneurship and have never seen such enthusiasm for developing new ventures – this is doubly remarkable coming from remote villages in one of the poorest countries in the world. We heard about people borrowing to knit hats and scarves, to sell cakes and donuts, to buy fertilizer for crops, to buy chickens or goats, to sell clothing and to produce charcoal. These short-term ventures are being paired with longer-term visions to build grain mills, fund chicken incubators, build houses and to support the church.
I had to ask representatives of the local Malawi United Methodist Church along with Cayce and Carol if I was reading this tremendous success correctly. The answer was uniformly yes. It seems that conditions were ripe. CCODE provided the right training in business management, financial planning and especially goal setting (“save with a purpose”) that has started a spark of hope that’s turning into a blaze of fire.
I then had to ask why has this happened? Why has this spark turned into a flame? There is no simple answer. As mentioned above, 
conditions felt ripe and CCODE provided great training. However, it seems that the blessing of the church and of local Chiefs has provided an extra boost to the participants to elevate their entrepreneurial efforts. Some of this seems to be the magic of one idea spurring another which spurs another. I’ve heard this called the Medici Effect. The Medici family sponsored some of the greatest thinkers in Florence, provided coffee shops for them to share ideas and from that the Renaissance was born. Are we seeing the start of a mini-Renaissance in Malawi? Can members of Resurrection come alongside to fan the flames?
After a very long day we still made time for dinner with Malawi’s Ministry of Water along with the owner of Malawi water drilling company. The discussion was extremely helpful. We learned a huge amount about how to organize community groups to support local water wells.