Inward Renewal

On Sunday, the Action Zambia team thought it would be good to come together to worship the Lord and pray.  Andrea and I were tired, but knew that we especially needed fellowship and prayer during the circumstances that we are going through.  Steve and Stephanie put together a program for the kids and Stephanie read from the Jesus Storybook Bible which was really good.  We watched a video sermon from C.J. Mahaney on looking for grace in the lives of the saints and His church.  The team prayed over us and our situation.  They also prayed for Ian who had a tough first night out of our home.  His fever seemed to be on the increase.  The Lord touched his body after the service and calmed his nerves enough for him to eat a little.  Right now he’s running around back to his normal self.  Thank you God!

Luke Whitfield and I have been scanning the country-side looking for alternative building materials to treated wood.  Prices of any steel scrap or composite materials turn out to be quite expensive.  We are in the process of pouring slabs of concrete for five chalets that will be available for camping out at Ciyanjano.  Because termite action here in Zambia is so bad, we were looking for a material for the chalet uprights that would be termite proof.

After getting a few leads from locals involved in the construction business, I visited TAP Zambia Limited which is based in Chilanga.  They manufacture asbestos roofing sheets as well as other concrete based composite products like drainage pipes, culverts.  The plant is massive and has been around for years, serving the infrastructure needs of Zambia.

What I discovered was that the plant has a lot of discarded product in their sewer-main piping division.  Because each pipe needs to be coupled with another pipe, each segment has a male and female end.  When one end is deffective then the product is discarded as scrap.  It turns out they were willing to sell these otherwise intact products at a significantly reduced rate.  Being 6 inches in diameter, and manufactured out of reinforced concrete, these  4 meter long pipes are used by construction crews for carport, chalet and porch uprights. Getting the material was an absolute fiasco, requiring several trips back and forth – not to mention many hours of waiting.

When we first navigated our way through the maze of access roads to the rear scrap yard we could see that much of the product was covered with vegetation.  Within two minutes of getting out of our lorry (truck) a security guard who was shadowing us killed a black mamba who was emerging out of the stacked product just meters from us.  As we loaded the product onto the flat bed, we encountered a second snake.  The Lord was definitely protecting us in that snake infested area.

All in all, it took us close to three days to secure these 30 pieces of material.  We’re very grateful however for the savings…  as well as a quality product that should last more than 60 years in a termite environment.  I look forward to posting pictures of these uprights installed.  A team from Illinois will be coming in a month’s time to mount header boards onto these as well as trusses for a roof.  Please pray that all goes according to plan.

Etambuyu Imasiku is one of our national staff workers with Action Zambia.  Eta (her name short hand) has been working with the CROSS Project ministry for close to 5 years now.  She is known by everyone for her strong, resilient faith.  Her poise and grace speak volumes about her character.  Eta hasn’t been feeling well lately, like the vast majority of Lusaka.  This is the flu season and everyone seems to catch nasty respiratory bugs and/or congestion.  So after we ourselves recovered from the flu we went to her place in Kabwata to drop off a meal and visit.

Ian and Ireen were elated to pay her a visit.  Ireen stood up (with a little bit of coercion from me) and demonstrated her catechism memorization for us.  Eta lights up around children and perhaps they were better medicine for her than a hot meal.

Last week a pastor in our mission’s pastors training classes passed through what most American’s would consider a tragedy.  His wife gave birth to a baby boy via an emergency C-section operation.  During the operation doctors and nurses told him to go home and wait for the outcome.  They told him that the procedure was 50/50 survival for wife and child.

The next morning he returned to the hospital and found wonderful news waiting.  His wife and child were okay… His boy was born with birth defects but the prognosis for future procedures seemed good.  A week passed and all seemed well…  He and his wife were exhausted from taking care of a newborn and recovering from the invasive surgery.  Friday night they went to sleep and in the morning they found the baby struggling to breath.

They rushed to the government hospital but their son died on the way.  The doctors pronounced the child BID (Brought In Dead).  What started out as just another morning turned into a visit to the police, mortuary and hasty funeral service.  In Zambia, children who are days / weeks old are not given the typical funeral.  The pastor and his wife had not yet given the boy a name so the government documents indicated “son of…”  Within hours, the death had been processed by the authorities and burial plot was given to the family in crisis.  By 13 hrs. that afternoon, everything was finalized.  The pastor and his wife returned to their home, stunned and exhausted.

I visited them the following day and sat with them in their home, me being mostly quiet.  Lots of family members were packed into every room of the small house.  Mothers, sisters, nieces, uncles sat on the floor and we all sat in silence.  Communication was evident, soul to soul, spirit to spirit.  Being surrounded by community like that would have been uncomfortable to me if I were the one loosing a child.  I would probably want to be left alone.  Not so in Zambia, the community shows profound solidarity and draws close to the grieving.

