Here I sit at the end of our debrief time at 6 in the morning in an attempt to FaceTime my family back home. But I am unable to since the power has been out the whole night I am drawn to think about the last month and all that has happened since I left my home and set out for Africa. In light of this I have decided to give a short review of my month in Zambia.
When my team and I got into Lusaka, which is the fastest growing city in Southern Africa, I was surprised to find much of it to look very much like home. There were no lions, or elephants, or wild animals running around. There were mostly people on smart phones, going to malls and driving Toyotas. On the left side of the road I might add, which can be a little unnerving.
Part of me expected to be going into a place that would not have most of the modern conveniences of home, which did and didn’t happen. For example, we had a washer and no dryer and since it’s the rainy season most of the time the guys room was used to hang clothes in. They have a road system but we took public transportation the whole month which was an interesting experience. Basically it’s a van with modified seats so you can squeeze as many people in as you can until you are basically on each other’s laps and the van is weighed down to the bumper.
What was very different about Lusaka was seeing the contrast of an westernized city in the middle of poverty. Even though there were malls, and cars, and cell phones, they were all in the middle of a city that is full of people struggling to survive.
We were blessed this month to be taken to a large number of ministries that are scattered around Lusaka. We went to compounds for orphans and widows. We went to a compound for women that had been caught up in the local sex trade or had been abused by family members. We spent time at the colleges evangelizing and spreading the gospel to students going to schools were STDs and abortions are just commonplace. Our contact alone knew of so many different places that are providing education for orphans that we really only went to one of them twice and what we saw seems like a very small sample of the amount of children that are without parents and without someone to truly care for just their basic living needs.
It was tough to see this type of suffering and know that there was really no major changes that I could make. It was a struggle to know my visit was not going to be able to change anyone’s standard of living no matter how much I wanted to. I am trying to get over the fact that I will mostly likely never see the outcome of my work in Zambia. I will never know if the words of encouragement we spoke at the college will help a young man or woman make Christ a priority in their life. I won’t know if that one experience of kindness and love from a Christian will help heal the pain of a girl whose lifetime has been full of being used by men. I won’t know if my time with an orphan just acknowledging and playing with them will effect the way they see themselves when they have lived thru rejection from not just their family but also the bigger part of society.
I will never see the rippling effects that God has been moving in from our time in Zambia. This alone has been my biggest test in faith since I stepped out of the door of my house just one month ago. God has been showing me the wonder of community. How even tho I don’t get to see the fruits of our labor in Zambia, that with faith another part of the body of Christ will be there for the harvest.
Please pray for the ministries that we worked with in Lusaka: Burning Bush, Vision of Hope, Emanuel Transit Center, and Campus Crusade.
Also, pray for the people we are going to in Malawi. We leave today for Senga Bay, which is a small village on lake Malawi. It will also be a big test as far as living conditions. Tents, bucket showers, and squatty potties. Looking forward to see God work in the difficulty of village life.
