hi to all again! :)
i can’t believe we’ve already been in africa for over a month – there’s been so much going on that i’ve hardly had a chance to sit down and take it all in! i miss you all so much, and i thank you again as always for all the support and prayers that you’re sending my way. please keep em comin – all of the missionaries working with zambia project and i certainly need them!
for the past couple weeks, life at mutoya (base camp) has certainly been interesting! i have 8 other house mates, we now have sixteen 20-somethings eating out of one (quite small) fridge, and all of the medium-term interns are gearing up for another 120 visitors who will stay at mutoya in just a couple of short weeks. it’s a huge blessing to have so many young people from a similar cultural background to live, love, and laugh with who all have such incredible hearts for missions! we’re scattered all over the place – some of us are down at the orphan school, some working with the ladies to begin making purses at hope art, some doing construction at the malnourishment center and the new site for the orphan school, others out in the bush, one working with marinette to develop the zambia project’s website, a couple developing soccer and youth ministries through hope church, and all of us working with the kids at kids’ church on sundays and with the young adults in cell groups during the week. amazingly though, even though we’re all very different and have a ton going on, we’re all already becoming good friends. i ask your prayers for all the medium-term interns here: kate, katie, catherine, jane, lucy, kiersten, holly, regina, big wes, little wes, big bryan, little brian, lucas, jeron, zach, and tyler. please pray for continued grace for us as we live and work together with the missionaries here at mutoya!
although i’m primarily working at the VOH orphan school in mongu, i’ve been able to go out to the bush quite a little bit over the past few days. two weekends ago, hope church went on an outreach to kande, a small village just outside of mongu, to visit homes in the area and spread the word about Christ and to invite people to visit the church that the zambia project helped plant about a year ago. that was my first time sharing the Word with complete strangers since the team went to mwai kalupe, but i already felt more comfortable receiving outrageous hospitality from people i’d never met, starting up conversations about Christ, and even sharing a bit of the amazing work that God’s done in my life. that sunday, leonard (rock star translator), graeme, and i went to nangula (2-ish hours away, waaaay out in the bush) to visit the church that was just planted the week before. about 80 people (half adults, half kids) came to sing, laugh, and hear leonard preach on romans 8. when we left about 2 hours later, they were still going strong! one woman had walked five hours to get to church that morning, and she’d only just heard the gospel a week ago!! it’s incredible to see enthusiastic faith lived out so vividly – and nangula is just one of the many testaments to God’s active work in people’s lives here in the western province. although i play the tiniest and most insignificant role, i still can’t believe that i’m able to take part in it all.
our first sunset at nalulau
from wednesday to sunday of last week, eight of us medium-termers and 5 translators headed out to share God with people and help construct a well in nalulau, a small village about 2 hours north-east of mongu. the experience was much different than when ron’s team and i went to mwai kalupe. for one, there was a huge lake right next to our camp site, so bathing was actually an option (!!!), though the water wasn’t safe to drink. unlike last time, too, two of our translators were newbies to the bush, and song spoke a different dialect of silozi than the villagers of nalulau. we also didn’t have felix, our five-star soux bush chef – cooking meals was all up to the three ladies (learning to cook on an open fire in the middle of africa – check)! by just the second day, though, i could tell that our time in nalulau would be just as exciting and challenging as our visit to mwai kalupe.
the boys at nalulau's lake
since our team’s main focus was to construct a water well, we only took one day, thursday, to visit villagers at their homes. we still had services for the villagers next to our camp site every night and on sunday morning, but much of our time during the day on friday and saturday was spent helping the village build the ten concrete cylinders needed before we could complete the well. (basically, the ten 1-meter diameter cylinders are stacked one on top of the other below ground to provide support to the well and protection for clean ground water.) we would have loved to finish the entire well and leave nalulau with clean drinking water by the time we left sunday afternoon, but unfortunately, time and resources cut us short. the cylinders took two hours each to dry, cylinders kept cracking because one of the two molds was a tad finicky, and mixing concrete with sand, rocks, and water turned out to be more time-intensive than it sounds. thankfully, though, a team will be going back to finish the well in just a couple of weeks!
isaiah and villagers making concrete cylinders
i couldn’t be of much use (it’s critically important for villages to take part in the construction process as much as possible – it’s their well!), but i was able to help some of the women pound rocks into 1x1 cm bits for the concrete and oversee all of the major steps in preparing a well.
pouding rocks for concrete
anyone can help!
aside from hanging out near the construction site for the well, i tried homemade bush wine (on accident…! won’t make that mistake again), lucas downed a full glass of milk straight from the cow (and regretted it later), and we feasted on sugar cane (picture gnawing on a long bamboo stick), surprisingly sweet green oranges, cassava roots, and sweet potatoes that villagers kept bringing to our camp site as wecome gifts. we shared what we had with the village, too – i showed a group of 4 year olds how to twirl, taught little boys how to play volleyball through a solid language barrier, and shared the glory of taking pictures with an ipod with a few teenage girls. in turn, regina, katie, and i received a semi-interactive lesson in the acceptable expression of zambian female sexuality while bathing from a group of 14- and 15-year old girls one afternoon in the lake. oh, what you learn in africa!
sharing the ipod's front camera with the gals
on sunday, leonard, graeme, and i visited nangula again for the village’s second-ever sunday morning church service while the rest of the team in nalulau taught about how much God loves us. that afternoon, we said our good-byes to the people of nalulau and headed back in greme’s truck to mutoya, mongu. since many of the medium-termers will be leaving in just over a month, few of us thought we’d actually see nalulau again – but hopefully, sometime in the next ten-or-so weeks that i still have left in zambia, i’ll be able to visit soon!
in the meantime, we have more than enough to occupy our time back at mutoya and in mongu. the teachers and medium-term interns working at the orphan school (me included) are helping to move the school to a temporary building (i.e. the tent that hope church used as a sanctuary before it relocated into a permanent building in town) to make the training center, its current home, available for use as a bible college for village leaders. i’m also working with a group of interns and young adults at hope church to put together three “kids fun days” – one on july 4th at hope church in mongu, one on july 5th at VOH orphan school in mutoya, and the last on the 9th in mewawa (a 40-or-so-minute drive out of mongu).
thank you again for all of your prayers and support – and more details to come on all that’s gone on here with our Christian family in the western province! i miss you all, and i look forward to talking with and seeing yall soon!
in His peace,
stephanie :)
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