Looking around the room I saw the faces… and wondered how the happenings of the day before could possibly be true.  The pastor was warm and appreciative of me passing through his place.  He shared with me his deep conviction of the “supremacy of Christ” even in the midst of loss.  He shared how he felt the tangible comfort of his Savior.  As he talked I glanced over at his front door… A paper had been posted there at eye-level – no doubt put there deliberately.  I’ll never forget what it read:

“Happiness depends on happennings, joy depends on Jesus.”

Already, the pastor had begun his fight for joy… in the midst of everything he had decided to soldier on.

Three Zambian families are living on site at our Ciyanjano Ministry Centre.  The families help maintain a presence there as well as do regular maintenance and help with our development initiatives.  Jailos (right) is our “go-to-man” and has an impeccable reputation.  He’s honest, humble and a hard-worker.  He functions as the spokesman for Ciyanjano to the community right now – and people seem to really respect him.  Because the development work that is happening out there wouldn’t have materialized without them, I’ve posted a recent picture of Boniface, Richard and Jailos holding their “slashers”.  Slashers are swung back and forth to cut grass.  In this picture, they just finished clearing an overgrown grassy area where we hope to install a playground for kids if we can find donors.  Oh, here’s a side note…Zambians don’t call them “playgrounds”, they call them “playparks”. We would appreciate prayer that God would continue to provide the funding that’s needed to pays for their labor costs.  It is hard for me to conceive of the ministry centre operating without them.  Their attitudes and resilience are always a big encouragement to me.

When we first arrived in Zambia, we worked with the CROSS Project (Churches Ready to Overcome Silence and Stigma).  It is a ministry that equips local church groups to compassionately reach out to those around (and within) who are affected by HIV/AIDS.  Tim and I both really enjoyed this work, both encouraging from the Word of God and challenging traditional beliefs about this disease. When Tim took on the role of director and I became a stay-at-home mom with 2 small children, our involvement in the CROSS project became minimal.

It was a real treat to join the CROSS team this past week and participate in their graduation signifying their completion of a 5 month curriculum.  Tim did a fantastic job of speaking to the graduates, passionately exhorting them to be a community who embraces those with HIV/AIDS.  After his talk, each graduate received a certificate and a “badge” of a blue cross wrapped in the red HIV ribbon.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Health and Wealth gospel?  Maybe not.  Either way it has made it’s way from the West to the heart of Africa.  It’s message is as deadly as any false prophet ever was.  It completely empties the work, death and resurrection of Christ.  Those are peripheral items compared to gaining prosperity, healing and deliverance.  The “pastors” of these churches are often misguided swindlers trying to rob an already destitute people of whatever material possession they have.  In addition, they are leading people astray and having them put their hope in something other than God.  Those who follow such teachings will undoubtedly become disappointed and angry with God for not giving them their every wish and many will turn cynically away from the church.

It makes me mad when I come across a sign like the one posted below.  My jaw drops as I read “pray your way to salvation…” And I wonder just how many people think they are Christians doing all the right things, following the prescription their church has outlined for them, but have never truly encountered Christ, the suffering one, who bore our sins upon the cross.  All of Action Zambia’s ministries combat the health and wealth gospel at some level.  We pray that God would use us to speak simply and clearly about Jesus Christ.

Bruce Kaumba is one of the 15 pastors that are attending Action Pastors’ College (APC).  His church and residence is not too far from our home.  Although the distance isn’t very far, the roads to reach his place can prove challenging.

Tim, Andrea and the kids had a chance to go and visit his him in Kanyama compound.  In addition to the church, Bruce has set up a small school called “Keke Christian Academy”.  From what I could tell, it only provides pre-school and some of the lower grades.  The children looked very engaged in what they were doing and the teachers, similarly, seemed very engaged with the children.

It was great to see a church where there is so much concern for the well-being of their community.  We pray God’s abundant blessing on that Church and that many children will come to know their Saviour because of their education at the school.

Thanks to Steve Allen’s hard work on this video, you can now catch a clearer picture of how Ciyanjano is set to be used.  These kids had such a blast!  With a football field now complete and a playpark for youth campers to be installed in the near future, Ciyanjano is ramping-up for kids.  Children who come for camps will have an exciting atmosphere where teaching and games are conducted in a beautiful, peaceful, secure setting.  Start the video by clicking the pic below!

Our vehicle is being repaired once again, so I found myself using public transport again.  I took a bus called the “Jesus Rhythm” for one leg of the journey and a taxi for the other.  For the taxi, my driver was a young man from John Laing compound by the name of Richard.  After negotiating a fare for the journey, Richard and i began talking about life.  Over the next 15 minutes he shared the difficulties of the life he was leading: about the troubles in his marriage and the concerns that he had for his kids.

With meager earnings from his taxi, he confessed that he was hungry most of the time and his wife and left him because he wasn’t a bread-winner.  After listening, I shared with him the hope of the Gospel and the fundamentals of what it means to be a child of God.  Before dropping me off he took my copy of the Gospel of John in Cibemba vernacular and committed to reading it by the end of the day.  I told him that I didn’t have the resources to fix the things in his life that were broken but I did commit to pray for him.  I have no idea whether I’ll ever see Richard again or if he read the Book of John but perhaps if we pray for him, God will transform his life.