Back from the bush…
(written on 1st Tuesday)
-We’re out in Nambaaza, about 5 hours from the nearest gas station. We left Friday morning, although the truck driver decided to work on his truck before he took us. So he was two hours late. After a 6 hour truck drive, we arrived at the property donated by the chief to EBM. With us, we brought 5 Americans and five nationals with us. This is the first time the Chambers have ventured out here for more than 6 days and the first time they have brought such a big team, so there will be a learning curve.
Kaponde Baptist Church is who we are working alongside while we are out in the bush. This church was planted by Salvation Baptist Church out of Choma (the church we are working with in town and have run the camps at) in 2006. In 2005, when the Chambers helped start Salvation Baptist, one of the women from the church, Teresa received Christ. Though she was a divorced woman (someone not respected by the society here), she knew she needed to take the Gospel back to Nambaaza (where she left) to bring the Good News back to her family and friends). The church had other people from around that area. Though young, they decided it was necessary to plant a church in Nambaaza (Kaponde Baptist). So, members of the church come out with us as part of the ministry of the church.
-Friday night, the churches choir greeted us and sung late into the night. They have been at the church (about 100 yards from our tents) singing each night since. Elephants were spotted the first two nights (although we haven’t seen them), so they’ve been doing that to keep us protected. There have also been three families staying at the church to protect us if anything were to come our way.
-Minus the church building and the pit latrine (the church built for us in anticipation of our coming), there is nothing out here. We spent the first couple of days clearing land so we could set up camp. The area we cleared will be the future home of the EBM campus (that is outlined in the blog).
-Saturday night, we also had a pleasant surprise. Somehow a rumor was spread that we were going to be showing the Jesus film that night. About 50 people were gathered for it at church waiting on us. Once we found out, we decided to go ahead and show it. By the end, more than 100 people were gathered, watching it around the church.
-Mrs. Chambers is known as a “doctor” out here, so many people come to her for help. She’s asked me to assist her in treating some of the injuries (b/c of my athletic training background). Every time we treat someone, it comes with great risk. If someone takes a turn for the worse, it is very easy for the locals to claim we used witch-craft to further hurt or kill them, which could hurt the ministry. We have to trust God that He shows us the best way to treat each patient (especially with our lack of medical supplies) and that if someone does turn for the worst, the locals understand we did the best we could for their friends/family.
(written on Tuesday)
Our first trip to the bush has come to an end. Overall, it was a great experience. We were able to get much more done than we thought was possible, everyone remained relatively healthy, God protected us from the wildlife and ourselves, and He presented us with some ministry opportunities we didn’t anticipate having.
- We were able to set up our ropes course within the first week we were there. The course offers 16 low rope initiatives at 12 stations spread across one trail (fallen log, trust fall, port-hole, spiders web, space web, nitro crossing, dragon’s finger, acid river, mountain tops, all-aboard, two types of tension traverse, postman’s walk, jungle vines, wild woozy, and Mohawk walk) . Because of our lack of cable, the longest cable of the Mohawk walk and wild woozy double as what we are calling multi-purpose lines. We have different attachment points to the trees, which allow us to run the tension traverses, jungle vines, and postman’s walk from both locations. We were also able to get plenty of tension on the cable, which we were very thankful for and so far it seems to be holding up much like the courses I have been on in the states. Though our lack of supplies and tools caused us some hindrances, overall we are very pleased with the final outcome of the course.
-As we were building, many of the locals wanted to try things out. Whether they were young or old, male or female, all of them wanted to try out the activities. They all looked like little kids on a playground and was a lot of fun to see them enjoying it.
-Since we got done so fast, we were able to do some training on the course and with debriefing as well. We will be training a couple of the nationals from Choma, and a couple of the nationals from Nambaaza in running the course and being able to teach through it.
-We were able to run three days of camps for the children of the local school. We would run a camp in the morning for the younger kids and a camp in the afternoon for the older kids. We averaged about 100 children/teens per day. Our first focus was on teaching about the Bible being God’s word and the eternal security Christ offers (*this recent ministry of Salvation Baptist is one of the first times the Gospel has been brought out to these people…the only other missionaries to reach this part of Zambia taught only certain people are good enough for salvation…and they didn’t last very long).
-We were able to show the Jesus film at the chief’s palace and at another village that asked us to come out as well. At the chief’s more than 80 people showed up…more than 200 people showed at the other village.
-While the men were building the camp, three of our women were able to teach in the local schools for the two weeks…teaching religious education, art, and literacy. We have been welcomed to do as much as we like by the community leaders with the children of the school and community.
Since we’ve been back…
-Since coming back from the bush, we traveled down to Livingstone for a night to see Victoria Falls (Saturday was Mr. and Mrs. Chambers anniversary)…incredible is the only way to describe it.
-Caleb left yesterday to get back to the capital. He boarded his plan today and should be back in the US around when I send this message.
-Harrison and Michelle Banda stopped by our house to visit last night…they send their greetings back to those of you who know them (Harrison was the first person to talk to me about coming to Zambia three summers ago, even though I never thought it would actually come about).
-For the next two weeks, we will be working with Salvation Baptist church, running some more camps from the church, working on some programing for camps we will run when we go back to the bush, and getting the things ready for our next trip out. We’ll leave July 4th for our next trip out.
Prayer Requests
-that we all regain our strength…living out in the bush takes a lot out of you
-that the brings get made/finished (we got out there and none of them had been fired yet)
-that Caleb finishes his travels safely
-that we’re able to find another tent before we go back out (Caleb and I had the privilege of sharing a one man tent for the two weeks…and next time we’ll have more people with us)
-if everything works out, it looks as if I will be going back to the north part of Zambia with Harrison and Michelle to spend a week with them and working with them to develop their own camp (they’re about 11 hours away from us)
