Zambia. One of our favorite months of the year so far. A month that was centered around community and relationships. Our relationship with our new teammates, our Zambian family, the members of the church, the members of the Lusaka community, and our relationship with God. We were created for community and relationships and that’s exactly what made this month so special.
Every day we would go into the community and visit with people — hear their stories, hear about their lives, their struggles, their praises and concerns, and we got to grieve and celebrate with them. We were able to offer encouragement and prayer, tell them about the gospel and love of Jesus, and lead some to a relationship with Christ! We got to simply live in community with the people we encountered in an intentional, thoughtful, God-focused way, and it was beautiful.
One of the reasons why it was so hard to say goodbye to Zambia when it was time for us to leave was because of our amazing host family — Bishop Obby, his wife Pastor Karen, and their amazing children (Mwewa, Shekinah, Evance, Clement, and Mwango). We lived with them, ate with them, prayed and worshiped with them, and had the best time together while we were there. Their smiles and laughter will forever be seared in my memory.
And because of the donations from our supporters in response to our previous blog post, we were able to raise over $3,000 to meet the needs of our host family and their ministry! Thank you so so much to everyone that donated!! Because of your generous hearts, we were able to use that money to: send the two youngest daughters to school and fund them for a year, buy 200 Bibles for the churches and believers there (practically nobody had the Word of God), help fund college for the two oldest children, donate towards the building fund for two of the church buildings we served at (they need to expand because their numbers are growing + the roof of the building has holes), and buy their middle son a new keyboard. (He has a speech impairment and playing is what gave him confidence and brought him out of his shell. He is incredible and this is his form of worship, but his old keyboard was half broken.)
At the end of this blog post, you will find a recap video of our time in Zambia. In some of the scenes you’ll see us shopping for food in the market, dancing together, cooking, praying for people, preaching in churches, Greg eating monkey(!), going on a safari, and lots of singing! That’s something that I’ll miss the most, the joyful singing from our Zambian family that would always fill the rooms of their home. You can hear their beautiful voices singing a worship song as the audio for the video below!
As we head into month 10 in Lesotho, we will find ourselves in the rural Melealea Valley helping run sustainable discipleship schools. Thank you for your prayers as we finish up our last 2 months on the mission field!
