Greetings from Choma...

Greetings from Choma.  This past week we have been working at Salvation Baptist Church (that Mr. Chambers and Arthur pastor over).  We have been preparing the grounds for the children’s camp we will be hosting Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  The pastor said we should anticipate more than 100 children for each session (we’ll have to sessions each day).  The past few days, we have been flattening land for a volleyball court, picking maize from the fields, slashing down the weeds, and painting part of the church.   We were able to finish everything needing done at the church.

This Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we’ll staying at the farm while we make preparations for the camps.  About half of the programing has been written, so that will need to be finished up.  Then we’ll be training a few of our team and our translators how to lead group games and debrief.

As a team, we are currently memorizing 2 Tim: 3:10-4:7

One correction from my previous post…Derrick is saved, one other teen who will be working with us is not.

Prayer Requests:

-That preparations and training will be able to completed well over the next couple of days

-That we would be able to get a better grasp on the language (we’re still struggling with simple greetings)

-I was asked to preach this Sunday at Salvation Baptist…that I may expound His Word well.

We're expected at the church in a short while, so we don't have much time...

We got through the airports surpisingly well...and had some of our overweight bags overlooked.  Once we went through customs in Lusaka, none of our bags got checked, which meant we didn't have to pay any taxes on a lot of the gear we brought.  They also only charged us $50 for our visas instead of the $100 we were expecting.

Currently, we're staying on a 5000 acre farm where the Chambers rent a house.  We got our tent up out in the back!

We are hitting the ground running.  Our time here will be split between Choma (the town) and Nambaaza (the bush).  Sunday, we went to the church we will be working at in Choma.  The pastor, Arthur, is also acting as our translator and teaching us the ways of the land.

This week, we'll be working on getting the church grounds ready to host a camp (clearing fields for big games, setting up some low ropes elements, etc), training some nationals, and coming up with the plans for the week.We'll be hosting a 3 day camp at the start of next week for the children at the local school.This camp we will talk about trust in Christ, Christ rescuing us, and then eternal security.  After this camp, we'll take a day to prep for the bush and then spend 2 straight weeks out in the bush.

We gotta run, but a few prayer requests:
-getting the church grounds ready
-training Derrick (one of the nationals to help us)-he's unsaved, but eager to learn more
-ideas and brainstorming as we work on the porgramming and lessons.

We should have more time later this week to update better.

Getting there...

So far, everything has been going well.  We received news we reached full support Thursday morning before we left (and then some...which is great because we can now do even more with the camp).  The airlines looked the other way on some of our heavy bags too...so we didn't have to pay the extra charge.  Our full team met up in D.C. (there are three other interns going out besides Caleb and I).
The flights have been going smoothly.  Caleb and I have have been blessed with a seat in between us on both the flights, making it much easier to stretch out. We're currently boarding our last flight into Lusaka, Zambia.  We'll spend the evening there before complete the drive tomorrow.